Woman-Stirred

James Schwartz: In Pursuit of the Gene

2009-11-10T22:03:00.005Z

This week, Merry Gangemi welcomes James Schwartz, to Woman-Stirred Radio, Thursday, November 12th, at 5:00 pm (eastern), to talk about his new book, In Pursuit of the Gene: from Darwin to DNA.

"... Schwartz presents the history of genetics through the eyes of a dozen or so central players, beginning with Charles Darwin and ending with Nobel laureate Hermann J. Muller. In tracing the emerging idea of the gene, Schwartz deconstructs many often-told stories that were meant to reflect glory on the participants and finds that the “official” version of discovery often hides a far more complex and illuminating narrative. The discovery of the structure of DNA and the more recent advances in genome science represent the culmination of one hundred years of concentrated inquiry into the nature of the gene. Schwartz’s multifaceted training as a mathematician, geneticist, and writer enables him to provide a remarkably lucid account of the development of the central ideas about heredity, and at the same time bring to life the brilliant and often eccentric individuals who shaped these ideas.

In the spirit of the late Stephen Jay Gould, this book offers a thoroughly engaging story about one of the oldest and most controversial fields of scientific inquiry. It offers readers the background they need to understand the latest findings in genetics and those still to come in the search for the genetic basis of complex diseases and traits" (Harvard UP).

So please tune in to Woman-Stirred Radio this Thursday, November 12th, at 5 pm, for a fascinating discussion of the history of genetics and the burgeoning science of DNA. Listen live at WGDR.

Questions for James Schwartz? call the air studio at 802.454.7762.

Lesley Wheeler on Woman-Stirred Radio

2009-11-02T19:47:00.007Z

This Thursday, November 5, 2009,at 5:00pm (eastern) Lesley Wheeler visits with Merry Gangemi on Woman-Stirred Radio to discuss her new book, Heathen. an

Heathen has been described as an "exquisite debut collection," striking "an impossible balance between the wildly witty and tenderly elegant detail."

Wheeler is the author of Scholarship Girl, Voicing American Poetry, and other books. her work has appeared in Poetry, AGNI, and other magazines, and she has held fellowships from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She teaches at Washington and Lee University in Lexington Virginia.

So please join Merry Gangemi in welcoming Lesley Wheeler to Woman-Stirred Radio, this Thursday, November 5, at 5 PM (eastern).

Want to join in the conversation? the air-studio phone is 802.454.7762.

Linda Gordon on Dorothea Lange, and Linda Nathan on Education

2009-10-21T13:59:00.008+01:00

This Thursday, October 22, at 4:15 pm (eastern), historian Linda Gordon visits Woman-Stirred Radio to discuss her new book, Dorothes Lange: a Life beyond Limits.

Dorothea Lange is probably the best known photographer of the new Deal's Farm security administration during the economic disaster that changed America forever: the Great Depression.

"Lange's haunting work from this period is recognized by millions of Americans, but at her death in 1965 at the age of seventy, her name remained known only among photographers."* Dorothea Lange was particularly sensitive to the lives of people of color and women, whose sufferings were amplified by racism and misogyny.

"Central to Lange's genius was focusing on the poor the same eye that had made her a prized portrait photographer to the rich; as a result, her images show the Depression's victims as responsible, dignified, and thoughtful, even if their circumstances are desperate." *

So tune in (91.1fm) or stream us live at WGDR, for what promises to be a fascinating exploration of the life and work of Dorothea Lange tomorrow, October 22, at 4:15.

Then at 5:00, Merry Gangemi welcomes Dr. Linda Nathan, headmaster and founder of the Boston Arts Academy, an urban high school that "builds on the passions of its students and defined by a supportive community..."# The Boston Arts Academy, founded in the 1990s offers an "academic curriculum motivating students with a variety of learning styles to succeed in high school and pursue higher education."##

Acknowledging the extraordinary challenges of the on-going crisis in education funding for the arts, Nathan gives us her insights and strategies that have made the Boston Arts Academy an urban success story: Fully 95% of its graduates have been accepted in colleges and universities.

Listeners are welcome to call the air studio and join in the conversation 802.454.7762.

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live every Thursday from 4 to 6 pm (eastern). In its seventh year, Woman-Stirred continues to present interviews with queer and straight writers, artists, musicians, and policy-makers.

Electa Arenal and Sor Juana on Woman-Stirred Radio

2009-09-11T19:13:00.008+01:00

This Thursday, September 17th, Electa Arenal visits Merry Gangemi and Woman-Stirred Radio. She'll discuss her critically acclaimed translation of La Respuesta, one of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's seminal works. Dr. Arenal teaches Spanish/Latin American literature at the College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center, The City University of New York. She is highly regarded for her scholarship of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the most important female voice in seventeenth-century Mexico.

Sequestered in a convent in Mexico City, Sor Juana wrote passionately in support of education for women. Sor Juana's work remains illuminating and still pertinent to the the lives of women four hundred years later. Sor Juana achieved extraordinary intellectual freedom, and was widely renowned as a poet, playwright, and essayist. La Respuesta is a remarkable response to church officials who continually attempted to silence her brilliant mind and authoritative voice.

There is also the matter of the viceroy's wife.

So please tune in to 91.1fm or stream us live at WGDR. on Thursday, September 17th, at 4:15 (eastern) for a fascinating conversation about La Respuesta with Electa Arenal. Interview begins at 4:15.

