Tag

Story

Children's Fiction, Fiction

Sep 06: Arletis, Abuelo, & the Message in a Bottle with Author Lea Aschkenas

September 6, 2023

The True Story Behind the Children’s Story – Cuba, Family, Love, & Connection

Arletis, Abuelo, and the Message in a Bottle with author Lea Aschkenas

On an alligator-shaped island in the middle of a wide sea, there lived a little girl who loved maps and dreamed of far away places. In another part of the world, at the mouth of a wide bay, there lived an old man who’d once dreamed of sailing the world and making friends in foreign lands.

When these two strangers connect through a message in a bottle, it sparks a friendship that expands both of their worlds.

Based on a true story, Arletis, Abuelo, and the Message in a Bottle is an illustrated children’s book of life in rural Cuba. We discuss the story book, the inspiring true story behind it, and writing for children’s books.

About Lea Aschkenas

Lea Aschkenas has written reviews for Washington Post Book World, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Salon. She’s the author of a travel memoir Es Cuba: Life and Love on an Illegal Island. She fell in love with Cuba and its people on her first trip to the island in 2000, and has returned almost every year since.  Arletis, Abuelo, and the Message in a Bottle is her first children’s book. Lea lives in Northern California where she works as a librarian and teaches with the California Poets in the Schools program. Visit www.pencilmoonstudio.com to lean about the award-winning husband and wife children’s book illustrator team – Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu.

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Fiction, Writers on Writing

Aug 23: Joel Johnson with Never

August 23, 2023

Debut Novelist at age 68 Tells Coming of Age Story in the Segregated South

Podcast – Never with author Joel F. Johnson

It took Joel Johnson seven years to write his first novel, Never, and he couldn’t have done it a day sooner he says.

Today we discuss why, despite growing up in Georgia, Joel created a fictional town for Never. He shares some of the research he used to weave historical events into his story, narrated by a young boy named Little. We look at how Joel – a white middle-class, professional male – approached the challenge of writing about the life of a black maid called Bit, working on the white side of Jim Crow’s South. And why Bit quickly became his favorite character.

About Joel F. Johnson

A graduate of Harvard, Joel made stops in Alta, Utah, Boulder, and Manhattan before settling in Concord, MA. His collection of poems Where Inches Seem Miles, was selected by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best independent books of 2014. Never is Joel F. Johnson’s first novel.

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Fiction, Writers on Writing

JUL 01: The Lost and Found Bookshop with Susan Wiggs

July 1, 2020

If you had to start over, what would you do, and who would you be?  Returning guest Susan Wiggs explores that question along with the meaning of happiness, trust, and faith in oneself in The Lost and Found Bookshop.

Susan shares her thoughts on artistic expression, how she develops her stories and characters, and the responsibility she feels an author has in portraying characters outside their own ethnic background.  She also reveals how she persevered through an incredibly tough period early in her career.

Susan Wigg’s novels have appeared in the #1 spot on the New York Times Bestseller List, and have been translated into more than 20 languages and 30 countries.  Her recent novel, The Apple Orchard, is currently being made into a film, and The Lakeshore Chronicles has been optioned for adaptation into a series.

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