December 1, 2013 – Holiday Gift Books

Host Gil Mansergh welcomes you to our annual Word By Word gift books suggestions show from North Bay Public Media, KRCB-FM.

Our guests are Sheryl Cotleur and Michele Bellah, the knowledgable frontlist buyers for the Copperfield’s Bookstores.

The conversation is about the personally selected novels, and nonfiction for adults, and picture books and stories for children that would be perfect for someone special on your gift list.

Gil invites you to sit back and spend an hour with us with your notebook handy – either paper or digital – as you to “make a list and check it twice” for gift books this year.

November 3, 2013 – Jamie Ford

Award-winning novelist Jamie Ford joins host Gil Mansergh for Conversations With Writers. Ford has followed his beloved novel The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet with a much-anticipated second novel set against the backdrop of Seattle’s depression-era Chinatown. Songs of Willow Frost tells the tale of two youngsters who escape from an orphanage to find the Chinese-American boy’s mother – a woman he thinks they have seen in a Hollywood movie. As author Pat Conroy writes: “Ford is a first-rate novelist… With his new book, he takes a great leap forward and demonstrates the uncanny ability to move me to tears.”

October 2, 2013 – Robin Burcell

Word By Word host Gil Mansergh has a conversation with former police officer, detective, hostage negotiator and forensic artist Robin Burcell, the Award-winning author of the Kate Gillespie series featuring the first female SFPD homicide detective in books like Deadly Legacy and Cold Case, and the thriller series featuring FBI forensic artist Sydney Fitzpatrick in Face of a Killer, Bone Chamber and The Kill Order, which comes out in January.

September 4, 2013 – Sonoma County Book Festival

Host Gil Mansergh welcomes listeners to what has become an annual tradition on KRCB-FM’s Word By Word: Conversations With Writers – a show featuring writers who are part of the current year’s Sonoma County Book Festival.

Gil’s guests are: food explorer and radio show host Marcy Smothers, author of SNACKS: Adventures in Food, Aisle by Aisle; mystery writer Sue Olsen McCullough, who has just finished writing a suspense novel set in Stockhom, Sweden about a mother whose 13-year-old daughter runs away from home leaving a trail based on The Runaway Bunny; and grammar diva Arlene Miller, author of The Best Little Grammar Book Ever, and Correct Me If I’m Wrong. Gil is the author of the historical coming-of-age novel The Marvelous Journals of Miss Virginia Pettingill, and all four writers are doing presentations at different times during the 2013 SoCoBookFest to be held Saturday, September 21st on the campus of the Santa Rosa Junior College.

August 7, 2013 – Ransom Stephens

Ransom Stephens captured his readers’ attentions with sex, drugs, quantum physics and artificial intelligence in his bestselling first novel The God Patent. Now, in his latest book The Sensory Deception, the Petaluma resident tackles the winner-take-all race for the ultimate gamer experience.

Ransom Stephens joins host Gil Mansergh for an entertaining conversation about creating an alternative universe not all that different from our own.

July 3, 2013 – Sonoma Squares Red Harvest murder mystery

Gil Mansergh welcomes listeners to a mysterious “Breakfast Serial*” broadcast of Word By Word where the conversation is with four of the 14 writers for the Sonoma Squares Red Harvest murder mystery serial currently appearing each morning in The Press Democrat in print and online.

Gil’s studio guests are:

Press Democrat entertainment reporter Dan Taylor who wrote Chapter 2.

Sonoma Squares/Red Harvest co-editor Frederick Weisel, author of the mystery Teller: A Novel, who wrote Chapter 3.

Musician, PD staff writer and blogger and author of the fantasy novel Horse Stalker, Robert Digitale who wrote Chapter 5.

And Press Democrat writer and blogger Crissi Langwell, author of the newly released novel, “A Symphony of Cicadas,” who wrote Chapter 8.

* A mystery serial you read at breakfast.

June 5, 2013 – Authors Bonnie Harvey and Rebecca Rosenberg

Join Gil Mansergh in conversation with two local entrepreneurs and writers: Bonnie Harvey, Co-Founder and Vice-President of Barefoot Cellars for 20 years and the co-author of the business adventure story, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand; and Rebecca Rosenberg the co-owner of Sonoma Lavender and co-author of the beautiful book, Lavender Fields of America: A New Crop of American Farmer, which looks at the modern, yet ancient, phenomenon of lavender, and the 250 enterprising American farmers who have taken up its call.

April 3, 2013 – Oleander Girl

American Book Award winner Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni joins Word By Word host Gil Mansergh for a conversation on her newest novel, Oleander Girl. Known worldwide as an “enticing storyteller with an exquisite moral compass,” Chitra’s bestsellers include Sister of My Heart, One Amazing Thing, and Mistress of Spices which was made into a movie Starring Dylan McDermot and Aishwarya Rai.

March 6, 2013 – The Big Read, Emily Dickinson

This month’s Word By Word program features conversations with writers writers from two distinctive Sonoma County activities – the National Endowment for the Arts March, 2013 Big Read focusing on the poetry of Emily Dickinson, and the 6th Annual Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival which runs from Thursday March 21st through Sunday, March 24th.

To honor Emily Dickinson, Word By Word host Gil Mansergh invited Anne Goldman and Gillian Conoley, two distinguished writers and professors from Sonoma State University who are, if you will forgive the pun, “well versed” in the life and work of America’s great poet. And to showcase Sebastopol’s award-winning documentary film festival, three filmmakers will be joining the festival’s director Jason Purdue to provide our listeners some insights into making their outstanding films.