Jane Satterfield on Woman-Stirred Radio

2009-09-09T23:54:00.004+01:00

This Thursday, September 10th, at 4:15, Jane Satterfield joins host Merry Gangemi on Woman-Stirred Radio to discuss her new book, Daughters of Empire.

The book delves into the complex relationships women negotiate in the decision to become mothers and the "complicated legacies of maternal history, both public and private." * Through her carefully honest narrative, Satterfield brings the reader along on her journey of renewed self-discovery. The memoir brilliantly weaves memory and familial legacy into a poet's credible and perceptive self-portrait of the artist.

Born in England and educated in the U.S., Jane Satterfield received an MFA from the University of Iowa. Her first poetry collection, Shepherdess with an Automatic received the Towson University Prize for Literature; her second, Assignation at Vanishing Point, received the Elixir Press Poetry Prize. She has received three Individual Artist Awards in poetry from the Maryland State Arts Council and is also the recipient of fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Sewanee Writers Conference, and the Wesleyan Writers Conference. Her nonfiction has received the Heekin Foundation's Cuchulain Prize for Rhetoric in the Essay, the John Guyon Literary Nonfiction Award, and the Florida Review Editors' Prize in Nonfiction. She teaches at Loyola College in Maryland. (NEA)

*Demeter Press

Interview with Jan Steckel Postponed

2009-09-02T22:18:00.003+01:00

Alas, I and the US Mail failed to get a copy of my book to Merry Gangemi in time, so we decided together to postpone my interview with her tomorrow. Let that be a lesson to you all, potential interviewees!

We'll post a new date soon for me to be on the show later in the fall. Meanwhile, you can still purchase my fiction chapbook MIXING TRACKS (Gertrude Press, 2009), winner of the 2008 Gertrude Press Fiction Chapbook Award for LGBT writers for $8 at http://www.gertrudepress.org. (Select Catalog and click on Chapbooks.) That way you'll be able to call into the studio the day of the interview with comments or questions.

Here's what publisher says about the book: "A darkly comic and oddly touching story of sex, drugs, rock and roll, and a plane crash that crushes human bodies while leaving the mandolins unharmed. In MIXING TRACKS, Jan Steckel strikes an unsettling balance between the consolations of memory, the thrilling ephemerality of youthful ambition, and our shared need for connection, even (or especially) when our world seems to have to come to its end."

Sorry about the delay!
Jan

Jan Steckel
http://www.jansteckel.com
The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) Available for $5.00 at http://www.zeitgeist-press.org
Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) Available for $8.00 at http://www.gertrudepress.org

Mixing Tracks with Jan Steckel on Woman-Stirred Radio

2009-08-28T22:24:00.010+01:00

Please join Merry Gangemi in welcoming Jan Steckel back to Woman-Stirred Radio, this Thursday, September 3rd at 4:15 (Eastern), to talk about her new book, Mixing Tracks, published by Gertrude Press and winner of the 2008 Fiction Chapbook Competition.

Jan Steckel is a bisexual activist and a Harvard- and Yale-trained former pediatrician. Over a hundred of her short stories, poems and nonfiction pieces have appeared in print and online publications such as Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Red Rock Review, So to Speak and Redwood Coast Review. Her work has won writing awards and has been widely reprinted and anthologized. Her writing has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize: once for nonfiction and once for poetry.

She served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic and cared for Spanish-speaking families in California at a county hospital and at a large HMO. In 2001 she left the practice of medicine to write full-time. Her poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital is available from Zeitgeist Press. She is currently working on a book-length collection of interrelated short stories and on a collection of short humorous first-person essays. Most of the stories and essays have already appeared in print. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband Hew Wolff.

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live on WGDR (91.1 fm) and online at wgdr.org every Thursday from 4 to 6 p.m. (eastern), with interviews, music, and guest commentaries from lesbian and queer activists.

Woman-Stirred Radio is funded in part by the Samara Foundation of Vermont, a non-profit, Burlington-based foundation that seeks to improve the quality of life for Vermont's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered citizens. Click on the link to find out more about Samara Foundation and its programs.

This is No Mere Future, Sarah Schulman

2009-08-19T02:38:00.005+01:00

In Sarah Schulman's Mere Future "Road crews were taking down billboards, and any kind of brand name or mass-reproduced symbol was being quietly painted over. No more Nike swooshes, no more yellow arches. It was visually a whole lot quieter out there, but also more complex. I could no longer just glance at a sign and know what it wanted me to do. I had to really look at it. Each one had its own code. Walking down the street took more time, if you were a curious person" (40).

And curious one should be about Schulman's delightfully horrifying gaze into the crystal ball. Not since Rudy Giuliani swept out Times Square and installed a permanent Disney installation, has New York City been as sinister and weird. In a steady and increasingly prescient voice, Schulman's narrator walks us through the early optimism of a new regime and the subsequent view of quiet hysteria in life and love, truth and illusion, deception and cruel self-interest.

So please join Merry Gangemi this Thursday, August 20th at 4:15 in welcoming Sarah Schulman to Woman-Stirred Radio and discussing her new novel, The Mere Future.

Sarah Schulman is the author of nine novels, four nonfiction books, and numerous plays. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, and is a professor of English at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. Schulman is also a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University.

Questions and comments are always welcome, so call the air studio at 802.454.7762 to join in.

