Word by Word

Continuing an annual tradition, the 2014 holiday gift books edition of Word By Word: Conversations With Writers on North Bay Public Media, KRCB-FM. host Gil Mansergh welcomes back the book buyers from the local Copperfield’s Bookstores, Sheryl Cotleur and Michelle Bellah with their always challenging task of choosing which books to talk about when they only have an hour to do it.

We are doubly pleased this year, because Sheryl served as one of the judges for the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction, and she gives us an insider’s peek at that process and the panel’s final selection, Philip Klay’s novel Redeployment.

In addition to fiction, we hear selective ideas for exceptional coffee-table books, nonfiction books, biographies, resource books, cookbooks, and how-to-do-it books, as well as books for young adults and children. It’s a lot of ground to cover, but Bellah (as she likes to be called), Gil and Sheryl approach the task with joy and happiness.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Word By Word Host Gil Mansergh has a conversation with the celebrated writer, teacher, and Tiny Lights Journal editor and publisher, Susan Bono as she shares some of her personal narratives from her new book , What Have We Here: Essays about Keeping House and Finding Home.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Host Gil Mansergh is in Europe for a few weeks, so we are celebrating Halloween a tad bit early with a reprise of a Word by Word conversation with novelist Molly Dwyer and her astounding book, “Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein.” The spooky story travels from the present to the past and recounts the almost unbelievable life of Mary Walstonecraft Shelley, who wrote her novel “Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus” when she was only 19 years old.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

SSU Professor Emeritus J.J. Wilson, joins SSU’s Jonah Raskin, former Sonoma County Poet Laureate, Terry Ehret, and Press Democrat contributor Julie Lee for a conversation with Word By Word host Gil Mansergh about The Sitting Room’s 2014 publication: This is What a Feminist Looks Like. Listeners also get to hear what Feminists sound like?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Learn the spicy secrets hidden between the covers of warmly sensual romance novels as Word By Word: Conversations With Writers host Gil Mansergh chats with the prolific bestselling writer, Sharon Hamilton. Sharon tells us how she was forced to leave her Sonoma County organic garden and travel to Las Vegas, Tucson, New Orleans and Italy to pose with the shirtless hunks who model for the covers of her various book series, including Cruisin’ For a SEAL, SEAL My Destiny , and Fallen SEAL Legacy in her SEAL Brotherhood romances, Heavenly Lover in her Guardian Angels trilogy and Honeymoon Bite in her Golden Vampires of Tuscany fantasy romances.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Word By Word: Conversations With Writers host Gil Mansergh welcomes the photojournalist and writer William Haigwood whose Journeying the Sixties: A Counterculture Tarot has caused a bit of stir among tarot aficionados and baby-boomers alike. Gil and Bill discuss the history and relevance of Tarot cards, and the impact of the 60’s Counterculture Movement has in our lives today.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Word By Word: Conversations With Writers host, Gil Mansergh welcomes Thonie Hevron, Sandy Baker and Alexis Fajardo, three talented local writers involved in From Pen to Published, the Redwood Writers Eighth biannual Conference. This eclectic group writes police insider mysteries like Force or Fear, nuclear terrorism thrillers like The Tehran Triangle, kid’s gardening and craft books like Mrs. Feeny and the Grubby Garden Gang, and medieval graphic novels like the Kid Beowolf series.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

We have a two-segment Word By Word: Conversations With Writers show this month from North Bay Public Media, KRCB FM. Host Gil Mansergh invites you to first meet with the Festival director and two of the filmmakers whose award-winning documentaries will be part of the exciting and still very cool, seventh annual Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, which will take place the last few days of March.

The second segment is a conversation and reading by Susanna Solomon, author of the recently released short story collection Sheriff’s Calls: Stories inspired by the Point Reyes Light.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Host Gil Mansergh has a special treat for our KRCB listening audience, as we welcome the return of the truly original writer Ben Marcus on this Word By Word: Conversations With Writers on North Bay Public Media, KRCB-FM.

Regular listeners should recall that Ben took time off from his job as a professor in Columbia University’s School of Arts a couple years ago, to share insights into the familiar yet unsettlingly different reality of the North America detailed in his spectacular novel The Flame Alphabet.

Already holding many literary awards, since we last met, Ben was awarded a 2013 Berlin Prize and a Guggenheim fellowship in fiction.

This Word By Word conversation focuses on Ben’s latest book – a collection of decidedly different short stories unlike any others you have read before. They have been gathered together under the title Leaving the Sea.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

For the January, 2014 broadcast of Word By Word: Conversations With Writers brothers Joe and David Henry join host Gil Mansergh to talk about their biography, Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him.

Joe is a singer songwriter who broke into the business as a Production Associate for Spinal Tap, the iconic band that never really was. Married since 1987 to Melanie Ciccone, Joe has penned songs for Madonna, Madeline Peyroux and Roseanne Cash. A Grammy-winning record producer, he has created albums with Louden Wainwright III, Elvis Costello, Aimee Mann, Mose Allison, Bonnie Raitt and Hugh Laurie (yes, that Hugh Laurie).

David is an author, screenwriter and video & broadcast producer who lives in Louisville, Kentucky. David’s most recent screenplay, co-written with Archie Borders, is Pleased to Meet Me, based on Starlee Kine’s radio story “Everyone Speaks Elton John.”

Topics range from Richard Pryor’s demons, to the “salad-making” skills of Bob Dylan and Joan Rivers, to Joe and Bob’s favorite Richard Pryor movies to what a music producer actually does. In short, one of those interesting and eclectic conversations with writers for which Word by Word is famous.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS