Susie Hathaway Helps Women Stay Healthy & Strong

Susie Hathaway, Strength Training for Women

Susie Hathaway, Safe Strength Training for Osteoporosis Prevention

Susie Hathaway helps women over 50 stay active and strong. Certified as a personal trainer through the American College of Sports Medicine, she’s an active volunteer for the National Osteoporosis Foundation. Her newsletter and exercise-advice blog provide tips on how to stay healthy, strong, and independent during the second half of your life. Susie recently wrote, produced, and released a home-exercise DVD called Susie Hathaway’s Safe Strength Training for Osteoporosis Prevention.

Hear Susie discuss women’s health and how she learned to write, produce, and edit a DVD during the Writers Voices radio show on Friday, Nov. 23rd at 1 PM CST or on Monday, Nov. 26th at 8 AM CST via live streaming on kruufm.com.

“Knitting is a life!”–Michelle Edwards, A Knitter’s Home Companion

Michelle & Yarn2

This Thanksgiving season, I have many reasons to be thankful. For example, as producer and host of “Writers Voices” on KRUU 100.1 FM, I chat with fascinating people, like Iowa City author Michelle Edwards. Here’s an excerpt from her book, A Knitter’s Home Companion: “Loops, wrote Elizabeth Zimmermann. Knitting is about loops. Loops to the end of time. Making them, I have knit myself a life.”

Hear Michelle discuss knitting, writing, and life Friday, Nov. 30th at 1 PM CST or Monday, Dec. 3rd at 8 AM CST via live stream on kruufm.com. You can also meet Michelle in person Friday, Dec. 7th in the At Home Store on the Fairfield, Iowa town square during the December Art Walk.

Eula Biss on Video Essays, Creative Nonfiction, and the Vaccination Controversy

Award-Winning Essayist Eula Biss

Award-Winning Essayist Eula Biss

Eula Biss and her former teacher Marilyn Robinson are speaking Wednesday, October 24th at 7 PM in Iowa City’s Englert Theater. Eula discusses video essays, creative nonfiction, and her work-in-progress nonfiction book about the vaccination controversy in a “Writers Voices” show that will be broadcast today at 8 AM via live streaming on kruufm.com. Eula’s book Notes from No Man’s Land, received the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. Her work has also been recognized by a Pushcart Prize, a Jaffe Writers’ Award, and a 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library. She teaches writing at Northwestern University. Her essays have recently appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Best Creative Nonfiction and the Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Nonfiction as well as in The Believer, Gulf Coast, Columbia, Ninth Letter, the North American Review, the Bellingham Review, the Seneca Review, and Harper’s. Eula holds a BA in nonfiction writing from Hampshire College and an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa.

Heather Alexander, Assistant Editor, Dial Books for Young Readers

Heather Alexander, Assistant Editor, Dial Books for Young Readers

Heather Alexander, Assistant Editor, Dial Books for Young Readers

Heather Alexander, Assistant Editor for Dial Books for Young Readers, acquires books for all age ranges, from picture books through young adult novels, and ushers them through the publication process. She edits the wildly popular Charlie and Lola picture books and also edited Jeanne Ryan‘s thought-provoking debut YA novel Nerve, in which a naive teen girl gets enmeshed in a deadly anonymous online game of dares. Heather will discuss what’s new in books for children and teens on “Writers Voices” on KRUU100.1FM Friday, Oct. 19 at 1 PM CST. Tune in via live stream tomorrow at kruufm.com.

Philip Goldberg: How He Became a HuffPost Blogger

Philip Goldberg with Cheryl Fusco Johnson at KRUU

Philip Goldberg with Cheryl Fusco Johnson at KRUU

Many people ask Philip Goldberg, author of American Veda: How Indian Spirituality Changed the West, how he became a religious-issues blogger for The Huffington Post. During our Writers Voices radio interview today, Philip explained what happened. Waiting at a bookstore to begin giving a book talk, he was thinking about how few people were there to hear him speak. A woman came into the store looking for something she thought she’d left behind. She noticed Philip standing by a sign advertising the topic of his talk and said, “You should be a blogger for The Huffington Post. My daughter’s an editor there.” Was this a lucky break? Or was it a just reward for the many years Philip spent researching spirituality and honing his writing and speaking skills through repeated practice?

Promoting Self-Published Books

Kate & Book

Author Kate McGuinness read from her legal thriller Terminal Ambition on Sept. 19th, 2012 at the Fairfield, Iowa Public Library. Her publicity efforts for this self-published mystery novel, which educates readers about sexual harassment in work places, began nearly a year before its publication date. Listen to Kate’s tips regarding how to promote self-published novels (and her advice to people experiencing sexual harassment at work) on kruufm.com. Kate makes good use of social media sites to promote her book: visit her Pinterest boards for examples of creative marketing techniques.