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live on WGDR (91.1 fm) and online at wgdr.org every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 p.m. (eastern), with interviews, music, and guest commentaries from lesbian and queer activists.

Woman-Stirred Radio is funded in part by the Samara Foundation of Vermont, a non-profit, Burlington-based foundation that seeks to improve the quality of life for Vermont's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered citizens. Click on the link to find out more about Samara Foundation and its programs.

Elana Dykewomon takes a RISK!

2009-08-13T19:02:00.005+01:00

Elana Dykewomon returns to Woman-Stirred Radio this week, on August 13th at 4:15 (est) to celebrate her new book, Risk, a novel that is not only a wonderful and engaging story but a story that encapsulates and honors the extraordinary lesbian community of dykes and femmes in Oakland, California.

As Gertrude Stein so famously proclaimed about Oakland: "There is no there there."

Wrong!

There really is something there in Oakland, and it is amazing. Risk allows the reader to discover and rediscover "a rich vibrant culture of dykes and femmes: "We are the serious dykes," her protagonist says, "the ones who have the heart to change how the heart works."

Dykewomon's novel is rich in characters that bend the rules of the straight world and struggle to live without "rules" within their own community, a process one of the main characters, Carol, finds painfully fascinating and difficult to navigate. But the resolutions are plausible, and the twists and turns delightful.

Risk does not avoid difficult conversations about gender, class, and race. Instead the women Elana Dykewomon brings to life are savvy, brilliant, bone honest, and lots of fun. Yup, I laughed out loud many times as I read. And when I read it again, there was the humor again, the laughs it elicits and the wonderful alliances with irony, strength of spirit, and a profound world view of equality, justice, and of course peace world peace.

The womyn in Risk are risk takers. They thrive in the complex culture of the Bay Area with chutzpah, hilarity, compassion, and a keen sense of for all women. Older dykes and femmes will so enjoy the references and contexts, and for our younger sisters in dykedom, it will open both heart and mind to the history of lesbian culture, which paved the way for the openness and acceptance so many lesbians enjoy today.

So, please join Merry Gangemi and all of us at Woman-Stirred Radio, in welcoming Elana Dykewomon. Tune in or stream the program live at WGDR, Thursday August 13th, at 4:15 p.m (eastern) for a delightful discussion of Risk and why we should all read it!

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live every Thursday from 4 to 6 p.m. (Eastern) and streams live at http://wgdr.org. Phone calls are always welcome. 802 454-7762

April Bernard on Woman-Stirred Radio

2009-07-14T13:05:00.006+01:00

This week on Woman-Stirred Radio, Merry Gangemi interviews poet April Bernard. The topic? Her latest volume of poetry entitled Romanticism (WW Norton 2009).

A recent post at Poetry Foundation notes that Romanticism "explores and challenges the central ideas of high Romanticism: the tragedy and gallantry of the individual’s life journey, the appeal of revolution and violence, the beckoning forces of Nature, and the estrangement from but constant longing for God."

Move over a bit Goethe,and make some room. April Bernard has created a work of art that hums with intelligence. Romanticism is not about romance. It is about “the cloth edge of certainty” and the daemons of traditional culture mores that control it.

This is risky stuff. But life is risky. Love is riskier. Romanticism is the violence of passionate love and the violence we do to ourselves when we are coupled, in the process of uncoupling, or simple observing our search. “When did I learn/ to make fun of pain” she asks. “I offered him our bloods’ river to drown in/ but he found the metaphor distasteful” (65). Indeed, when did we agree to learn how to be objects of love rather than beings of love?

Tune in (91.1fn) or stream us live (WGDR) Thursday, July 16th at 4:15 (eastern) for an interview with April Bernard. And join the conversation! 802.454-7762.

Woman-Stirred Radio is funded in part by the Samara Foundation of Vermont, a non-profit, Burlington-based foundation that seeks to improve the quality of life for Vermont's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered citizens. Click on the link to find out more about Samara Foundation and its programs.

News from the Horizontal Poet

2009-06-30T08:42:00.008+01:00

Hi All, it's Woman-Stirred member Jan Steckel posting after a year or so of silence.

My fiction chapbook arrived today! It looks beautiful. Mixing Tracks won the Gertrude Press Fiction Chapbook Award for LGBT writers. Here’s the publisher’s blurb for the 22-page book:

“A darkly comic and oddly touching story of sex, drugs, rock and roll, and a plane crash that crushes human bodies while leaving the mandolins unharmed. In Mixing Tracks, Jan Steckel strikes an unsettling balance between the consolations of memory, the thrilling ephemerality of youthful ambition, and our shared need for connection, even (or especially) when our world seems to have to come to its end.”

If you want to order one for $8, you may have to bounce around http://www.gertrudepress.org a bit, but please be persistent, and keep looking at the shopping cart icon. Sooner or later it will successfully register your order! Don't wait too long, though, because there are fewer than a hundred copies left. Start by going to the Catalog at the top of the site and pulling down the menu; click on Chapbooks.

Please help me by ordering Mixing Tracks from the Gertrude Press website at http://www.gertrudepress.org! If I can sell out this first print run, they may do another. If this fiction chapbook sells well like my poetry chapbook did, it may help me get a publisher for the full-length short story collection I finished recently. I’ll have some copies of Mixing Tracks to sell at my July readings, but I won’t be taking mail orders myself this time.

