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Essay/Memoir

LAPL ID: 
11

The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa

In conversation with Louise Steinman, curator, ALOUD at Central Library
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
01:03:04
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
Seeking a place where his deafness would be irrelevant, Josh Swiller volunteered for the Peace Corps and spent two years in a remote and impoverished village in Zambia. His hilarious and harrowing memoir recounts what he found there.
Participant(s) Bio
Josh Swiller has had a wide variety of careers, including forest ranger, raw-food chef, and journalist. In August 2005, he had successful surgery for a cochlear implant and partially recovered his hearing. He often speaks on issues facing mainstream deaf individuals.

Lit: A Memoir

In conversation with author Heather King
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
01:04:40
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
A new memoir by the author of The Liar's Club, about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live.
Participant(s) Bio
Mary Karr is the author of four volumes of poetry, including Sinners Welcome, Viper Rum, The Devil's Tour, and Abacus. Karr's first memoir, The Liars' Club, won the PEN Martha Albrand Award for best first nonfiction. The sequel, Cherry, about her adolescence was a New York Times bestseller. She lives in Syracuse and New York City.

A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

In Conversation With Jon Wiener, Professor of History, U.C. Irvine
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
01:05:59
ALOUD
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Episode Summary

Can the social connectedness that arises in the aftermath of a disaster-whether natural or manmade-lead us to a new vision of society?

Participant(s) Bio

Rebecca Solnit is the author of ten books, including River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, which won five awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and the Mark Lynton History Prize. In 2003, Solnit received a prestigious Lannan Literary Award.

Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son

In conversation with David L. Ulin, Book Editor, L.A. Times
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
01:20:01
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
A shy manifesto and an impractical handbook by one of America's finest writers.
Participant(s) Bio
Michael Chabon received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at UC Irvine, and has spent most of the past two decades in California. He is the author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Wonder Boys, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Other works include a young adult novel, Summerland, and two collections of short stories, A Model World and Other Stories and Werewolves In Their Youth.

No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes about Himself and our Way of Life in the Process

In conversation with Judith Lewis, environmental reporter
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
01:14:33
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
No toilet paper! No plastic containers! No new clothes! No eating out! Beavan discusses-and screens film clips about-- his family's yearlong experiment to live a zero waste lifestyle in New York City.
Participant(s) Bio
Colin Beavan is the author of Operation Jedburgh: D-Day and America's First Shadow War and Fingerprints: The Origins of Crime Detection and the Murder Case that Launched Forensic Science. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Mens' Journal, and many other national magazines. Beavan has appeared on NPR's All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, and many other nationally syndicated NPR and commercial radio shows. He lives in New York City.

Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer

In conversation with Evan Kleiman, renowned cookbook author and chef
Thursday, July 23, 2009
01:18:02
ALOUD
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Episode Summary

Urban and rural collide in this wry, inspiring memoir of a woman who turned a vacant lot in downtown Oakland into a thriving farm.

Participant(s) Bio

A child of back-to-the-land hippies, Novella Carpenter grew up in rural Idaho and Washington State. She attended the University of Washington in Seattle, majoring in Biology and English. Past careers include: assassin bug handler, book editor, media projectionist, hamster oocyte collector, and most recently, free-lance journalist. Carpenter studied under Michael Pollan at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism for two years. Her subsequent journalistic work reflects her interests-in farming, food, the environment, and culture. As an Urban Farmer, Carpenter has been cultivating the city for over ten years now, starting with a few chickens, then some bees, until she had a full-blown farm near downtown Oakland.

Why Choose to Love?

In conversation with author and artist Terry Wolverton
Sunday, December 5, 1999
01:20:45
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
This podcast, taken from the ALOUD archive, is a discussion from 1999's \"The Big Questions\" series. A celebration of writing, reading, and public debate, \"The Big Questions\" features visionary thinkers in the arts, sciences, and humanities who are asking new questions, challenging accepted theories, and reframing ancient dialects.
Participant(s) Bio
Bell Hooks is the author of fifteen books, including Killing Rage, Ain't I a Woman, and Bone Black: Memories of a Girlhood. She is a distinguished Professor of English at City College in New York. 'She writes with a deep sense of urgency about the existential and psychocultural dimensions of African-American life, especially those spiritual and intimate issues of love, hurt, pain, envy, and desire usually probed by artists...Her books help us not only to decolonize our minds, souls and bodies; on a deeper level, they touch our lives.' (Cornel West)

Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever

In conversation with journalist Amanda Fortini
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
01:01:02
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
A peerless interpreter of American life recounts his own long strange trip from rural Minnesota to the ivy-covered walls of Princeton-- a fascinating examination of the perils of an education that prizes the accumulation of points over the enrichment of the mind.
Participant(s) Bio
Walter Kirn is a regular reviewer for The New York Times Book Review, and his work appears in The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Time, New York, GQ and Esquire. He is the author of six previous works of fiction: My Hard Bargain: Stories, She Needed Me, Thumbsucker, Up in the Air, Mission to America and The Unbinding. Kirn is a graduate of Princeton University and attended Oxford on a scholarship from the Keasby Foundation.

Notes on Sontag

In conversation with David L. Ulin, book editor, LA Times
Thursday, June 4, 2009
01:11:12
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
A renowned essayist considers the achievements and limitations of his tantalizing, daunting subject.
Participant(s) Bio
Phillip Lopate is the author of three personal essay collections, two novels, two poetry collections, a memoir of his teaching experiences, and a collection of his movie criticism. He has edited the following anthologies, and his essays, fiction, poetry, film and architectural criticism have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Essays, The Paris Review, Harper's, Vogue, Esquire, New York Times, Harvard Educational Review, Conde Nast Traveler, and many other periodicals and anthologies. He has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, and two New York Foundation for the Arts grants. After working with children for twelve years as a writer in the schools, he taught creative writing and literature at Fordham, Cooper Union, University of Houston, and New York University. He currently holds the John Cranford Adams Chair at HofstraUniversity, and also teaches in the MFA graduate programs at Columbia, the New School and Bennington.

Losing Mum and Pup

In conversation with Gregory Rodriguez, author and Los Angeles Times columnist
Co-sponsored by the Council of the Library Foundation and City National Bank
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
01:05:22
ALOUD
Listen:
Episode Summary
In this tragicomic true story of the year in which both of his parents died, the award-winning author and humorist captures the heartbreaking and disorienting feeling of becoming a 55-year-old orphan.
Participant(s) Bio
Christopher Buckley was born in New York City in 1952 and graduated cum laude from Yale University in 1976. He shipped out in the Merchant Marine and at age 24 became managing editor of Esquire magazine. At age 29, he became chief speechwriter to the Vice President of the United States, George H.W. Bush. Since 1989 he has been founder and editor-in-chief of Forbes FYI magazine.

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