Woman-Stirred & Woman-Stirred Radio

Loud in the House of Myself : Stacy Pershall on Woman-Stirred Radio

2012-02-08T15:50:00.001Z

Stacy Pershall

This week on Woman-Stirred Radio, at 5:00 p.m., author Stacy Pershall visits with Merry Gangemi to talk about her memoir, Loud in the House of Myself, published last year by W.W. Norton, and re-released, in paperback, last month.Hailing from Prairie Grove, Arkansas, Pershall grew up in the 1970s, the decade of Vietnam, Watergate, Kent State, and Janet Jackson, when the average starting salary was $7,600.00 and the national debt only $382 billion.

From her life as a Jesus freak to a belly dancer and writer in New York City, Loud in the House of Myself, is a narrative of being different, brilliant, and wack-a-doo---all at the same time.

Pershall's voice is bold, wry, and her behavior, at times, is comical. But it is not light reading. Loud in the House of Myself is a deeply insightful and existential, a well-crafted memoir which brings the reader, like Dante on his metaphoric journey through Hell, down and back again from the harsh difficulties of mental illness. Loud in the House of Myself is also a map and thesaurus of the emotional intelligence needed to understand oneself, and of the fierce, successful determination to take back control of one's life.

Stacy Pershall describes herself as having a body "made... of color and light." Her skin "is made of lightning bolts, robots, rockets, cats, the Bride of Frankenstein, Laurie Anderson quotes." Her tattoos remind her of "who I am and what I'm made of, and the unfilled lines of a work in progress."

Stacy Pershall lives in New York City and holds an MFA in new media art from the University of Cincinnati. She is a member of the Active Minds Speakers Bureau, and lectures widely on issues of mental health, body modification, and bullying.

Want to join the conversation? Call the air studio at 802.456.1630.

So please tune in to Woman-Stirred Radio---or stream us live at http://wgdr.org.

Woman-Stirred Radio is underwritten by Sinister Wisdom, celebrating 35 years of lesbian-feminist arts and letters. Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live on WGDR 91.1 fm and WGDH 91.7 fm, Goddard College's community radio station located in Plainfield, Vermont.

Linq at 4:15 and Merle Hoffman at 5:00 Today on Woman-Stirred Radio

2012-02-02T14:31:00.000Z

This Thursday, February 2nd, at 4:15, Woman-Stirred Radio welcomes back Linq, Massachusetts-based singer-songwriter, whose latest CD, Caught in the Act Acoustic, was released in 2011. Not everyone gets to live their dream and not everyone has the hutzpah to pull it off, but when Linq sold her pharmacy and picked up her guitar she made the move and moved successfully. With eight CDs in her discography, Linq performs all over New England. Her CD, Fast Moving Dream, has been nominated for many awards, including

the International Narrative Song Competition, American Idol Underground, and the Just Plain Folks Music Awards. She was named Musical Artist of 2009, in the Pride of the Arts Award.

Committed to the power of music as a vehicle for profound social change, Linq lives the reality of her dreams and helps to change the world one note at a time, reaching out to queer communities well beyond the boundaries of Massachusetts. Click HERE for an audio clip about Linq, and HERE for a sample of her music.

So tune in this Thursday, February 2nd, at 4:15 for a delightful conversation with Linq! Want to join in the conversation? Call the air studio at 802.454.7762.

Then at 5:00 p.m., Woman-Stirred Radio airs a pre-recorded conversation with abortion activist and provider Merle Hoffman. Her new book, Intimate wars; The life and times of the woman who brought abortion from the back alley to the boardroom, was released last month by The Feminist Press. Hoffman "leads us through the raging political battles of the past four decades and her own internal contradictions and challenges with nuance and lucidity. Her story provides both an intimate personal portrait as well as a revealing social tableau. With characteristic fortitude and realism that provides insight into both dimensions" (GLW). When asked about the impact of her work, Hoffman says "There has been a heavy price to the work I've done. But if you want to call me names, I say 'take a number. The line forms at the left" (GPR).

A personal narrative set within the context of the pro-choice and pro-life movements and sustained political actions such as Operation Rescue, Hoffman trains her sights on the skilled, politically-motivated actions, against choice, from Nixon to Obama "with special attention given to Clinton and George W. Bush," whose administration is characterized by what Hoffman identifies as the "most violative period of government interference" (GPR).

Merle Hoffman is president and CEO of Choices Women's Medical Center, Queens, New York.

The Lives of Margaret Fuller. John Matteson on Woman-Stirred

2012-01-26T17:31:00.001Z

This week on Woman-Stirred Radio, I am delighted to welcome back Pulitzer prize winner John Matteson, author of Outcasts in Eden. His new biography, The Lives of Margaret Fuller has already garnered critical acclaim. (New York Times Book Review January 22, 2012)

Fuller, the most famous American feminist writer and thinker of her generation, wrote literary and social commentary for Horace Greeley and was the very first foreign correspondent for an American newspaper. She is also the author of the first great work of American feminism, Women in the Nineteenth Century.

The eldest of her family, Fuller was born in Massachusetts in 1810 and under the stern tutelage of her father was known as a prodigy: "it should be emphasized that she enjoyed this role and, at least by the time she was eight, was not being compelled to fill her mind with Latin and Greek grammar entirely against her will" (23).

A difficult personality, whose intellectual brilliance outpaced her emotional development, Fuller established friendships with men who fired her imagination and love of learning. She was also condescending and suffered for it, but learning, as she matured, that she could "take the ordinary hopes and feelings of those she favored and to raise them to a height of poetic beauty and importance" (72).

She made friends with Emerson, taught with Bronson Alcott at his innovative Boston school, and later, in Europe, met Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Sand.

While living in Europe, Fuller fell in love with an Italian nobleman, Giovanni Angelo Ossoli, and bore his son. In 1848, Fuller joined the fight for Italian independence and reported on the war while caring for the wounded within range of enemy cannon. Margaret Fuller was, in short, no slouch.

So please join me this Thursday, January 26th at 5:00, for a wonderful discussion with John Matteson about the fascinating Margaret Fuller.

Want to join the conversation? Don't be shy! Call the air studio at 802.454.7762.

Robin Bernstein and JD Glass are Woman-Stirred

2012-01-11T17:43:00.001Z

This Thursday, January 12th, Merry Gangemi welcomes queer writer JD Glass, and scholar Robin Bernstein, to Woman-Stirred Radio.

First up, at 4:15 JD Glass, whose novels include Punk Like Me, Red Light, X, American Goth, and Core. A post-postmodern novelist, Glass's work explores and dissects the complex interstices between queer culture and the rapidly evolving digital world. Her work is gritty, iconic, and driven by unrepentant honesty and sharply cynical wisdom.

JD Glass reading at Bent Pages

In the literary traditions of Sara Schulman and Eileen Myles, JD Glass is steadily making her mark on the NY and national literary scene. We'll talk trends, changes, and technology; personalities, politics, and I hope, the fast evolving notions of God in the queer universe.

A Lambda Literary nominee, JD Glass is the author of more than five novels and lives in Staten Island. When she's not writing or working an an EMT in NYC, she plays music with her rock and roll band.

Jd's interview begins at 4:15 (eastern) and the air studio # is 802.454.7762. Give us a call if you want to join the conversation.

Then at 5:00, I welcome Robin Bernstein, associate professor of African and African American studies and studies of women, gender, and sexuality at Harvard University, to Woman-Stirred Radio to talk about her new book Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights ((NYU, 2011).

In Racial Innocence, Bernstein examines the concept of childhood innocence and its construct, enforcement, and insinuation into U.S. society and culture.

Robin Bernstein

Using archival photos, books, toys, theatrical props, and household items and memorabilia, Bernstein narrates a fascinating and deeply disquieting analysis of of how, in the context of Black experience of childhood, "'scriptive things'... invite or prompt historically-located practices while allowing for resistance and social improvisation.... Throughout Racial Innocence, Bernstein shows how 'innocence' gradually became the exclusive province of white children--- until the Civil Rights Movement
succeeded not only in legally desegregating public spaces, but in culturally desegregating the concept of childhood itself" (NYU).

So please join Merry Gangemi, JD Glass, and Robin Bernstein, this Thursday, January 12th from 4 to 6 pm on Woman-Stirred Radio. Interviews begin at 4:15. Want to join the conversation? Call the air studio at 802.454.7762 or email your questions to merrygangemi@gmail.com.

Woman-Stirred Radio is a queer cultural journal that broadcasts live every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 pm (eastern). You can listen locally at 91.1 fm and 91.7 fm, or you can stream us live at http://wgdr.org.

Woman-Stirred Radio is underwritten by listeners' contributions and by Sinister Wisdom, the oldest lesbian journal of arts and letters, celebrating 35 years.

Sally Bellerose and The Girls Club on Woman-Stirred Radio

2012-01-04T17:11:00.001Z

Sally Bellerose

This Thursday, January 5th, at 4:15 (eastern), I am delighted to welcome author Sally Bellerose, whose new novel, The Girls Club, has garnered great reviews—and deservedly so.

Joan Nestle, author and co-founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, (now permanently located in Brooklyn, New York), says Sally Bellerose “is one of our finest writers” and “gives us this best yet portrait of a working class lesbian coming out in the early 70s.”

The Girls Club is well-paced, the dialogue authentic and witty. The novel is engaging, realistic, fun, and wrenching, as the narrative opens numerous windows into the mind and character of the book’s main protagonist, Cora Rose, as she copes with her Catholic upbringing, two wild older sisters, a wacky but lovable extended family, and the eventual surety of her identity as a lesbian.

As for so many women who came out in the early days of the Gay Rights Movement (and even more so pre-Stonewall), Cora Rose's journey of discovery takes many turns and twists, replete with an obsessive fascination (with women), marriage, children, and the dykes downstairs.

So please join us this Thursday, January 5th at 4:15 for a lively and interesting conversation with Sally Bellerose.

And at 5:00 poet Denise Evans Durkin joins us to talk about the creative process, the poet's life, and her new manuscript!

Want to join in the conversation? Call the air studio at 802.454.7762

nancy Sherman and Patricia Nell Warren are Woman-Stirred!

2011-12-18T21:38:00.001Z

This coming Thursday, December 22nd, at 4:15, Woman-Stirred Radio welcomes military ethicist, Nancy Sherman, author of The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of Our Soldiers (WW Norton, 2011), and then at 5:00, best-selling lesbian author Patricia Nell Warren, joins us to talk about her new memoir, My West (Wildcat, 2011).

The Untold War probes the complexities of a soldier's internal war, and what Sherman describes as "the moral weight that soldiers carry on their shoulders," and "examines the full arc of combat from deployment, to battlefield, to the soldier's return to civilian life."

The narratives are compelling and enlightening; personal experiences intersect with training, duty and obedience to answer questions such as: Is revenge ever justified? How does a soldier make peace with the guilt of killing or of surviving? What are the moral obligations of a a soldier interrogator when it is clear the prisoner is in psychological duress?

Trained as a philosopher and psychoanalyst, Nancy Sherman served as the Inaugural Distinguished Chair in Ethics at the Naval Academy and lectures widely on resilience, trauma, and military ethics. She is a university professor of philosophy at Georgetown University, and is a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars for 2011/2012.

Nancy Sherman's interview begins at 4:15. You can listen locally on 91.1 fm (Montpelier area) and 91.7 fm (Hardwick area) or stream us live at http://wgdr.org. Want to join in the conversation? The air studio number is 802.454.7762.

At 5:00, Woman-Stirred Radio welcomes Patricia Nell Warren to discuss her new memoir, My West: Personal Writings on the American West . The book is layered with fascinating details and sharp observations as she tells us about pheasants, and long horn cattle, Indian mounds, or the handmade jewelry of artist Heyoehkah Merrifield and the significance of the métis sash in Charles M. Russel's art. No matter what the subject, Warren's writing is "rayed through by a changing perspective over half a century," from the spiritual mysteries of native culture, to the wild ferocity of Calamity Jane and pioneering rodeo champion Alice Greenough.

Patricia Nell Warren was born in Helena, Montana in 1936. She is the author of more than eight novels, including the ground-breaking novel, The Front Runner, the first novel about gay love to win popular acclaim. "Her literary and political work has won numerous awards and accolades, including the Arizona Human Rights Fund's Barry Goldwater Award, the National Cowboy Hall of Fame's Western Heritage Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the Saints & Sinners Hall of Fame, and the Gay and Lesbian Literary Hall of Fame" (source).

Patricia Nell Warren's interview begins at 5:00. You can listen locally on 91.1 fm (Montpelier area) and 91.7 fm (Hardwick area) or stream us live at http://wgdr.org. Want to join the conversation? The air studio number is 802.454.7762.

Woman-Stirred Radio is underwritten by Sinister Wisdom, celebrating 35 years of lesbian-feminist arts and letters. Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live on WGDR 91.1 fm and WGDH 91.7 fm, Goddard College's community radio station located in Plainfield, Vermon.

Sophie Blackall and Deborah Willis are Woman-Stirred

2011-12-14T17:22:00.000Z

This week on Woman-Stirred Radio I am delighted to welcome artist Sophie Blackall, whose first book for adults, Missed Connections, has drawn deserved attention and great reviews.

Missed Connections: Love, Lost & Found (Workman Publishing, 2011) began as a BLOG based on real, anonymous messages posted online by strangers. Fascinated by the thousands of posted Missed Connections, Blackall's images bring whimsey and depth to the posts, and celebrate the mysteries of attraction and love-at-first- sight. Missed Connections reminds us that the age-old "remembered glance, smile, or fleeting conversation" can slow the speed of the digital world.

Author and illustrator of more than twenty children's books, Blackall has won the Ezra Jack Keats Award, the BCCB Blue Ribbon Award, and a Founder's Award from the Society of Illustrators. She is an honor recipient of the Horn Book Award for Pecan Pie Baby, and the Ivy and Bean series. Blackall's Big Red Lollipop won the New York Times Top-Ten Picture Book Award for 2010. Her iillustrations have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Gourmet, Food & Wine, and Town & Country. Interview begins at 4:15 p.m. The air studio number is 802.454.7762.

Then at 5:00, I welcome Deborah Willis, author of Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs, and Reflections in Black. A recipient of MacArthur, Guggenheim, and Fletcher Fellowships, Deborah Willis is chair and professor of New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, Department of Photography and Imaging.
Her new collection, Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present is the first photographic history of black beauty in African American culture, "a story overlooked by most of America" (N). Posing Beauty explores notions of Black beauty and the import of the pose, which expands and manipulates the viewer's perspective. Nicholas Mirzoeff argues "the pose is the essence of the photograph" (xvii), and as beauty and the pose exist in ever-changing cultural and political contexts, historical juxtapositions make the book even more compelling. Deborah Willis's interview begins at 5p.m.

So tune in this Thursday, December 15th 4 to 6 p.m. to Woman-Stirred Radio for diverse perspectives thoughtful discussion, open dialogue. Interviews start at 4:15. Listen every Thursday and join the WSR conversation with writers, visual artists, musicians, academics, policy makers, and special guests. The air studio number is 802.454.7762.

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live every Thursday afternoon, from 4 to 6, on WGDR 91.1 fm and WGDH 91.7fm, Goddard College's Community Radio stations. Click HERE to listen live. Click HERE for a selection of WSR podcasts. Click HERE for information about WSR and upcoming guests.

Wendy Call and Ellen Hart are Woman-Stirred!

2011-12-06T03:02:00.001Z

This week, on Thursday, December 8th, on Woman-Stirred Radio, I'm delighted to welcome Wendy Call, author of No Word for Welcome: the Mexican village faces the global economy (U of Nebraska Press), and delighted to welcome back mystery maven Ellen Hart, whose new book, The Lost Ladies of Lost Lake, has been released by Minotaur Press (St. Martin's/McMillan).

At 4:15, Wendy Call, writer, editor, teacher, and translator, comes on air to talk about No Word for Welcome: the Mexican village faces the global economy, a fascinating and intimate portrait of the peoples and cultures of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the narrow "waist of Mexico" which stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. The region is known for "its strong women, spirited marketplaces, and deep sense of independence" (UNP). Call's narrative about her years in the isthmus among the Huave and Zapotec, who now struggle with the consequences of industrialization and development that has been driven by the post-NAFTA global economy. "With timely and invaluable insights into the development battle, Call shows that the people who have suffered most from economic globalization have some of the clearest ideas about how we can all survive it" (UNP).

Wendy Call is a recent writer-in-residence at Seattle University, New College of Florida, and Harborview Medical Center. She is the coeditor of Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writer's Guide, author of various essays, and translator of Mexican poetry and short fiction.

At 5:00, Ellen Hart joins us for a fun-fest about her latest Jane Lawless mystery, The Lost ladies of Lost Lake. "While caring for a friend after she takes a nasty fall, restauranteur Jane Lawless discovers that her friend is actually much more afraid of a tragic accident that took place years ago---and the reporter snooping around it---" (SMP). The Lost Women of Lost Lake is another adventure from one of the best writers of lesbian/gay mysteries!

The author of more than seventeen novels, Ellen Hart is a Lambda Literary and Minnesota Book Award winner. She lives and writes in Minnesota.

Want to join the conversation? Call the air-studio at 802.454.7762

Extra Virginity and Birds of Paradise on Woman-Stirred radio

2011-11-28T16:42:00.001Z

This week, Tom Mueller, author of Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, and Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Birds of Paradise, visit Merry Gangemi on Woman-Stirred Radio.

First up, at 4:15 p. m. (eastern), is journalist Tom Mueller, whose new book, Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil (WW Norton, 2011) has shaken consumers and producers alike. An essential foodstuff for thousands of years, extra-virgin olive oil is also utilized in medicines, religious rituals, and health and beauty products. Extra-virgin olive oil is the product garnered from the first pressing of the fruit, and is highly valued for its uniquely beneficial properties as a monounsaturated oil. Mueller's carefully researched and well-written book, Extra Virginity, not only explores the implications and consequences of an impure product, but also exposes the enormous financial windfalls available to producers who adulterate the oil, as well as fraudulent shipping practices and export/import policies, the brokers and purchasers who turn a blind eye, and the government inspectors and wholesale/retail quality control experts who are unwilling or unable to stop the fraud. The book is interesting, engaging, informative, and for some, will change the way they think about the food industry and the laxity of FDA oversight in an age of slash and burn economics.

Free-lance journalist Tom Mueller writes for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and other magazines. He lives in a medieval farmhouse the Ligurian countryside, near Genoa, Italy.

Then at 5:00 p.m., I interview Diana Abu-Jabar, whose new novel, Birds of Paradise, was released by WW Norton this year. The novel is structured around Felice, the teenage daughter of Avis and Brian, a master baker and a real estate lawyer, and their son Stanley, who owns and manages a thriving natural foods market. Set against the backdrop of Miami, Florida, the narrative unfolds in a style and manner not unlike the very essence of the city itself, with its diverse, multi-cultural neighborhoods, teen homelessness, the romanticism and allure of sugar, and social blindness to the long-term consequences of sprawling urban development. Fraught with the complexity of twenty-first century American life, Birds of Paradise relentlessly excavates the secrets and ambiguity of childhood, social and familial moral responsibility, and compartmentalization that grows like lichens between the realities and shattered perspectives of parenthood and financial success. One of the more fascinating undercurrents of the book is the inability of spouses, parents, children, siblings, friends, and business associates to communicate with each other in an age in which communication technology is exploding and the facades of the American Dream are crumbling.

Diana Abu-Jaber is the author of Origin, Cresent, Arabian Jazz, and the Language of Baklava. her work has been published in many magazine, including Ms, Salon, Vogue, Gourmet, the Washington Post, and the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. A recipient of the PEN Center USA Award, Abu-Jaber divides her times between Coral Gables, Florida, and Portland, Oregon.

So please tune in this Thursday, December 1, from 4 to 6 p.m. to Woman-Stirred Radio. Interviews start at 4:15. Want to join the conversation? Call the air studio 802.454.7762.

Vanessa Lively and Willard Sterne Randall on Woman-Stirred Radio

2011-11-16T12:26:00.000Z

This week on Woman-Stirred Radio I welcome Austin TX-based singer- songwriter, Vanessa Lively at 4:15 and then at 5:00, historian Willard Sterne Randall.

"For a woman who thrives on jumping into the unknown with both feet, Vanessa Lively took an unusual approach to her new album, Uncovering Stones. She and her producer-husband, Jason, planned it practically down to the last note before stepping near a recording studio – a room in their Austin home, tricked out for the sessions by co-producer/engineer Keith Gary. Vanessa even painted the album art beforehand – on 42 canvas squares she sold individually to help fund the 12-song disc.

Lively recorded her first album, Let Me Rise, while she was living in Ecuador, followed by her second A Chain Unbroken, recorded in Northern England. Her third, Canto y Cantera, was a tribute to Argentinean singer Mercedes Sosa and the nueva canción song movement she popularized.

Making music constantly during her sojourn in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador, she observed how strongly it connected people. Uncovering Stones is, she says, an expression of that experience. With a compelling mix of tempos and styles that embrace “hints of urban, world, Latin, funk and pop,” Lively’s songs fully capture her compassionate nature and love of community. Lively is thrilled with the result; she says Uncovering Stones is the album she dreamed of making---an inspiring album full of energy and beauty.

Then at 5:00, I welcome historian Willard Sterne Randall, author of Alexander Hamilton: A Life (Henry Holt, 2004), and Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor (Morrow, 1990). His latest biography, Ethan Allen: His Life and Times, has just been published by WW Norton.

The book is accessible and cogent, bringing to life an historical figure at once iracible, brilliant, and passionate. Ethan Allen, as Randall describes him as "part Davey Crockett, part Paul Bunyan, and two parts Jack Daniels."

Randall brings Ethan Allen to life in this in-depth and fascinating narrative; the first extensive biography of Ethan Allen in fifty years.

Willard Sterne Randall is the author of twelve books, including Thomas Jefferson: A Life; George Washington: A Life; Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor; and Alexander Hamilton: A Life. Randall is professor of history at Champlain College and lives in Burlington, VT.

So please join us on Woman-Stirred Radio, this Thursday, November 17th from 4 to 6 p.m. (eastern) for a lively and historically interesting two hours of ideas, questions, and creativity! Want to join the conversation? Call the air studio at 802.456.1630, or email questions and comments to merrygangemi@gmail.com.

Lan Samantha Chang and James A. Reeves on Woman-Stirred Radio

2011-11-06T10:43:00.001Z

James A.Reeves joins Merry Gangemi this coming Thursday on Woman-Stirred Radio to talk about his new book: The Road to Somewhere (WW Norton, 2011), a pictorial and verbal memoir of an American man faced with the reality of how ambivalent and frenetic life in the United States has become. Reeves roads are not plotted or planned, he moves across post-9/11 America open and at times raw. "Sometimes," he writes, "I feel jumpy, spooked by the few people that I pass when driving through shuttered small towns. The kids look wild, glaring at me and shouting at a red light. Skinny hard-bodied guys without shirts and chubby girls with cleavage spilling everywhere" (91). Or, when he "hits the Pacific" he waits for the extraordinary or the profound, "for one of those feelings you expect when you reach the ocean: the flash of insight that never arrives." From under the boardwalk at the Santa Monica pier, Reeves takes "lousy art school photographs of shadows and water and light. Now here's something: a fight. Fast and messy with hard rabbit punches and pulled hair and then it's gone. People are always more interesting than nature" (345). The Road to Somewhere is a fascinating narrative of an American man determined to understand what it means to be a man.

James A. Reeves is a writer, educator, and designer. He attended the University of Michigan, Pratt Institute of Design, and Tulane Law School. He is a partner at Civic Center, an urban design studio, in New Orleans, where he lives.

So tune in this coming Thursday, November 10th, at 4:15 for a conversation with James A. Reeves about his photo memoir, The Road to Somewhere. Listen locally on WGDR 91.1 fm or WGDH 91.1 fm, or stream the show live at http://wgdr.org.

The at 5:00 (eastern), I welcome Lan Samantha Chang, director of the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Samantha Chang's novel, All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost (WW Norton, 2010) has now been released in paperback. The novel is a story of friendship and poetry, of the commitments one makes to ambition and success, and of the seemingly innocuous "moments and petty decisions... that pass unnoticed..." and how it is that we "mysteriously and without consenting"collude with both the dark and threads threads of our own character, negotiating the minefields of lies or "deliberate untruths" and face "the subtle yet devastating ravages of regret, revelation, and time" (WWNorton). Set squarely and realistically within the universe of literary life, the novel will ring more than a few familiar bells.

Lan Samantha Change is the author of Hunger (1998) and Inheritance (2004) and had won The Wallace Stegner, and Truman Capote Fellowships at Stanford University; she was also a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow. Chang lives in Iowa City, where she is the director of the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop.

Merry's interview with Samantha Change begins at 5:00 p.m. this coming Thursday, November 10th on Woman-Stirred Radio. You can listen live locally at WGDR 91.1fm and WGDH (91.7fm), or you can stream the interview live at http://wgdr.org.

Woman-Stirred Radio is a queer cultural journal that broadcasts live every Thursday afternoon on WGDR and WGDH, Goddard College's community radio stations. Woman-Stirred Radio is supported in part by Sinister Wisdom, the oldest lesbian journal of arts and letters, celebrating over 30 years of continuous publication.

Stella Duffy (Theodora: actress, empress, whore) and Joshua Cody ([sic]) on November 3rd

2011-10-31T12:15:00.000Z

Stella Duffy

This Thursday, November 3rd, at 4:15 (eastern), all the way from England, Stella Duffy joins Merry Gangemi on Woman-Stirred Radio to discuss her bestselling historical novel, Theodora: actress, empress, whore (Penguin 2011). The novel, released in October tells the story of the young girl who began her life in 6th-century Byzantium and became one of the most powerful and progressive women of her age. Scholars believe Theodora was born between 479 and 510 AD. Her father was a bear trainer at the Hippodrome, the vast and sports center of Constantinople and the site of Theodora's early career as and acrobat.

Duffy weaves a plausible, tapestry-like narrative, illuminating the smallest details of daily life in the first millenium after Christ's death as well as each pinnacle and nadir of Theodora's tumultuous, fascinating, and emotionally-rich life.

Then at 5:00, Merry welcomes new York City-based composer and film maker, Joshua Cody, whose memoir , [sic] is about his three-year encounter with malignancy, in the form of a tumor in his neck, paints a landscape of the ordeal textured with irony, self-deprecation, and insights lyrical and profound. Writer Nick Flynn finds the book "endlessly curious, genuinely funny, fiercely intelligent, and wonderfully perverse" (WWNorton).

"Moving effortlessly between references to Don Giovanni and the Rolling Stones, Ezra Pound and Buffalo Bill"Cody's memoir "is a mesmerizing, hallucinatory glimpse into a young man's battle against disease and a celebration of art, language, music, and life" (WW Norton).

Listen to this week's show Thursday, November 3rd, locally, at WGDR 91.1 or WGDH 91.7 fm, or stream us live at http://wgdr.org. Interviews begin at 4:15.

WGDR and WGDH are the community radio stations of Goddard College, Plainfield, VT. Woman-Stirred Radio is supported in part by Sinister Wisdom, the world's oldest continuously-published lesbian journal of arts and letters, by grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Goddard College, and listeners like you.

Want to join the conversation? Call the air studio at 802.454.7762.

Jane Dwinell is Woman-Stirred

2011-10-25T00:20:00.000+01:00

This Thursday, October 27th, at 5:00 p.m. (eastern), Jane Dwinell visits Woman-Stirred Radio to talk about her latest book, Freedom through Frugality: Spend less and have more.

"In the early days of the economic crisis, the media touted the "new frugality" as a way for people to weather the storm until the sun came out. But, the truth is, the storm is here to stay. With all the ups and downs on Wall Street and in Washington, the ongoing job stagnation and housing downturn, economists are clear that the recession will be with us for some time.

In the meantime, many people are getting used to being thrifty and are, in many cases, seeing this as a new way of life, one that brings them some peace of mind in the midst of uncertainty. But many more people are crying out for information that could help them deal with these tough times. Freedom Through Frugality provides that help.

But, just what is frugality? According to author Jane Dwinell, frugality is about:

Being deliberate and careful with your resources

Respect

Planning ahead

Making do

Understanding the true cost of things

Not wasting anything -- including your life

Common sense

Paying attention

And, what frugality is not about:

Just you

Being cheap

Living a spartan existence

Living in fear

Dwinell offers philosophy, support, and how-to for your transition to a more frugal, fun, and free life. With the ongoing global economic unpredictability, and the understanding that living on a smaller ecological footprint can help stem climate change, Freedom Through Frugality is a timely book.

Jane Dwinell has been living a free and frugal life for over 25 years -- in the country, in the city, and in town. She and her partner raised two children (who continue to be frugal young adults), and have travelled extensively since they retired in their mid-50s. They currently live in Montpelier, VT" (GLW).

Sound interesting? Then tune in this Thursday, October 27th, at 5:00 for what should be a very cool discussion about the different ways we can free ourselves from the clutches of corporate-controlled life---which is really what we are seeing in the phenomenal Occupy Wall Street movement that is sweeping the country---and find freedom!

2011-10-13T17:46:00.000+01:00

This week on Woman-Stirred Radio, I'm thrilled to welcome author Terry Wolverton and chef Didi Emmons! It's WGDR's fall fundraiser this week and Woman-Stirred Radio asks you to help keep us on the air! Whatever you can give is appreciated... and for any donation over $25 some of the amazing books written by authors I've interviewed on the program. Call during the show for a list of titles. 802.454.7762.

At 4:15 Terry Wolverton comes online to talk about her new novel, Stealing Angel (Spinsters Ink, 2011). Layered within the emotional complexities of a broken relationship and the desire to protect a beloved child, Stealing Angel is a story of love and forgiveness that crosses boundaries of gender, race, and spiritual consciousness. Set in the exquisite beauty of Baja, Mexico, amidst a community of enlightenment, Maggie Saver and her daughter Angel find refuge, friendship, and acceptance. It's a story that appeals to anyone who desires a world wherein love and kindness really do make a difference. Stealing Angel is a gem of GLBTQ fiction, relevent and insightful, another triumph for a writer who believes in the power of faith and transformation.

Terry Wolverton is the author of eight books including novels, poetry, and short fiction. She has taught creative writing for over twenty-five years and in 1997 founded Writers at Work, a creative writing center in Los Angeles. Wolverton is an associate faculty mentor at Antioch University, Los Angeles, and a certified instructor of Kindalini Yoga. Click here for her website.

Then at 5:00 (and this one's sure to please listeners who practice sustainable agriculture and believe in the principles of 360 and Peak Oil), Merry welcomes Didi Emmons, Boston chef and author of Vegetarian Planet and Entertaining for a Veggie Planet. Her new book, Wild Flavors: One Chef's Transformative year Cooking from Eva's Farm, has just been released from Chelsea Green Publishing.

Through her marvelous collaboration and friendship with Massachusettes farmer, Eva Sommaripa, Emmons has compiled a cookbook that celebrates the simplicity of cooking with uncommon herbs, greens, and wild edibles---with her staff, she grows more than 200 of these on her farm on the Massachusettes coast.

This is more than a cookbook, however, Wild Flavors presents plant profiles and stories laced with "practical tips and tools for foraging, growing, and preparing seasonal fare" (GLP). It's also an encylopedia of foods right at our fingertips---such as allium, lovage, rugosa rose, and cardoon---that might very well change the way you perceive the spaces around your garden and backyard.

So tune-in to Woman-Stirred Radio, Thursday, October 13th, 4 to 6 p.m. (eastern) for some delightful conversations with Terry Wolverton and Didi Emmons---programming that is sure to please. Want to join the conversatio? Call the air studio at 802.454.7762.

l

Dr. Allen Teel and author Eleanor Lerman on Woman-Stirred Radio

2011-09-29T18:40:00.003+01:00

Up first today on Woman-Stirred Radio, Dr. Allen Teel, a family physician from Damariscotta, ME, discusses his new book, Alone and Invisible No More, which examines alternative solutions to the growing problem of warehousing elder Americans. The book deals with solutions to the current trends of institutionalization and the prohibitive costs medical-based care generates. Former governor Howard Dean says the book "helps us understand the underlying social movement against 'kicking seniors to the curb' and serves "as a call to real action, not just reform of bureaucracy" (source).

Teel's approach embraces the Maine Approach, which reconfigures care models around at-home care, using volunteers and technology to help seniors remain at home and among the families and communities they are comfortable with. Teel's approach is intelligent and articulate, taking in the big picture of America's flawed eldercare system and offering solutions and how to access resources already extant in our communities.

Then at 5:00, I'm delighted to welcome Eleanor Lerman, whose debut novel, Janet Panet is an intriguing portrait of a time when psychedelics and mystery drove thousands of American youth to the philosophical experiments of a generational guru and his journey of self-enlightenment.

The story revolves around a Carlos Castenada-like character who was an integral part of the revolutionary age of American youth. Through the eyes of Janet Planet, Lerman recreates a time of personal and social upheaval and the forces at play that laid the groundwork for the New Age philosophies of postwar and post-Vietnam America.

With skillful prose and sharp personal insight, Lerman's Janet Planet brings to life a time and place in America where ideology and optimism worked together to forge new ways of thinking about ourselves, and laid the groundwork for the perceptions and ideas so many of us believed would actually change the world. The novel is a brilliant feminist statement of self-discovery and independence.

So tune in today, at 4:00 (eastern) to Woman-Stirred Radio, a queer cultural journal serving the global GLBTQ communities and bringing the finest in queer arts and letters to the airwaves. Listen locally at 91.1 and 91.7 fm, or stream us live at WGDR.org.

Want to join the conversation? Call the airstudio at 802.454.7762.

Today's show is cancelled

2011-09-22T10:11:00.002+01:00

Well, it happens to the best of us. For the next few days I will be in-patient while the doc drive me crazy and run all sorts of tests on my endocrine system.... I'll be back in the saddle as soon asI can!

Thanks for all your support and your continued support of Woman-Stirred Radio.

-Merry Gangemi

Stefani Deoul and Fay Jacobs and Ernest Drucker on Woman-Stirred Radio

2011-09-15T14:50:00.001+01:00

This week on Woman-Stirred Radio, I am delighted to welcome Ernest Drucker, at 4:15, author of A Plague of Prisons (New Press, 2010). Then at 5:00 TV producer and writer, Stefani Deoul, author of The Carousel (A&M 2010), as well as Fay Jacobs, publisher of A&M Books and author of For Frying Out Loud: Rehoboth Beach Diaries (A&M 2010).

First up at 4:15 is Ernest Drucker, scholar-in-residence and senior research associate at John Jay College of Crimminal Justice, City University of New York. He is professor emeritus of family and social medicine at Montefiore medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and adjunct professor of epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. He is an NIH funded researcher, editor-in-chief of the International Harm Reduction Journal, a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Global Health, and a Soros Justice Fellow. He is also the founder and former chairman of Doctors of the World/USA.

A Plague of Prisons examines the decades-long explosion of mass incarcerations in the United States. Drawing upon his knowledge and experience as an Dr. Ernest Drucker lays out the horrific effects and long-term consequences of America's prison-industrial complex, an economic system that is driven by for-profit prisons, and one in which "each individual who comes in contact with our...system... of mass incarceration remains damaged by it for life" (140). Not since Joseph Stalin's massive prison system has a nation imprisoned so many for and for such long periods of time.

Professor Drucker's compassionate, clear-sighted analysis is something all Americans should be aware of, especially in light of the "school-to-prison pipeline," which utilizes drug war policing tactics into America's schools---and with terrible results. The message of this book is not only how quickly and purposefully our systems of justice policies wreak havoc on families and communities, but also why collective responsibility must make way for awareness, an understanding of the crisis and its ramifications, and for drastically needed activism and change.

"Like the story of global warming and climate change, this epidemic of mass imprisonment includes many "inconvenient truths"---critical realities....such as its sheer size, huge social disparities, and monumental costs.... [u]nlike climate change, the scale and consequences of mass incarceration derive from relatively recent events and a deliberate set of public policies that continue to be defended as being in the public interest" (48).

Then at 5:00, I welcome TV producer and writer Stefani Deoul, to talk about her debut novel, The Carousel, and Fay Jacobs, publisher of A&M Books---and who also has a new book out---For Frying Out Loud: Rehoboth Beach diaries.

The Carousel tells the story of a stranger whose chance destination in a small town on the Northeast, begins a narrative of redemption, acceptance, and courage in the face of the unknown. The plot is complex but tight and very intriguing. Deoul's characters are layered and surprising, their interactions and relationships are authentic and endearing. It's the kind of book that stays with you, thinking and rethinking what you've read and why it's striking.

For Frying Out Loud: Rehoboth Beach diaries, is fun and engaging collections of essays and vignettes sure to keep you interested and less inclined to put the book down. Here is Fay Jacobs on the lesbian baby boom:

"as the gay parenting trickle turned into a spate and then a boom, it sure has been fun to watch. Like the time we went to dinner with a couple we'd just met. As the waiter took drink orders, Bonnie and I choose vodka and tonic, one of our new friends asked for a glass of white wine, and our fourth companion looked up at the waiter and said, "Nothing for me, thanks, I just inseminated myself." The waiter handled it rather nicely. "How about a Shirley Temple?" he asked. Then turned around and walked smack into the wall" (133).

So please tune in or stream us live at WGDR.org. Want to join in the conversation? Call 802.454.7762.

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 p.m. (eastern) and strives to bring you the best in local and global queer culture. Click HERE to listen!

Lisa Gitlin and Andrea Myers are Woman-Stirred!

2011-09-06T16:15:00.000+01:00

Lisa Gitlin

I Came Out for This?

This Thursday, September 8th, on Woman-Stirred Radio, I welcome author Lisa Gitlin and Rabbi Andrea Meyers.

My first interview, with author Lisa Gitlin, starts at 4:15 (eastern). Her debut novel, I Came Out for This, is getting great reviews, and deservedly so! The book is a well-crafted breath of fresh air, and funny as hell. It is also poignant, emotionally raw, and wonderfully ironic.

Set in the new millennium, the novel follows Joanna Kane, a lesbian newbie who comes out at the age of 47 and dives into the life with gusto and a rage that will, at times, make the reader very uncomfortable. Gitlin's sense of irony has Joanna running headlong into the ups, downs, and snags of self-discovery and and her search for veracity. Gitlin's novel has taken the Independent Publishers Book Award Gold Medal in both humor and fiction.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Gitlin is a graduate of the New School for General Studies (formerly The New School for Social Research. A freelance writer, Lisa Gitlin lives in Washington DC.

Then, at 5:00, I welcome Rabbi Andrea Myers, whose memoir, The Choosing:A rabbi's journey from Silent Nights to High Holy Days, is fresh off Rutgers University Press. The cild of a Roman Catholic Sicilian, and German Lutheran, Myers grew up on Long Island, took a degree in neuroscience from Brandeis University. Myers lived and studied in jerusalem for two years and was ordained at the Academy for Jewish Religion, in New York City, where she currently lives.

"Myers relates tales of new beginnings, of reinventing oneself, and finding oneself. Whether it's a Sicilian grandmother attempting to bake hamantaschen on Purim for her Jewish granddaughter, or an American in Jerusalem saving a chicken from slaughter during a Rosh Hashanah ritual, Myers keeps readers entertained as she reflects that spirituality, goodness, and morality can and do take many forms. Readers will enthusiastically embrace stories of doors closing and windows opening, of family and community, of integration and transformation. These captivating narratives will resonate and, in the author's words, "reach across coasts, continents, and generations" (source).

So please join us this Thursday, September 8th on Woman-Stirred Radio, a queer cultural journal, which broadcasts live every Thursday afternoon, from 4 to 6 p.m. (eastern), locally at 91.1 fm (Plainfireld) and 91.7 (Hardwick). We also stream live at WGDR.org. WGDR is a community radio station and broadcasts from the campus of Goddard College. Interviews begin at 4:15. Want to join the conversation? Call the air studio at 802.454.7762.http://wgdr.org

Jeff Kidder and Bett Norris are Woman-Stirred!

2011-08-31T22:03:00.000+01:00

In spite of the flood here in Vermont, Woman-Stirred Radio swims on! So this Thursday, September 1st, I welcome sociologist Jeff Kidder, the author of Urban Flow: Bike Messengers and the City (Cornell University Press) and lesbian fiction writer Bett Norris, whose latest novel, Miss McGhee, explores the relationship of two women in post-WWII Alabama.

First up at 4:15 p.m. is Jeff Kidder, associate professor of sociology at Northern Illinois University. Through interviews and hands on involvement and observation, Kidder unpacks and examines the urban bike messenger. Both folk hero and derided menace, the bike messenger's work world and messenger sub-culture is vibrant, thrilling, chaotic, and dangerous. In the elements all year and in madhouse traffic every day the bike messenger performs invaluable services for businesses moving time-sensitive packages for small and large companies. Check out Yak, who messengers in NYC.

Alleycats and track bikes, from San Diego and Seattle, to the BIg Apple, Kidder's book is accessible and fascinating, sure to elicit admiration and, yup, a sense of awe for these wild and crazy men and women who fly through traffic at breakneck speed and move seamlessly through the urban jungle.

Then at 5:00 p.m. I welcome Bett Norris, in another of my series of lesbian novelists.
Set in a small rural Alabama town, the story revolves around the turbulence and upheavals of postwar America. Filtered through the lens of a closeted lesbian relationship, the lives of Mary McGhee and Lila Dubose intersect with Southern-style racism, the horrors and triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement.

Born and raised in Alabama, Norris grew up about forty miles from Haper Lee's home town. She is a graduate of the University of Alabama with a BA in history.

So tune in to Woman-Stirred Radio, Thursday, September 1st, for a great show with some very interesting guests. Click HERE to stream the show live, and if you want to join in, the air-studio number is 802.454.7762.

Woman-Stirred Radio is a queer cultural journal that broadcasts live every Thursday from 4 to 6 (eastern) on WGDR and WGDH, Goddard College's community radio stations!

Casino Women come to Woman-Stirred Radio

2011-08-24T17:15:00.000+01:00

This Thursday, at 5:00 (eastern), I welcome Susan Chandler PhD, co-author of Casino Women: Courage in Unexpected Places, to Woman-Stirred Radio!

"Casino Women is a pioneering look at the female face of corporate gaming. Based on extended interviews with maids, cocktail waitresses, cooks, laundry workers, dealers, pit bosses, and vice presidents, the book describes in compelling detail a world whose enormous profitability is dependent on the labor of women assigned stereotypically female occupations—making beds and serving food on the one hand and providing sexual allure on the other. But behind the neon lies another world, peopled by thousands of remarkable women who assert their humanity in the face of gaming empires' relentless quest for profits.
The casino women profiled here generally fall into two groups. Geoconda Arguello Kline, typical of the first, arrived in the United States in the 1980s fleeing the war in Nicaragua. Finding work as a Las Vegas hotel maid, she overcame her initial fear of organizing and joined with others to build the preeminent grassroots union in the nation—the 60,000-member Culinary Union—becoming in time its president. In Las Vegas, "the hottest union city in America," the collective actions of union activists have won economic and political power for tens of thousands of working Nevadans and their families. The story of these women's transformation and their success in creating a union able to face off against global gaming giants form the centerpiece of this book.
Another group of women, dealers and middle managers among them, did not act. Fearful of losing their jobs, they remained silent, declining to speak out when others were abused, and in the case of middle managers, taking on the corporations' goals as their own. Susan Chandler and Jill B. Jones appraise the cost of their silence and examine the factors that pushed some women into activism and led others to accept the status quo" (source)

The book is inspiring and so well-crafted that readers will settle down with it and enjoy the backstories, personalities, history, and cold hard facts of what it's like to be part of the global fantasy-world of corporate gaming.

Want to join the conversation? call the air-studio at 802.456.1630.

Marianne K. Martin is Woman-Stirred!

2011-08-17T16:34:00.004+01:00

Marianne K. Martin

Tomorrow, August 17th at 5:00, I welcome Marianne K. Martin to Woman-Stirred Radio. The third in a series of Bywater Books authors
(last week it was Val McDermid).

Martin's The Indelible Heart, is a well-crafted and insightful look into the ways and means of complex homophobia and its impact on the minds and hearts of lesbian communities. It is also about the extraordinary ways in which those communities cope, communicate, and heal. The story moves smoothly, dialogue is authentic and natural, and characters come alive on the page. There is also an honest clear-eyed look at families and the consequences of dysfunction.

So please join me tomorrow, Thursday August 17th at 5:00 p.m. for a conversation with Marianne K. Martin.

Want to join the conversation? Call the air studio at 802.454.7762.

Legendary DJ Susan Morabito is Woman-Stirred

2011-08-04T20:18:00.001+01:00

Today, at 5:00 (eastern) on Woman-Stirred Radio, Merry Gangemi welcomes “global legend” Susan Morabito—DJ extraordinaire!

The music industry has changed dramatically in the past decade but in keeping step with the new landscape of indie production and direct sales from musicians websites, Susan Morabito continues to deliver euphoric, sophisticated insights into the integrated physical and emotional journey that, in the performance of dance, connects us to and celebrates life.

For millions of GLBTQ men and women, clubs and bars were one of the few places they could meet and interact, and dance, and in particular, since the advent of DJs and dance clubs, Saturday nights became rituals of motion and rhythm, transporting one to a state of entrancement and joy.

Whether she spins dark and sexy, soulful or smooth, light and happy, Morabito’s vision and creativity stands above the rest. Through her skill of controlling the dance floor, Morabito takes the dancer to another plane of emotion. Morabito’s understanding of her dancers emotions opens doors to collective experiences of connectedness—whether that translates into immediate fusion among individuals, or a sense of community.

For over 25 years, Susan Morabito has touched, influenced, and moved her audiences and Woman-Stirred is delighted to welcome her to the show.

So tune in today, at 5 p.m. for a fun and intriguing dialogue with DJ Susan Morabito. Want to join the conversation? Call the air studio at 802.454.7762.

Joan Opry and Amie Klempnauer Miller are Woman-Stirred

2011-07-21T16:20:00.001+01:00

Today on Woman-Stirred Radio, Merry Gangemi welcomes Amie Klempnauer, author of She Looks Just Like You: A memoir of (non-biological lesbian) motherhood, and author Joan Opyr, whose brand-new Shaken and Stirred has just been released by Bywater Press.

Up first at 4:15 is Amie Klempnauer Miller, a development consultant to the public media industry. Miller’s work has appeared in Salon and in Brain, Child, and Greater Good, magazines.

There are thousands of books published about motherhood and parenting every year, but Miller’s, She Looks Just Like You, takes us into the world of lesbian child-bearing and parenting. As the non-biological mother of her daughter, Miller explores the experience of motherhood from and through multiple prisms of lesbian and straight concepts of parenthood and family. The book is engaging, unlike so many pedantic books that grate at one’s nerves or terrify the uninitiated, moving from personal experience to abstract notions of who we are as lesbians and mothers. Sometimes confident, anxious, expectant, and funny, the book is as delightful to read as it is important to the cultural memory of lesbian mother experience.

So tune in today, Thursday, July 21st at 4:15 for a serious but casual conversation about lesbian motherhood.

Want to join the conversation? Give us a call at 802.454.7762, or email me at merrygangemi@gmail.com.

Then at 5:00, I welcome Joan Opyr to talk about her fun and snappy new novel, Shaken and Stirred, which through credible characters and authentic experiences, examines the “absurdity and devotion that holds families together.” (press release)

"Sometimes I think my story is about addiction and adultery. Other times I think it’s about bad luck with the Avon lady. And not just one—one I could chalk up to chance. Two rotten Avon ladies feel more like a curse. (Shaken and Stirred).

So tune in to Woman-Stirred Radio, today from 4 to 6 p.m. (eastern), 91.1/91.7 fm on WGDR/WGDH, Goddard College’s community radio stations. To stream us live click HERE. Amie Miller at 4:15 and Joan Opry at 5:00. Air studio phone is 802.454.7762. Email questions to merrygangemi@gmail.com

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Woman-Stirred Radio and Mind Your Own Life

2011-07-12T16:13:00.000+01:00

This Thursday, July 14th at 5:00 p.m. (Eastern), please join Merry Gangemi in welcoming inspirational writer Aaron Anson to Woman-Stirred Radio to talk about his new book, Mind Your Own Life, an autobiographical narrative of his childhood, life, and times.

"Aaron Anson is an inspirational writer and new thought coach who is married and lives in Washington, DC with his partner Oliver, where they operate a small computer technology firm. He is currently at work on another book and has appeared on several radio shows and spoken at a number of literary events around the country.

His first book began as a journal of his life and eventually unfolded into a book. Before then he did not consider being a writer and accepted the creation that his writing instead chose him as a vessel for those with muted voices longing to be heard and those striving for an authentic affirmation of self-love.

Raised a devout christian in the South and endeavoring to uphold indoctrinated beliefs, he struggled to suppress his nascent sexual attraction hoping to escape the ambiguity of being gay with Christian beliefs. After a stint in the military he married and fathered two children before accepting that he was inherently a gay man.

His fascination with the arts, world cultures, and all of humanity has led him to travel six continents. Anson is passionated about empowering teenagers gay and straight alike who struggle to find their place amidst the bombardment of excessive political and religious rhetoric. He has participated in relief efforts around the world and several missions that address homelessness" (Source).

So join us, this Thursday, July 14th at 5 pm for a visit with Aaron Anson. Want to join the conversation? Give us a call: 802.454.7762. Or email your questions to merrygangemi@gmail.com

Erin P. Finley and Elizabeth Oakes on Woman-Stirred Radio

2011-06-29T18:38:00.002+01:00

This Thursday, June 30th, at 4:15, I welcome back poet Elizabeth Oakes to Woman-Stirred Radio to explore her new poetry collection, Mercy in the New World (Wind Publications, 2011). Her earlier collection, The Luminescence of All Things Emily, received wonderful reviews across the board, and Mercy in the New World lives up to her level of craft, insight, and imagery. Readers will not be disappointed!

The title plays well in its multiple meanings and references to her time and society.

Mercy in the New World, is a powerful narrative drawing on the life of Anne Bradstreet's sister and the years following her arrival on the shores of the New World. The poems are contained and visual, yet evoke true emotion and powerful images of Mercy's life. I am delighted to welcome Elizabeth Oakes back!

Then at 5:00 I welcome Erin P. Finley, author of Fields of Combat: Understanding PTSD among veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the beginning of the Iraq War, more than 120,000 soldiers have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and the stories of these returning vets compel us to demand that the military make good on their promise to provide access to the resources and help these men and women need to heal, recover, and live the lives they want and need to live. Erin P. Finley is a medical anthropologist with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs in Texas and through her research and fieldwork has compiled the profoundly powerful narratives of a group of veterans, their personal stories of war, and the difficulties and pitfalls of navigating their return home. The impact of PTSD is merciless and rapacious, trapping veterans into a spire of depression, addiction, domestic violence, and suicide, but Finley challenges the prevailing contention that PTSD is incurable and permanently debilitating. In examining the cultural, political, and historical influences that formulate the individual experiences of U. S. Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, Finley articulates, not only how counterproductive actions and non-actions of the military, medical professionals, and our society-at-large amplify and complicate the problems, but also presents the good news of new and effective treatments have revolutionized how the VA provides care and treatment.

So tune in to Woman-Stirred Radio, locally at 91.1 and 91.7 fm or stream us live at WGDR and WGDH, Goddard College's community radio stations. Want to join the conversations? Give us a call at 802 454 7762.

Questions? Email me at mgangemi@vtlink.net or go to Facebook and post a question or comment.

Carolyn Gage is Woman-Stirred!

2011-06-22T16:50:00.000+01:00


Gage as Calamity Jane

This Thursday, June 23rd at 4:15, Merry Gangemi is thrilled to welcome lesbian-extraordinaire Carolyn Gage, award-winning playwright, performer, and activist. Gage is the author of 12 books and more than 63 plays (including musicals, one-acts, one-woman shows and dramas) [source]

Gage as Joan of Arc

Phyliss Chesler, author of Woman and Madness, says: “Carolyn Gage is a fabulous feminist playwright, and a major one too. This is great theatre. Gage’s dramatic and lesbian imagination is utterly original… daring, heartbreaking, principled, bitter, and often very funny… There is no rhetoric here: only one swift and pleasurable intake of breath after another… Women’s mental health would improve, instantly, were they able to read and see these plays performed” [source].

Gage's collection of plays, the Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Selected Plays won the 2008 Lambda Literary Award in Drama, just one of many and various awards, including the Oregon Playwrights Award, the Maine Playwrights Award, the Lynda Hart Memorial Grant from the Astrea Foundation, and the Janine C. Rae Award for the Advancement of Women's Culture from the National Women's Music Festival.

So please join us on Woman-Stirred Radio, this Thursday, June 23rd at 4:15 (eastern) for a fascinating discussion about lesbian art and culture. I'm particularly interested in the ways a specific lesbian identity has been diminished in our so-called progressive culture and why the identity of Butch remains vital, and revolutionary within Queer identity-politics, transsexual choices, and pregnant men.

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 (eastern). You can listen in locally on WGDR 91.1fm and WGDH 97,1fm or stream us live.

Joan Larkin on Woman-Stirred Radio

2011-05-26T17:27:00.000+01:00

On Thursday, June 9th, at 4:15 pm (eastern), I'm thrilled to welcome poet and playwright, Joan Larkin to Woman-Stirred Radio. We'll be talking about her collection My Body : New and Selected Poems (Hanging Loose, 2007), as well as some new unpublished work slated for a new chapbook.

Larkin, who has taught at Brooklyn, Sarah Lawrence, Goddard, and New England Colleges, was Distinguished Visiting Poet at Columbia College, Chicago, and Wichita State University in Kansas. She was the publisher of Out & Out Books, a small

As Julie R. Enszer points out in her review of Larkin's collection, My Body, Joan Larkin's "work as a poet extends well beyond the gay and lesbian community," and of great importance, "her work has been published and nurtured by the small presses in the gay and lesbian community over the past thirty years" (Enszer, 2007).

Larkin is a poet with a powerful voice of surety and raw veracity. She speaks from the center of her being in language that is lyric and ironic, offering the reader multi-dimensional tensions and primal female experience, as in "Native Tongue":

My first language was wet

and merging

My syllables were not distinct

from hers; our liquid interface

floated my small vowels

into the infradark

of her hold

my serious fish face

my belly with its tendril

registering her depth

charges. (89)

Here, in the poem "Waste Not," Larkin excavates the trauma that batters the survivors of a beloved's death:

We're using every bit of your death.
We're making a vise of your mouth's clenching and loosening,
an engine of your labored breathing,
a furnace of your wide-open eyes.

We've reduced you to stock, fed you to the crowd,
banked the pearl of your last anger,
stored the honey of your last smile.

Nothing's left in your mirror,
nothing's floating on your high ceiling.
We're combing pockets, turning sleeves,
shaking out your bone and ash,
stripping you down to desire.

Your beloved has folded your house into his—
I'm wading the swift river, balancing on stones. (59)

So please tune in Thursday, June 9th at 4:15 (eastern) for a fascinating discussion with Joan Larkin. Listen locally at 91.1 and 91.7 fm, or stream us live at WGDR.org.