Upcoming Readings

Monday, July 6, 2009, at 7 PM. I’m featured with Joyce Jenkins (editor of Poetry Flash) and my husband Hew Wolff at the Gallery Cafe Reading Series hosted by Kit Kennedy. Open mic to follow. The Gallery Cafe, 1200 Mason St. at Washington, San Francisco, CA. 414-296-9932. Take the bus: #1 California, #30 Stockton, #45 Union. For more information contact Kit Kennedy, kitkennedy@yahoo.com, 415-305-1831.

Monday, July 20, 2009, at 6:40 PM. I’m featured with Seattle author Cat Ruiz plus open mic at Poetry Express, hosted by Mark States, Nance Wogan and Jim Barnard. Priya Indian Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. (near University Ave.), Berkeley, CA. 510-644-3977. Ask for special seating for poetry reading; 10% off dinner.

You can find details about my terrific co-featured poets at http://www.jansteckel.com/Events.html.

Publications

Fiction, poetry and essay publications over the past year and a half include work in Bellevue Literary Review, Sage Trail Poetry Magazine, The November 3rd Club, Outsider Writers, the anthology Getting Bi (2nd Edition), SoMa Literary Review, The Eloquent Atheist, Street Spirit, S.F. Heart, Faithful Fools Anthology: Living in the Land of the Dead, Vol. 3, Redwood Coast Review, and Bi Women. I have work forthcoming in Canary, Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts, and the anthology Best Bi Short Stories. My wonderful webmistress and Woman-Stirred colleague Nicki Hastie is gradually adding links to many of these to my website writing resume at http://www.jansteckel.com/Writing.html. Drop by to check out what’s new! You can also find me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/jan.steckel or on Goodreads.com, where I have an author page and a blog.

Julie R Enszer and the Lesbian Poetry Archive

2009-06-18T18:54:00.005+01:00

Today on Woman-Stirred Radio, Julie R. Enszer brings us the Lesbian Poetry Archives, a digital online project that collects and preserves the work of lesbian poets.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and lesbian activist who holds an MFA from the University of Maryland and is currently enrolled in the PhD program in Women’s Studies at Maryland. Her work has been published in Iris: A Journal About Women, Room of One's Own, Long Shot, the Jewish Women's Literary Annual, and the Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly.

Enszer's Lesbian Poetry Archive "is conceived as a place to digitally preserve lesbian poetry and its ephemera and present them to not only scholars, but also poets and general readers. With this launch in December 2008, there are three items, the introductory material to Amazon Poetry, published in 1975; the introductory material to Lesbian Poetry, published in 1981; and the complete chapbook A Movement of Poets by Jan Clausen, published in 1982" (Enszer 2008).

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live on WGDR (91.1 fm) and online at wgdr.org every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 p.m. (eastern), with interviews, music, and guest commentaries from lesbian and queer activists.

We are funded in part by the Samara Foundation of Vermont, a non-profit, Burlington-based foundation that seeks to improve the quality of life for Vermont's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered citizens. Click on the link to find out more about Samara Foundation and its programs.

Founders and Breadlines: Ray Raphael and Sasha Abramsky

2009-06-04T13:48:00.013+01:00

This week: Ray Raphael at 4:15 and Sasha Abramsky at 5:00.

Founders: The People who brought You a Nation, is Raphael’s closely focused exploration of the ordinary people who participated in the great experiment of American Independence. Raphael's sweeping narrative offers readers the fascinating stories of seven ordinary in a bottom-up study of Timothy Bigelow, Henry Laurens, Joseph Plumb Martin, Robert Morris, Mercy Otis Warren, and Thomas Young, with some delightfully scandalous behavior from George Washington to keep it all simmering along. In the words of noted historian Gary B. Nash, Director of The National Center for History in the Schools, historian Ray Raphael “teaches us more about the multiple dimensions of the American Revolution than one could ever have imagined.”

Ray Raphael has published books on subjects as diverse as male initiation rites, education, regional history (Northwest California), and timber politics. His first book, An Everyday History of Somewhere, won the Commonwealth Club award for the best book of the year about California. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Reed College, he holds masters degrees from the University of California at Berkeley (Political Philosophy) and Reed College (Teaching Social Science and History). In addition to teaching at Humboldt State University and College of the Redwoods, he has taught all subjects except foreign languages at a one-room public high school in his remote community. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow with Humboldt State University, working full time as a researcher and writer. He lives in the hills of northern California and kayaks whitewater rivers.

>Breadline USA dives deep into the lives of working-poor Americans who find themselves trapped by the confluence of the housing market collapse, erratic, rising energy costs, and a health care system that mismanages, damages and ruins the lives it is supposed to enhance. Add to this mix their struggle to access nutritious affordable food. In Breadline USA Abramsky brings us the stories of Americans in all types of communities and how they manage at the end of the month when money runs out and the social safety net isn’t there to catch them./a>

Sasha Abramsky is a freelance journalist. His work has appeared in The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, New York magazine, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone. Born and raised in England, Abramsky is a graduate of Oxford University, and holds a master’s degree from Columbia University School of Journalism. In 2000 he was awarded a Soros Society, Crime, and Communities Media Fellowship, and he is currently a Senior Fellow at the New York City-based Demos think tank. In addition to Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger and How to Fix It, (PoliPoint 2009), Abramsky is the author of: American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment, (Beacon 2007), Hard Time Blues (2002) and Conned (2006). /a>

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live on WGDR (91.1 fm) and online at wgdr.org every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 p.m. (eastern), with interviews, music, and guest commentaries from bi-activist Jan Steckel, British writer Nicki Hastie, and lesbian literary historian and poet, Julie R. Enszer.