Kate McGuinness and Cheryl Fusco Johnson

Kate McGuinness and Cheryl Fusco Johnson

Robert Wolf Jump-Starts Everyone’s Writing

Robert Wolf is the cofounder and director of Free River Press, a nonprofit publishing house currently headquartered in Decorah, Iowa. The press’s motto is “Telling America’s Story” and its primary mission is “to create an enduring collection of Americana, a literary mural, a mosaic, written primarily by people without literary ambition.”

Cover of Aver Y Ahora

Besides encouraging ordinary people to record their stories, Robert has authored and edited many books, including An American Mosaic: Prose and Poetry by Everyday Folk and Jump Start: How to Write from Everyday Life, both published by Oxford University Press. Through Free River Press, he wrote and publishedThe Triumph of Technique: The Industrialization of Agriculture and the Destruction of Rural America. In addition to leading writing workshops, Robert directs seminars and rural economic development projects through Free River Press.

Aired on Iowa Public Radio, his six-part commentary, Developing Rural Regional Economies won the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Best Radio Editorial of 1994. In 2007 a Free River Press book edited by Robert, Aver & Ahora (Yesterday & Today): Stories of Sant Fe and Northern New Mexico, won a New Mexico Heritage Preservation Award.

Tune in to kruufm.com Friday, Sept. 21 at 1 PM CST or Monday, Sept. 24 at 8 AM CST to learn Robert’s sure-fire techniques for getting everyone writing.

College Professor Pens Legal Thrillers

Mary Vermillion, Author of Seminal Murder

Mary Vermillion, Author of Seminal Murder

A Professor of English at Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Mary Vermillion pens legal thrillers to highlight social issues. So far, she’s written three books in her Mara Gilgannon mystery series. The fictional Mara, a radio talk show host, has gotten entangled in mysteries involving a small town resisting the opening of a new Walmart store and a rape charge involving college basketball players. Seminal Murder, the latest installment in the series, focuses on crimes taking place in an artificial insemination clinic.

Mary teaches a broad range of courses, including Shakespeare, Creative Writing, and Law and Literature. She and her students host book clubs with inmates at Anamosa State Penitentiary. Mary and a colleague recently  toured England with students.

Mary will be featured Friday, Sept. 14th at 1 PM CT on “Writers Voices.” The show will be rebroadcast Monday, Sept. 17 at 8 AM.  Listen in at kruufm.com.

Legal Thriller Explores Sexual Harassment

Kate-McGuiness

Kate McGuinness, Terminal Ambition

Friday, Sept. 7 on Writers Voices I’ll interview a very learned and accomplished guest. Kate McGuinness studied writing at the University of Southern California where one of her teachers was Janet Fitch, the author of the Oprah book club selection, “White Oleander.” Kate studied creative writing at UCLA, too. Earlier she’d earned a J.D. from the University of San Diego. For 17 years Kate practiced law at a major international law firm, where she was one of a handful of women to achieve partnership status. Later, a Fortune 500 company recruited Kate to be its General Counsel. Eventually Kate decided to leave the corporate world and devote herself to writing. Today she uses her writing career to advocate for women’s rights. Her essays on women’s issues have appeared in many publications, including Forbes Woman, The Women’s Jezebel, and The Girls Guide to Law School. In 2012, Kate’s first novel, Terminal Ambition, was published: it’s a legal thriller that explores issues of discrimination and sexual harassment. An appendix defines sexual harassment, sexual discrimination, and other pertinent terms. Kate also includes 12 steps people faced with these problems can take. Join us Friday at 1 PM CT on Writers Voices at kruufm.com!

BK Loren, Theft

BK Loren, Author of TheftB.K. Loren has been a naturalist, large predator monitor for Colorado State Parks, professional brainstormer, assistant chef, ranch hand, furniture maker, UPS driver, and college professorwhile still managing to produce prose that reviewers deem visceral, lyrical, and incandescent. Her writing has garnered Pushcart nominations, fellowships, and inclusion among Best American Spiritual Writing anthologies. BK lives with her partner, two dogs, and two cats in Colorado, where long, daily walks enrich her reflections on life. Join us for a discussion of her debut novel, Theft, categorized by writer Ann Pancake as “part environmental novel, part elegy to place, part family tragedy, part murder mystery.” A riveting combination!

Listen via livestream on Friday, Aug. 17 at 1 PM CDT or Monday, Aug. 20 at 8 AM CDT: go to kruufm.com; at the top left, find “Playing On Air Now” and click “Listen Live.”