Lucy Jane Bledsoe on Woman-Stirred Radio

2011-05-03T18:31:00.001+01:00

This Thursday, May 5th, at 5:00 pm (eastern) author Lucy Jane Bledsoe joins Merry Gangemi for a conversation about her new novel, The Big Bang Symphony.

A deftly structured feminist novel of Antarctica, The Big Bang Symphony, is confidently intelligent in tone, and delightfully complex. Its narrative is character-driven and Bledsoe’s characters are authentic, pragmatic, witty, at times too serious, but talented, grounded, and blessedly flawed.

The Big Bang Symphony draws the reader into the world of McMurdo Station, a U. S. research base located just northeast of Mt. Erebus, on the southeast coast of the Ross Ice Shelf. There is adventure, mystery, and absurdity, and there is the majesty of Antarctica, its haunting emptiness and unforgiving environment a hologram, perfectly suited to reflect the indomitable forces which compel and sustain each woman’s search for what is true—even if that truth is the simple equivalent of what can be perceived as true.

"Lucy Jane Bledsoe is the author of four novels, a collection of short fiction, a collection of narrative nonfiction, and six books for kids. When she’s not writing, she’s sea kayaking in Alaska, backpacking in the Rockies, backcountry skiing in the Sierras, or biking the Berkeley/Oakland hills.

Lucy has traveled to Antarctica three times, as a two-time recipient of the National Science Foundation’s Artists & Writers in Antarctica Fellowship and once as a guest on the Russian ship, the Akademik Sergey Vavilov. She is one of a tiny handful of people who have stayed at all three American stations in Antarctica. She has also stayed in a number of field camps, both on the coast and in the Transantarctic mountains, where scientists are studying penguins, climate change, and the Big Bang." (source)

Woman-Stirred Radio Welcomes Judith Barrington

2011-04-27T16:26:00.001+01:00

This week on Thursday, April 27, at 5:00 (eastern) I'm happy to welcome Judith Barrington to Woman-Stirred Radio. We'll talk about her memoir, Lifesaving (Eighth Mountain Press, 2000), and her latest book of poems, Horses and the Human Soul (Story Line Press, 2004).

Judith Barrington is a poet and memoirist who has published three collections of poetry, a prize-winning memoir, and a text on writing literary memoir which is used all across the United States and in Australia and Europe. Her most recent poetry is collected in two new chapbooks, Postcard From the Bottom of the Sea and Lost Lands.

Maxine Kumin writes that Horses and the Human Soul "is lyrical," and "her intelligence palpable throughout...." The Woman's Review of Books tells us that Barrington "engages wittily with cultural differences...and gives a prominent place to what Elizabeth Bishop, of whom her writing sometimes reminds me, called 'questions of travel.'" (source) and her work has been compares to Elizabeth Bishop. Barbara Drake, reviewing the book for Calyx, writes: "These stunning poems find moral high ground in the world of nature and animals without falsifying that world."

Indeed.

Barrington's memoir, Lifesaving, won the Lambda Book Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir. She is a faculty member of the low-residency program at the University of Alaska at Anchorage. She offers workshops at many conferences and writing events in the U.S. as well as in England and Spain. Judith Barrington grew up in England and moved to the United States in 1976. She lives in Portland. (source)

So please tune in this Thursday, April 17th at 5:00 (eastern) for an interview with Judith Barrington.

Want to join the conversation? Call 802.454.7762. Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live every Thursday from 4 to 6 pm (eastern) on WGDR 91.1fm and WGDH 91.7fm. We also stream live at WGDR.org.

Mark Kurlansky and Eileen Myles on Woman-Stirred radio

2011-04-21T19:12:00.002+01:00

This Thursday April 21st, at 4:15 (eastern) on WSR, I am thrilled to welcome Mark Kurlansky, author of the fascinating and thought provoking Cod (Random House, 1999), and Salt (Penguin, 2003)
"Imagine a planet with orange oceans, toxic seawater, and marine life that consists almost solely of jellyfish. This may sound like science fiction, but it's actually a realistic projection of what our world could become if we don't take drastic measures to reverse the decline of fish populations" (source).

"Mark Kurlansky, beloved author of the award-winning bestseller Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, offers a riveting new book for kids about what’s happening to fish, the oceans, and our environment, and what, armed with knowledge, kids can do about it. Written by a master storyteller, World Without Fish connects all the dots—biology, economics, evolution, politics" (source)

Then at 5:00 (eastern), I welcome Eileen Myles, enfant terrible of lesbian poets, to talk about her fast-paced, narrative Inferno,

"I was completely stupefied by Inferno in the best of ways. In fact, I think I must feel kind of like Dante felt after seeing the face of God. My descriptive capacity just fails, gives way completely. But I can tell you that Eileen Myles made me understand something I didn’t before. And really, what more can you ask of a novel, or a poet’s novel, or a poem, or a memoir, or whatever the hell this shimmering document is? Just read it." — Alison Bechdel

“What is a poem worth? Not much in America. What is a life worth? Inferno isn’t another ‘life of the poet,’ it’s a fugue state where life and poem are one: shameful and glorious. People sometimes say, ‘I came from nothing,’ but that’s not quite right. Myles shows us a ‘place’ a poet might come from, did come from––working class, Catholic, female, queer. This narrative journey somehow takes place in a moment, every moment, the impossible present moment of poetry.” – Rae Armantrout

“Zingingly funny and melancholy, Inferno follows a young girl from Boston in her descent into the maelstrom of New York Bohemia, circa 1968. Myles beautifully chronicles a lost Eden: ‘The place I found was carved out from sadness and sex and to write a poem there you merely needed to gather.’ ” — John Ashbery

“Eileen Myles debates her own self identity in a gruffly beautiful, sure voice of reason. Is she a ‘hunk’? A ‘dyke’? A ‘female’? I’ll tell you what she is––damn smart! Inferno burns with humor, lust and a healthy dose of neurotic happiness.” — John Waters

Need I say more? Just tune in. This should be really interesting and confounding to the point of enlightenment. 5:00 (eastern). Woman-Stirred Radio. WGDR and WGDH. Listen Live. Call the studio.
802.456.1630.

Joan Larkin on Woman-Stirred Radio

2011-04-05T20:31:00.000+01:00

This Thursday, at 5:00 pm (eastern) on Woman-Stirred Radio, I'm thrilled to welcome poet and playwright, Joan Larkin. We'll be talking about her collection My Body : New and Selected Poems (Hanging Loose, 2007), as well as some new unpublished work slated for a new chapbook.

Larkin, who has taught at Brooklyn, Sarah Lawrence, Goddard, and New England Colleges, was Distinguished Visiting Poet at Columbia College, Chicago, and Wichita State University.

Julie R. Enszer, in a review of My Body, writes:

"While Joan Larkin's reputation as a poet extends well beyond the gay and lesbian community, her work has been published and nurtured by the small presses in the gay and lesbian community over the past thirty odd years....MY BODY: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS gathers Larkin's newest poems with selections from three of her earlier books....Her new poems are expansive in the subject matter and their location in time and place, but they are grounded in the things that make poetry strong: images, new and startling observations like the consistence of a person's ashes and the excavation of significant relationships--families, caregivers, lovers, and friends. Alone the new poems of MY BODY are bound to delight readers.... MY BODY is an important collection of Larkin's work for both lovers of poetry and devotees of lesbian literature. It is also an important reminder of hte significance of our independent presses in nurturing and developing the literary talent in LGBT communities" (Enszer, 2007).

So please tune in, this Thursday, at 5:00 (eastern) for a fascinating discussion of the work of Joan Larkin. Listen locally at 91.1 and 91.7 fm, or stream us live at WGDR.org.

Lois Eby and Elizabeth Oakes on Woman-Stirred Radio

2011-03-29T22:09:00.000+01:00

This week, Thursday March 31st at 4:15, I'm thrilled to welcome back Elizabeth Oakes to talk about her newest collection, Mercy in the New World, perhaps her most haunting and tangibly profound work yet.

Co-founder and co-editor of the Kentuck Feminist Writers Series, Elizabeth Oakes is the author of three volumes of poetry: The Farmgirl Poems, which won the 2004 Pearl Poetry Prize, The Luminescence of All Things Emily, and Mercy in the New World. She has published in such journals as Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, The Louisville Review, Harvard Journal ofFeminist Studies in Religion, and Room of One's Own, among others. She holds the Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University and taught Shakespeare and Women's Poetry at Western Kentucky University until 2009, when she retired to write. She lives in Bowling Green, KY, and Sedona, AZ.

Then at 5:00, I welcome Vermont visual artist Lois Eby, whose work can be seen at The Vermont Arts Council Spotlight Gallery at 136 State Street, from March 3rd until April 22nd. The retrospective, Momentary Dance: Lois Eby 2008-2010, can be seen March 3rd through April 27th. Click HERE to view her artist statement.

So please tune in or log on to Woman-Stirred Radio 4:15 poet Elizabeth Oakes and artist Lois Eby at 5:00.

Richard and Barbara and Martin! Oh My! Joseph and Hearts and Minds! Oh No!

2011-03-24T17:39:00.000Z

This Thursday, March 24th, on Woman-Stirred Radio, at 4:15 and 5:00 pm (eastern), Merry Gangemi

welcomes Joe Piscatella, MD, who, along with Barry A. Franklin, is the author of Prevent, Halt, and Reverse Heart Disease (Workman, 2011).

Here's a bit of an excerpt:

"Beginning with assessing cardiac risk (from traditional factors such as cholesterol to newer ones such as C-reactive protein) and covering diet, exercise, stress relief, medications and procedures, this book is a complete guide to the lifestyle changes that can make a life-or-death difference. Medically up-to-date and easy to implement, it is a program that will help readers know what to do and how to do it to increase cardiovascular health" (1).

When he was thirty-two years old, Joe Piscatella "had to pick himself up from the operating table after emergency by-pass surgery and learn to recover his full cardiac health..." (2). Needless to say, he has done quite well and in the process shars his experiences and knowledge in his book. So. Tune in to Woman-Stirred Radio this Thursday, March 24th at 4:15 for an interesting and informative conversation with Joe Piscatella.

Then at 5:00, glbtq historian Martin Duberman returns to Woman-Stirred Radio to talk about his newest book, A Saving Remnant: The radical lives of Barbara Demming and David McReynolds.

"By the time their paths first crossed in the 1960s, Barbara Deming and David McReynolds had each charted a unique course through the political and social worlds of the American left. Deming, a feminist, journalist, and political activist with an abiding belief in nonviolence, had been an out lesbian since the age of sixteen. The first openly gay man to run for president of the United States, on the Socialist Party ticket, McReynolds was also a longtime opponent of the Vietnam War—he was among the first activists to publicly burn a draft card after this became a felony—and friend to leading activists and artists from Bayard Rustin to Quentin Crisp" (3).

It's an interesting juxtaposition of two beloved activists whose contributions equal rights and social justice endure to this day. Initially unfamiliar with McReynolds (who was the first openly gay man to run for president of the United States), the book opens up an interesting man in an interesting time.

Dr. Maggie Kozel on Woman-Stirred Radio

2011-03-16T19:20:00.002Z

At 5:00 (eastern), this Thursday March 17th, on Woman-Stirred Radio, Merry Gangemi welcomes Dr. Maggie Kozel to a conversation about Kozel's new book: The Color of Atmosphere: One doctor's journey in and out of medicine.