Woman-Stirred Radio is funded in part by the Samara Foundation of Vermont, a non-profit, Burlington-based foundation that seeks to improve the quality of life for Vermont's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered citizens. Click on the link to find out more about Samara Foundation and its programs.

The Poet and the Progressive: John Amen and Matt Rothschild

2009-05-27T19:54:00.024+01:00

This Thursday, May 28, beginning at 4:15 pm (eastern), Merry Gangemi welcomes John Amen, editor of The Pedestal Magazine, and at 5:00, welcomes Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive Magazine, to Woman-Stirred Radio.

John Amen is the author of two volumes of poetry, More of Me Disappears (2005), and Christening the Dancer(2003).

Amen travels widely to give readings, performances, and workshops. In his spare time he is a folk/rock singer/songwriter, and a visual artist working primarily with acrylics.

Amen edits The Pedestal Magazine, an ezine that is widely respected for its excellence in content and layout. Click HERE to go to the website, and HERE to go to John's website.

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At 5:00, Matthew Rothschild, editor and publisher of The Progressive Magazine, visits with Merry Gangemi to talk about Democracy in Print: 100 Years of The Progressive Magazine (University of Wisconsin Press), a recently released volume of articles and essays spanning 100 years of the Progressive's publication. Through his careful selections and editing, Rothschild brings to life the dialogues and participatory activism of notables Kurt Vonnegut, Paul Welstone, Noam Chomsky, martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin, Huey Long, Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, Rita Dove, June Jordon and Frank Zappa. Voices that confirm The Progressive as a highly-respected and globally recognized community that continues the belief and actualization of peace and social justice in the United States.

Rothschild has made guest appearances on , C-SPAN, DemocracyNow!, Nightline, NPR, and The O'Reilly Factor. he is also a recognized commentator and has work in The Chicago Tribune, The L.A. Times, and The Miami Herald, among others.

Feel free to join in the conversation. The air-studio phone number is 802.454-7762.

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live on WGDR (91.1 fm) and online at wgdr.org every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 p.m. (eastern), with interviews, music, and guest commentaries from bi-activist Jan Steckel, British writer Nicki Hastie, and lesbian literary historian and poet, Julie R. Enszer.

Martha Nell Smith and the Emily Dickinson Electronic Archives

2009-05-21T20:32:00.005+01:00

Today at 4:15 on Woman-Stirred Radio, Merry Gangemi welcomes Martha Nell Smith, author of Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson and executive director of the most amazing Dickinson resource yet, the Electronic Dickinson Archives.

The Dickinson Electronic Archives (DEA), is a website devoted to the study of Emily Dickinson, her writing practices, writings directly influencing her work, and critical and creative writings generated by her work. The DEA is produced by the Dickinson Editing Collective, with an executive editor, a general editor, two associate editors, a project manager, and a technical editor working collaboratively with one another and with numerous coeditors, staff, and users.

The DEA provides access to Dickinson's correspondence and facsimiles of actual letters and drafts of poems; constellations of poems; recordings of well-known poets reading Dickinson's work and adding commentary on the influence of Dickinson on their work and lives as women who are poets; critical resources, and teaching aids.

So please tune in or listen online to Woman-Stirred Radio, Thursday, May 21st at 4:15 (eastern).

Call in with questions or comments! The air studio phone is 802.454.7762.

Mary Roach Returns to Woman-Stirred Radio

2009-05-06T23:06:00.005+01:00

This Thursday, May 7th at 4:15 (eastern), science writer Mary Roach
returns to Woman-Stirred Radio to talk about Bonk: the Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, just released in paperback from WW Norton.

A native of Etna, New Hampshire, Roach graduated from Wesleyan in 1981 and moved out to San Francisco, where she landed a stint in PR at the San Francisco Zoo. In her own words:

"I mostly write books these days, but I still write the occasional magazine piece. These have run in Outside, National Geographic, New Scientist, Wired, and The New York Times Magazine, as well as many others too embarrassing to name. A 1995 article of mine called "How to Win at Germ Warfare" was a National Magazine Award Finalist, and in 1996, my article on earthquake-proof bamboo houses took the Engineering Journalism Award in the general interest magazine category, for which I was, let's be honest, the only entrant. I often write about science, though I don't have a science degree and must fake my way through interviews with experts I can't understand. I also review books for The New York Times."

Mary is refreshing and fun and this week's interview promises to be just as interesting and lively as her first one was on Woman-Stirred. So tune in this Thursday, May 7th. 4:15 (eastern) for a delightful conversation with Mary Roach. air studio phone lines will be open 802 454-7762.

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live on WGDR (91.1 fm) and online at wgdr.org every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 p.m. (eastern), with interviews, music, and guest commentaries from bi-activist Jan Steckel, British writer Nicki Hastie, and lesbian literary historian and poet, Julie R. Enszer.

Lisa Williams Reads to the Sea

2009-04-27T21:47:00.013+01:00

Woman Reading to the Sea

Please join Merry Gangemi in welcoming Lisa Williams, author of Woman Reading to the Sea to Woman-Stirred Radio this Thursday, April 30th at 5 pm (eastern)for a discussion of her award-winning collection of poems

A scholar and associate professor of English at Centre College, in Denville, Kentucky, Williams holds an MA in creative writing and poetry from the University of Virginia, an MA degree in literature from the University of Cincinnati, and a BA from Belmont University.

Joyce Carol Oates calls Woman Reading to the Sea “Poems of arresting intelligence, precision, and beauty. In wonderfully crafted language, with the startling subtlety of certain of Emily Dickinson’s poems, Lisa Williams takes us into eerily imagined worlds—the interior of a jellyfish, and the interior of a glacier; she beguiles us with the most seductive of poetic possibilities... . This slender volume constitutes a journey of sorts, a pilgrimage ‘out’ that returns the questing poet, imagined as a companion ‘you,’ to her own life.”

Here is the title poem, Woman Reading to the Sea.

There's a certain freedom in the long blue slant
of its uncaring, in the wind that knocks
the surface onto rocks, and there's a dent

made in that wind by the woman who recites
straight into it, pretending the waves might hear
or that some larger being that is sea

or seeing hangs there listening, when sea air's
so clearly full of its own gusts and grunts,
inanimate uprisings. In the line

of no one's sight, her voice lost in the spray,
she feels a chilling freedom: how the foam
edges the sheets of zigzag patterned water

while gulls' shrill outbursts punctuate the sky
(one cloudy, sentimental phrase
or canvas brushed with amber, green, and rose).

What welcomes, and ignores, and doesn't question?
Sheer emptiness. It's like a husk
for her alone. It's like a shell for absence.

Without an audience, she makes a noise
swallowed by waves and wind, just as
the waves themselves---or no, just like the drops

lost in the waves, which neither care nor keep
distinctions---sweep out a place
inside an amphitheatre she imagines

rising around her, with columns that crash
instantly, like the white foam that collides
and shreds its layered castles. Her words drift,

dissolve, and disappear. A crest
of words has surged and poured into the sea.
It doesn't matter now what the lines say.

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live on WGDR (91.1 fm) and streams online at wgdr.org every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 p.m. (eastern), with interviews, music, and guest commentaries from bi-activist Jan Steckel, British writer Nicki Hastie, and lesbian literary historian and poet, Julie R. Enszer.

Mother-Daughter Relationship in the World of Alzheimer's

2009-04-26T02:59:00.002+01:00

When I came out as a lesbian 15 years ago, my parents had a very hard time with it. Over the course of several years, though, they transitioned from being resistant to supportive to celebratory--then, to activists. My mom, Arlene Evans, helped found a chapter of PFLAG in her very conservative small town several years ago.

In addition to being an advocate for the queer community, my mom is a writer. It's hard to know when I say my mom is a writer what verb tense to use: is? was? Because now she has Alzheimer's and can write only short sentences, most of which are riddled with misspellings. And she knows it. She's very aware of what she is losing, has lost.

Her abilities have been sliding away fast. Not quite two years ago when she was diagnosed, she was able to write about the experience in a journal. Recently she gave me that journal and told me she'd like me to share her story with others.

In conjunction with working on a memoir about caregiving (involving the long illness and death of my father, followed by my mother's diagnosis), I've been sharing excerpts of my mom's journals on my blog.

Here is the first entry.

Here is the second.

Mom always supported my writing. I'm grateful to be able to return the favor.

Martha Serpas on Woman-Stirred Radio

2009-04-13T17:47:00.025+01:00

Please join me this Thursday, April 16th, at 4:15 pm (eastern) in welcoming Martha Serpas to Woman-Stirred Radio.

We'll talk about her newest collection of poems, The Dirty Side of the Storm, a compelling testament to the splendor and disquietude of the bayous and coastlines of Louisiana, its Cajun culture, and its history of "pink-taffeta-ball-gown-and-bourbon/sky," and "faces like a darkened mirror,/an alchemized image no longer discernible."

The Dirty Side of the Storm offers lyrical perspective on the social and cultural consequences of a compromised ecosystem which, since the 1930s, has lost more than 2500 square miles of wetlands and essentially set up the disaster of Katrina.

In a review of The Dirty Side of the Storm, Ginny Kaczmarek points out that all but one poem in The Dirty Side of the Storm was written before Hurricane Katrina, giving the book an "eerie prescience."

Through the act of writing the poems in this book, Serpas honors what Grace Paley understood so well and demanded of us as poets: to keep an eye on/ this world and cry out like Cassandra, but be/ listened to this time ("Responsibility").

So tune in and listen! Thursday April 16 at 4:15 to Woman-Stirred Radio!

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live on WGDR (91.1 fm) and online at wgdr.org every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 p.m. (eastern), with interviews, music, and guest commentaries from bi-activist Jan Steckel, British writer Nicki Hastie, and lesbian literary historian and poet, Julie R. Enszer.

Woman-Stirred Radio is funded in part by the Samara Foundation of Vermont, a non-profit, Burlington-based foundation that works to improve the quality of life for Vermont's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered citizens. Click on the link to find out more about Samara Foundation and its programs.

Eavan Boland and Rigoberto Gonzalez on Woman-Stirred Radio

2009-04-06T21:39:00.013+01:00

On Thursday, April 9th, Merry Gangemi welcomes Rigoberto Gonzaléz and Eavan Boland to Woman-Stirred Radio.