"[It] can be hard to distinguish truth from a perfectly good answer," Maggie Kozel tells us in The Color of Atmosphere. She was in her second year of medical school when this thought came to her. There were many truths Maggie Kozel would struggle with during her years as a pediatrician in the U.S. health care system.

"In, The Color of Atmosphere, Kozel's personal story plays out against the broader backdrop of our changing health-care system, and demonstrates the way our method of paying for health care has reached its way into the exam room, putting a stranglehold on how doctors practice, and profoundly influencing the doctor-patient relationship."

A graduate of Georgetown University School of Medicine (1980 ), Maggie Kozel specialized in pediatrics. She completed her residency at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. She served as a general medical officer on board the USS McKee and as a pediatrician at the U.S. naval Hospital in Yokosuka, Japan. Dr. Kozel entered private practice, eventually as pediatrician/partner at Narragansett Bay pediatrics.

So. This Thursday March 17th at 5:00, Dr. Maggie Kozel is Woman-Stirred! Tune in locally at 91.1fm and 91.7 fm or listen with the rest of the world at WGDR. Want to join in the conversation? call the air-studio at 802.454.7762.

Katherine V. Forrest is Woman-Stirred

2011-03-06T07:47:00.001Z

This coming week on Thursday, March 10th, at 5:00, Merry Gangemi welcomes Katherine V. Forrest to Woman-Stirred Radio. Forrest is the iconic lesbian author of the Kate Delafield mystery series: Handcock Park (2004); Sleeping Bones (1999); Apparition Alley (1997); Liberty Square (1996); Murder by Tradition (1991); The Beverly Malibu (1989); Murder at the Nightwood Bar (1987); and Amateur City (1984). Forrest's classic lesbian novels have enjoys an enduring readership and many are now being re-released by Bella Books and Spinster's Ink. At a time when lesbians began to claim space and visibility for their creative work, Forrest's imaginative re-vision of the lesbian novels entertained and inspired thousands of lesbians everywhere, offering alternate narratives that explored lesbian-feminist alternatives to pathelogical portraits of lesbians depicted by books such as Radclyffe Hall's Well of Loneliness (1928), and the plethora of lesbian pulp fiction published in the 1950s and 1960s. So join us this Thursday, March 10th at 5pm (eastern) for an interesting and informative interview with Katherine V. Forrest.

WGDR broadcasts live every Thursday from 4 to 6pm (eastern) locally on WGDR Plainfield 91.1fm and WGDR Hardwick 97.1 or globally at WGDR.org.
Woman-Stirred Radio is funded in part by Sinister Wisdom, a multi-cultural lesbian literary and arts journal in its 30th year of continuous publication.

Michael David Lukas on Woman-Stirred Radio

2011-02-23T22:46:00.002Z

Tomorrow, February 24th at 4:15 (eastern) on Woman-Stirred Radio, Merry Gangemi welcomes Michael David Lukas to a conversation about his debut novel, The Oracle of Stamboul. The novel tells the story of Eleonora Cohen, an amazingly intelligent and sophistocated orphan who, at eight-years-old, grew to become a close confident and advisor the Ottoman sulton and whose intellectual and personal relationtionship with him changed the course of history.

Click HERE to read an excerpt.

Michael David Lucas has been a Fullbright Scholar in Turkey, a night-shift proofreader in Tel Aviv, and a waiter at the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference in Vermont! He is a graduate of Brown University and the Uniersity of Maryland. His work can be found in National Geographic Traveler, Georgia Review, among others, and has awarded several fellowships as well as a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

So tune in locally WGDR Plainfield at 91.1fm, WGDR Hardwick at 91.7 or stream us live at WGDR.org.

Elizabeth Streb and Linq

2010-10-28T14:28:00.004+01:00

It's fundraising week at WGDR, and Merry Gangemi has scheduled two guests: singer/songwriter, Linq, up at 4:15, and MacArthur Fellow, Elizabeth Streb at 5 pm.

Linq has always lived in the North Quabbin area of Massachusetts. After graduating from Northeastern University with a pharmacy degree, she went into and eventually took over her family’s independent business. Recently, Linq’s lifetime passion for music has taken on a new and exciting dimension. At an age when many look forward to retirement, Linq is kicking it up, cranking it out, and defying stereotypes. In December 2002 she decided that it was time to start sharing her music with the public, and she hasn’t looked back. She released a single called “War Machine” in June 2003, and her first full length CD, “Journey”, was released in July 2004. Linq’s music twists and turns from folk/rock to classic rock, from love and loss to political, and from serious to outright fun. We'll talk about her new, award-winning song, written after the national outcry against teen suicides (which, I have to say is revoltingly too little too late, but hey! let's scoop up every crumb we can when it comes to queers), and how the power of music really can make a diference.

Then at 5:00, Woman-Stirred Radio welcomes the incomparable Elizabeth Streb, the woman who creates PopAction art which "evokes the dream of flight and the power of velocity."

In the introduction to Elizabeth Streb's new book: Streb: How to Become an Action Hero, Peggy Phalen writes: "What most complels me about Streb's work is her insistence that the body is unthinkable without a fully launched understanding of motion: there is no living body at rest.... Thus to be embodied is to be in a state of action" (xvii).

Here here!! I suppose surfing, which I began at the age of twelve, is the closest I've ever come to a "real move" with its "three most basic, elemental ingredients--time, space, and body" (21). But what Streb does catapults the very construct of what we experience as human animals into an accesible, cohesive narrative of her life as an action hero.

In Streb: How to Become an Action Hero, EB's narrative co-joins memoir and theory to present the breathtaking possibilities of motion and the human body. Woman-Stirred Radio looks forward to sharing more about this amazing woman, Elizabeth Streb.

So tune in to Woman-Stirred Radio today from 4 to 6 pm (eastern) and if you want to join in the conversations give us a call at 802.454-7762. If you're listening, please consider calling in and making a pledge. Each and every donation is thoroughly appreciated. You can also go to our web site and make a secure pledge through PayPal.

Brigid O'Farrell is Woman-Stirred!

2010-10-15T19:36:00.004+01:00

Please join Merry Gangemi in welcoming Brigid O'Farrell to Woman-Stirred Radio, this Thursday, October 21st at 4:15 pm (eastern).

We'll be discussing her new book about Eleanor Roosevelt, She Was One of Us: Eleanor Roosevelt and the American Worker.

Blanch Wiesen Cook writes: "She Was One of Us is profoundly researched and powerfully written. Brigid O'Farrell has gifted us with a timely, galvanizing, much needed study of Eleanor Roosevelt’'s democratic vision and union participation. This book well serves O'Farrell’s hope for a new generation of activism to ensure workers' rights, human rights, dignity for all. Her brilliant journey of alliance in the long struggle for economic security, worker safety, union influence is filled with surprises—new and amazing details. It enables us to imagine a global future of full employment, equitable wages, and worker health free of toxic industrial poisons. Everybody concerned about a just and livable world will rush to buy, read, assign, this splendid, important book" (1)

The author of seven books, Brigid O'Farrell focuses on employment equality for women, especially in nontraditional jobs and labor history. She is currently affiliated with the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, at George Washington University. As an independent scholar, she has been affiliated with Stanford University's Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and the study director at the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences.

So please join us at 4:15 on Thursday, October 21st for a delightful and interesting exploration into one of America's most remarkable woman... Eleanor Roosevelt... and her advocacy and devotion to employment equality for all women.

Want to join the conversation? Call the air studio: 802.454.7762.

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live from the campus of Goddard College, in Plainfield, VT, every Thursday from 4 to 6 pm.

Mary Walton is Woman-Stirred!

2010-10-13T18:02:00.002+01:00

This Thursday, October 14th at 4:15, Mary Walton talks about her new book, A Woman's Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot.

"A Woman's Crusade is a biography richly endowed with research, giving the reader dense, detailed, absorbing accounts of seemingly every march, demonstration and congressional hearing that Alice Paul either conceived or influenced... I value the book for introducing her [Mary Walton] to the next generation of feminists with a taste for revolution." - Ms. Magazine, Vivian Gornick

Mary Walton's career as a staff writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer spanned twenty-two years. She has written for the New York Times, Washingtonian, the Washington Monthly, and the American Journalism Review. A graduate of Harvard, Walton began her journalism career in 1969 as a reporter for the Charleston Gazette (West Virginia). She lives in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, with her husband, Charles Layton. (*)

So tune in to Woman-Stirred Radio this Thursday, October 14th at 4:15 for a fascinating conversation with Mary Walton. Want to join the conversation? Call 802.454.7762.

A Bit of a Breather

2010-09-29T16:11:00.001+01:00

It's been mostly music on Woman-Stirred Radio these past several week, and with reason. I've taken a hiatus: to think about Woman-Stirred in different ways, such as tightening the "queer" identity of the program and or make it woman only (which seems somewhat silly and narrow). After all, gender it the one of the engines of interaction and creativity.

I might even look to tag the show to that great lesbian icon, Sinister Wisdom, which I'll be co-editing with the incomparable Julie R. Enszer. Or, I just might keep it eclectic and welcome all, because in our great wide world there are many "genders," so to speak, and my brand of feminism is not a hermetically-sealed universe, and utopia is a fascinating theory, not a feasible possibility.

I know I'll start blathering here now, but, there it is!

Woman-Stirred Radio, which is a live, two-hour queer cultural journal, is a labor of love. I have no staff, which means I do all the research and scheduling, and I read all the books, I even stuck with The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson (Norton 2010), a book I wanted to toss instead of read. But of course it is good to know how the other half thinks.

There are some interviews scheduled in October so I'm getting ready to dive in again and continue to meet amazing poets and writers and visual artists and musicians, policy makers and brokers... etc. So that's that and this is this... doing what I love and more importantly, reaching out to the world and offer what I can do and what I share in doing so.

Kate Davy's Lady Dicks and Lesbian Brothers

2010-09-09T19:47:00.001+01:00

This Thursday, September 9th. at 5:00 (eastern), Merry Gangemi welcomes Kate Davy to Woman-Stirred Radio for a conversation about her new book: Lady Dicks and Lesbian Brothers, an in-depth study of the phenomenal Women's One World (WOW Cafe Theater), "a small, hand-to-mouth, women's theater collective" that for 30 years offered complex, and hilarious "hit and run" performances, which were not only provocative and immediate, but also wove deep threads of connection to the women's movement and feminist theory of the 1970s and 1980s.

WOW Cafe Theater was fertile ground from which theater troupes and performance artists such as Split Britches Company, The Five Lesbian Brothers (who I saw in Provincetown in the mid-1990s), Carmelita Tropicana, Holly Hughes, Lisa Kron, Deb Margolin, Reno, Peggy Shaw, and Lois Weaver. And all, as I've found out, are also still kicking butt. The WOW Cafe Theater, at its current location on East 4th Street, is still kicking too!!

Davy's Lady Dicks and Lesbian Brothers is a treasure trove of lesbian and feminist culture with details and analysis about "a witty, hilarious, gender-bending and erotically charged aesthetic on the stage for women in general and lesbians in particular." And lest you think these brilliant women are no longer vital and still prodigious, think again. The avant garde WOW Cafe Theater that was born 30 years ago continues to flourish and can be found right there on East 4th Street.