The son and grandson of migrant workers, Rigoberto González was born in Bakersfield, California and raised in Michoacán, Mexico. His extended family migrated back to California in 1980 and returned to Mexico in 1992. González remained alone in the U.S. to complete his education. His childhood in Michoacán and difficult adolescence as an immigrant in California are chronicled in his coming of age memoir, Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa. González currently teaches at the writing program of Rutgers University in Newark, where he is Associate Professor of English. He also holds a part-time appointment with the Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier.

Rigoberto González has written two poetry books: So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water until It Breaks, a National Poetry Series selection, and Other Fugitives and Other Strangers; two children’s books: Soledad Sigh-Sighs and Antonio’s Card; and the novel Crossing Vines, winner of ForeWord Magazine’s Fiction Book of the Year Award, in addition to the memoir, Butterfly Boy.

Eavan Boland was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1944. Her father was a diplomat and her mother was an expressionist painter.

At the age of six, Boland and her family relocated to London, where she first encountered anti-Irish sentiment. She later returned to Dublin for school, and she received her B.A. from Trinity College in 1966. She was also educated in London and New York.

Her books of poetry include New Collected Poems (W.W. Norton & Co., 2008), Domestic Violence, (2007), Against Love Poems (2001), The Lost Land (1998), An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems 1967-1987 (1996), In a Time of Violence (1994), Outside History: Selected Poems 1980-1990 (1990), The Journey and Other Poems (1986), Night Feed (1982), and In Her Own Image (1980),
Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time (W. W. Norton, 1995), a volume of prose, After Every War (Princeton, 2004), an anthology of German women poets, and she co-edited The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms (with Mark Strand; W. W. Norton & Co., 2000).

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live on WGDR (91.1 fm) and online at wgdr.org every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 p.m. (eastern), with interviews, music, and guest commentaries from bi-activist Jan Steckel, British writer Nicki Hastie, and lesbian literary historian and poet, Julie R. Enszer.

[sources include: WW Norton; Rigoberto González; Poets.org;]

Alicia Ostriker is Woman-Stirred!!

2009-03-26T17:20:00.004Z

Alicia Ostriker

is a major American poet and critic. Twice nominated for a National Book Award, she is author of eleven volumes of poetry, most recently No Heaven (2005). As a critic Ostriker is the author of two pathbreaking volumes on women’s poetry, Writing Like a Woman and Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America. Her most recent critical book is Dancing at the Devil’s Party: Essays on Poetry, Politics and the Erotic. She has also published three books on the Bible, Feminist Revision and the Bible, the controversial The Nakedness of the Fathers; Biblical Visions and Revisions, a combination of prose and poetry that re-imagines the Bible from the perspective of a contemporary Jewish woman, and most recently, For the Love of God: the Bible as an Open Book.

Ostriker’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Antaeus, The Nation, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, The Atlantic, MS, Tikkun, and many other journals, and have been widely anthologized. Her poetry and essays have been translated into French, German, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew and Arabic. She has lectured and given performances of her work throughout the USA, as well as in Europe, Australia, Israel, Japan and China.

Ostriker has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Society of America, the San Francisco State Poetry Center, the Judah Magnes Museum, the New Jersey Arts Council, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She lives in Princeton, NJ with her husband. Ostriker is Professor Emerita of Rutgers University and is a faculty member of the Drew University Low-Residency Poetry MFA Program. Ostriker has taught in the Princeto University Creative Writing Program and in Toni Morrison’s Atelier Program. She has taught midrash writing workshops in the USA, Israel, England and Australia.

So tune in on Thursday, March 26th at 4:15 pm (eastern) for a fascinating conversation with Alicia Ostriker.

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live on WGDR (91.1 fm) and online at wgdr.org every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 p.m. (eastern), with interviews, music, and guest commentaries from bi-activist Jan Steckel, British writer Nicki Hastie, and lesbian literary historian and poet, Julie R. Enszer.

Ben Binstock and JD Glass on Woman-Stirred Radio

2009-03-10T11:05:00.017Z

This week on Woman-Stirred Radio, at 4:15 (eastern), Merry Gangemi interviews art historian Ben Binstock, author of the book Vermeer's Family Secrets, an exploration of the life and work of the seventeenth-century Dutch painter, Johannes Vermeer, best known for his iconic painting, Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Vermeer was relatively unknown until the he was "discovered" in the mid-nineteenth century. Vermeer's Family Secrets details the painter's complex technical achievements by tracing sources and influences.

Vermeer's Family Secrets is the first painting-by-painting, year-by-year study and analysis of the artist's oeuvre, integrating Vermeer's relationship to his wife and her family with his development as an painter with the profound technical influences of his predecessors, Rembrandt and Carel Fabritius.

Binstock reveals through research and scholarship that Vermeer's daughter Maria was both his apprentice and his successor and that at least seven paintings, originally thought to be Vermeer's, were actually painted by Maria.

Benjamin Binstock holds a Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University. He has studied in Aix-en-Provence, Berkley, CA, Berlin, and Amsterdam. He was a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and the American Academy in Berlin. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, and CUNY. Binstock is presently teaching at Cooper Union in Manhattan.

Then, at 5:00, JD Glass returns to Woman-Stirred Radio to talk about her new novel, X, set in an accelerated cyberpunk world of love, betrayal, and political intrigue.

What is fascinating about X is its implications in the broader context of gender and power within queer culture. It is an intense and chilling schema of where the soul of America has gone in this post-9/11 world.

A Lambda Literary nominee, JD Glass is the author of American Goth, Punk and Zen, Red Light, and Punk Like Me. JD Glass lives in Staten island, and when she's not writing or surfing, she's playing music with her band, Life Underwater, or doing her job as an EMT in New York City.

Today, March 12th is Nicki Hastie's birthday.
A very Happy Birthday Sir Nick!!
You're the BEST!!

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live on WGDR (91.1 fm) and online at wgdr.org every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 p.m. (eastern), with interviews, music, and guest commentaries from bi-activist Jan Steckel, British writer Nicki Hastie, and lesbian literary historian and poet, Julie R. Enszer.

Raising the Status of Little Magazines

2009-03-06T21:38:00.003Z

Last week I discovered a research project within the University I work at which seemed to be inviting my attention more than most: The Little Magazines Project.

So tomorrow I'm heading back into literary research territory to attend an English Research Symposium entitled Interaction, Symbiosis, Overlap: Little Magazines and Small Presses.

Little magazines and small presses are defined as "those which publish creative work in literature (poetry especially) and the other arts, with little or no regard for commercial gain, in the form of journals, on the one hand, and books or pamphlets on the other. They often provide an outlet for work that might be seen as exploring or pushing at the boundaries of its given medium."

Isn't this the stuff that Woman-Stirred poets feed on? Isn't it these little magazines which keep us poets motivated, as sources of inspiration and possible publication?

During the day-long symposium, key magazines and presses in the field of innovative poetry will be looked at as case studies of literary experimentation. Then, in the afternoon, there's a session to really make me sit up and take notice: the importance of little magazines and small presses in exploring gender politics. Gay Liberation literary magazines will be one of the topics discussed.

So, with all of this on my doorstep, I'm hoping there might be a space for me to celebrate lesbian poetry and the little magazines which have nurtured this work over the last few decades. I won't be alone. Julie R. Enszer is already engrossed in this work through the Lesbian Poetry Archive. And just this week on the Lesbian Writers listserv a call was put out by one list member for examples of feminist magazines of any size.

Lesbian culture and literary history has evolved inside little magazines and small presses. Perhaps there are ways we can all link up to add and contribute to The Little Magazines Project. After all, the research team would especially welcome additional information about any little magazines from editors, contributors, scholars, librarians and enthusiasts. Can we help?

Maxine Kumin on Woman-Stirred Radio

2009-03-03T22:25:00.006Z

Please welcome Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Maxine Kumin to Woman-Stirred Radio, this Thursday, March 5th, at 4:15 pm (eastern). We are going to discuss her latest book of poems, Still to Mow.

Kumin is the author of sixteen books of poetry,including Poems of New England, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1972. Kumin has written five novels and two short story collections, as well as essays, and a memoir, Inside the Halo and beyond: The Anatomy of a Recovery.

Maxine Kumin’s new volume of poems, Still to Mow is both the lyrical description of an altered American landscape and a complex chronicle of her exploration of experience and knowledge as an elder American woman in the age of Peak Oil. Kumin seamlessly connects the dots in lyric self-revelation and insight and casts an eye on America’s delusion that we are somehow more evolved than any other people.

So tune in or stream it live at WGDR.org.

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live on WGDR 91.1 fm and online at wgdr.org every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 p.m. (eastern), with interviews and music; plus commentaries from British writer Nicki Hastie and guest commentaries from Julie R. Enszer, and Jan Steckel.

Judith Arcana returns to Woman-Stirred Radio

2009-02-18T19:41:00.007Z

Please join Merry Gangemi in welcoming Judith Arcana back to Woman-Stirred Radio, this Thursday, February 19th, at 5:00 (eastern). They'll talk about Poetry and Politics and Grace Paley.

Born and raised in the Great Lakes region, living now in the Pacific Northwest, Judith Arcana is a writer of poems, stories, essays and books, as well as a scholar, teacher, and activist for reproductive justice.

Praised by writers & readers, reviewers and community leaders, Judith’s most recent publications are a signed/numbered edition five-poem broadside, POEMS) and a chapbook manuscript in an envelope, Family Business. Her most recent full-length book is What if Your Mother, a collection of poems and monologues examining a constellation of motherhood themes rarely offered with such richness, including abortion, adoption, miscarriage and the contemporary biotechnology of childbirth.

She is the author of two classic prose books about motherhood, both published in the US and the UK: Our Mothers' Daughters – one of the earliest feminist analyses of the mother/daughter relationship; and Every Mother's Son – the first feminist book about the mother/son relationship published in the USA.

Judith is also the author of Grace Paley's Life: A Literary Biography. Studying Grace and knowing her for many years gave Judith what she was wanting when she wrote, in that book’s Preface: “Where in literature are reflections of my experience, my sensibilities, my world view, my politics? When I read and write about John Keats, or D.H. Lawrence, or Beowulf, I am ranging far off, studying the history and possibilities of a distant ‘other.’ But when I study she-who-is-most-like-me, I learn what has been, and might be, possible for myself.”

Here's what Alicia Ostriker has to say about 4th Period English, Judith's new book, due out in the spring: "4th Period English is so wonderful, I feel privileged to have read it, and I wish it were part of every curriculum starting right now. Listen to Adelita, Vicente, Mikoor, Huynh Chinh, Kathy and Megan, Corazón, Jamayah, the teacher Ms Solomon and her neighbor Khatereh Jafari… you'll think you too were there in George Washington High School, Anywhere, USA, surrounded by The World. And you were. This is absolutely terrific writing."