Check it out... and tune in tomorrow, Thursday September 9th at 5:00 (eastern) for what I predict will be an interesting and exuberant interview with Kate Davy. If you want to join in the conversation call the air studio at 802.454-7762.

Kate Davy is the author of Richard Foreman: Plays and Manifestos, and Richard Foreman and the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre. She is currently Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

Produced and hosted by Merry Gangemi, Woman-Stirred Radio (WSR) is a queer cultural journal that broadcasts live every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 (eastern) on WGDR, locally at 91.1 and streams live at WGDR.org.

(sources)

Rebecca Turner on Woman-Stirred Radio!! August 26th

2010-08-25T16:46:00.000+01:00

This Thursday, August 26th, at 5:00 (eastern) on Woman-Stirred Radio, Rebecca Turner is live in the studio.

Turners CD, Slowpokes, has received solid reviews and the attentions of many reviewers, including Jersey Beat's, The World According to Wawrzyniak. Turner is, after all, living in New Jersey, describing her music as "Americana... Nashville by way of Newark, NJ."

Listen here to some of the tracks on Slowpokes:

Turner describes Slowpokes as her "usual casserole of styles...kind of Americana, kind of rock, kind of folk. I grew up in L.A. and soaked up the whole California rock thing, pretty much memorizing every Linda Ronstadt song. Right before I moved east, there was the whole Bangles/Plimsouls thing; I wrote a poem for the school paper about how Peter Case sweat on me from the stage. In college in NYC I sang with an a cappella trio...everything from settings of Edna St. Vincent Millay poems, to raucous gospel tunes. Somehow it all came to a head in the late '90s, when I was listening to a lot of Jane Siberry and Liz Phair, and indulging my country music fanaticism, with Nanci Griffith on one end of the spectrum and Trisha Yearwood on the other..." (Turner).

So please tune in this Thursday, August 26th at 5pm for some live music and conversation with Rebecca Turner. If you want to call in dial: 802.454.7762 and let us know you're listening and liking what you hear (or not).

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live every Thursday from 4 to 6 pm (eastern). Podcasts available at WGDR

Poets Barbara Crooker and John Amen on Woman-Stirred Radio

2010-04-29T13:32:00.000+01:00

Today, Thursday April 29th Merry Gangemi welcomes Barbara Crooker and John Amen to Woman-stirred Radio.

Up first at 4:15 (eastern), Barbara will read and discuss poems from her new collection More, (C&R Press, 2010).

Barbara Crooker's poems have been widely anthologized and published in national journals and magazines including: The Green Mountains Review, The Hollins Critic, The Christian Science Monitor, Smartish Pace, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Nimrod, The Denver Quarterly, The Tampa Review, Poetry International, The Christian Century, and America. She has won many awards, including the 2007 Pen and Brush Poetry Prize; the 2006 Ekphrastic Poetry Award; the 2004 WB Yeats Society of New York Award; and the 2003 Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award. Her book, Radiance, won the 2005 Word Press First Book competition and was a finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize. Line Dance, released in 2008, won the 2009 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence. Her poetry has been read on the BBC, the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company), and by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac. She was a recent reader in the Poetry at Noon series at the Library of Congress.

Then at 5:00 John Amen returns to Woman-Stirred Radio, to talk about his At the Threshold of Alchemy (Pressa press, 2009) and More of me Disappears (Cross-Cultural Communications, 2005----an interesting juxtaposition to Crooker's new collection More).

Amen is the author of three collections of poetry: Christening the Dancer (Uccelli Press 2003), More of Me Disappears (Cross-Cultural Communications 2005), and At the Threshold of Alchemy (Presa 2009), and has released two folk/folk rock CDs, All I’ll Never Need and Ridiculous Empire (Cool Midget 2004, 2008). His poetry has appeared in Rattle, The New York Quarterly, The International Poetry Review, Gargoyle, and Blood to Remember. He is also an artist, working primarily with acrylics on canvas. Amen travels widely giving readings, doing musical performances, and conducting workshops. He founded and continues to edit the award-winning literary bimonthly, The Pedestal Magazine (www.thepedestalmagazine.com).

So please tune in (91.1 in central VT) or stream Woman-Stirred Radio us live at WGDR. Barbara Crooker at 4:15; John Amen at 5:00. If you want to join the conversation call the air studio at 802.454.7762.

Elizabeth Bradfield and Approaching Ice

2010-04-21T15:07:00.000+01:00

This Thursday on Woman-Stirred Radio, April 22nd, at 5:00 (eastern), please join Merry Gangemi in welcoming back Elizabeth Bradfield, author of Interpretive Work (Arktoi, 2008), and a new collection of poems, Approaching Ice.

The poems in Approaching Ice "are adventures in far more than subject matter. Their themes, to be sure, involve risk and stoicism, the testing of the will and the spirit needed to confront icy wastes" (Eavan Boland).

"How I hate," Bradfield writes through the voice of Lynne Cox, the intrepid cold water swimmer, "the thoughtlessness of breath on land, the arms/ that pull me to my awkward vertical,/ the language anchored/----even here----/ to the wet shore" (96).

Elizabeth Bradfield grew up in Tacoma, Washington. She holds an MFA from the University of Alaska, Anchorage, is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow, and lives on Cape Cod. She works as a naturalist.

So please tune in or stream us live, this Thursday, April 22nd at 5:00 (eastern), on WGDR.

Poet Rachel Dacus and Activist-writer Liz Bradbury on Woman-Stirred Radio

2010-04-15T01:52:00.000+01:00

This Thursday, April 15th at 4:15 poet/writer Rachel Dacus joins Merry Gangemi to kick another "April is Poetry Month" interview on Woman-Stirred Radio. The daughter of a rocket engineer, Rachel's name is on a piece of rocket still circling the planet (that's Earth). Rachel studied English and French literature at Berkeley, in the really interesting years... the 60s. her work is widely anthologized and published in print and online. her first collection, Earth Lessons, was published in 1998; her second book of poems, Femme au chapeau, was published in 2005; and her chapbook, Another Circle of Delight (great title!) was released in 2007.

Last year, on the anniversary of Emily Dickinson's birthday, Rachel was one of the featured poets who read an original poem inspired by Emily Dickinson, "Carlo and Me."

So please join Rachel Dacus and Merry Gangemi at 4:15 for some poetry and conversation.

Then at 5:00, writer-activist Liz Bradbury joins Merry for an interesting look at her work with PA Diversity Network and some of the amazing projects and events she has organized and facilitated.

Liz is also the author of Angel Food and Devil Dogs,A Maggie Gale Mystery, was a finalist in both the mystery and debut author categories (June 2009) in the Golden Crown Literary Awards!.

So! Two great interviews in one great show. Woman-Stirred Radio! Listen Live at WGDR

Poet Sandra Beasley and Writer Rachel Spangler on Woman-Stirred Radio

2010-04-07T16:45:00.000+01:00

This week on Woman-Stirred Radio, fiction writer Rachel Spangler, and poet Sandra Beasley visit with Merry Gangemi. In concert with National Poetry Month, WW Norton has released Sandra Beasley's new collection, I Was the Jukebox, winner of the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize.

Winner of the Golden Crown Literary Award, Rachel Spangler's books are published by Bold Strokes press and her latest, Trails Merge, is now available.

Up first at 4:15, Merry visits with Rachel to talk about her books, her process, and her life as a lesbian writer in post-Stonewall America.
Rachel holds degrees in politics and government, women’s studies, and English, as well as a master’s degree in college student personnel administration from Illinois State University. Throughout her college experience, she was actively involved with PFLAG, PRIDE, FMLA, and Safe Schools, all of which influenced various aspects of her first novel, Learning Curve.

Then at 5:00 Merry welcomes Sandra Beasley, whose first book, Theories of Falling, won the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize. Sandra's recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Cave Wall, Blackbird, and Poetry. Honors for her work include the 2008 Poets & Writers Maureen Egen Exchange Award, the Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize, and fellowships to the Sewanee Writers' Conference, the Millay Colony, and Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She serves on the Board of the Writer's Center and writes for the Washington Post Magazine in Washington, D.C. She is at work on Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life.

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live, every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 (eastern). WSR is a queer cultural journal that showcases the talents of our global community of writers, poets, musicians, visual artists, and policy makers. To stream, go to WGDR and click on Listen Live. Want to join in the conversation? Call 802.454,7762.

Julie R. Enszer's Handmade Love

2010-04-01T17:06:00.000+01:00

Today on Woman-Stirred Radio, welcomes Julie R. Enszer back to talk about Handmade Love, a fabulous first collection of poems. Julie's work speaks volumes about culture and life in this post-9/11 America. With a decidedly queer slant, Enszer's Handmade Love is a world unto itself, funny, clamorous, wistful, dead-eyed and right on.

"From demonstrations on the street to bedroom ramps, these smart and sexy poems interweave narrative and lyrical moments with the political and the sensuous" (MNP).

A consummate lesbian-feminist, Julie Enszer brings to the page a fierce sense of justice and pragmatism. her work has been published in, among others: Room of One's Own, Long Shot, Feminist Studies, Bridges, So to Speak, Suspect Thoughts, and Windy City Times.

So please join Merry Gangemi and Woman-Stirred Radio for what promises to be a fantastic hour with Julie R. Enszer, today, Thursday, April 1st at 5:00 pm (eastern).

Changes coming to Woman-Stirred!

2010-03-17T14:03:00.000Z

Are you sprucing up for spring? Queering up the closets? Cleaning rugs? Sorting clothes? Order books? So are we!

In the next few months you’ll see some changes here at the Woman-Stirred blog. This blog will be transitioning to focus more on the fabulous Woman-Stirred Radio hosted each week by Merry Gangemi. Merry will be changing the look and feel of the blog and including links to weekly podcasts of the show.

Don’t worry though, the old entries will remain, and, while the other stalwart women of Woman-Stirred will be taking a back seat, we’re all still here in spirit and you can find us on the web elsewhere. If you haven’t already check out

Jan Steckel
Nicki Hastie
Kate Evans
Julie R. Enszer

We look forward to the new developments here at Woman-Stirred and hope you do too!

Handmade Love - book of poetry by Woman-Stirred member Julie R. Enszer

2010-03-17T13:59:00.001Z

Julie R. Enszer is pleased to announce the publication of her first book of poetry, Handmade Love. More information is available below.

HANDMADE LOVE

by Julie R. Enszer

Body Language 05

ISBN-13: 978-0-9794208-5-6
ISBN-10: 0-9794208-5-7

Poetry/Lesbian Studies
64 pages/perfect bound
Pub Date: 1 April 2010

$11.95

I believe that there are two kinds of love in this world:

inherited and handmade. Yes, we inherit love
but my people, my people make love by hand.
—From “Handmade Love”

In her first collection, Julie R. Enszer offers poems that are as unabashedly erotic as they are unabashedly feminist.

Whether responding to queer cultural icons, fantasizing about sex, or mourning illness and loss, these poems are sweet and sultry, fierce and tender.

From demonstrations on the streets to bedroom romps, these smart and sexy poems interweave narrative and lyrical moments with the political and the sensuous.

Handmade Love renders a world that delights in the lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people and tells queer life stories sublimely and generously.

Julie R. Enszer has published poems in Room of One’s Own, Long Shot, Feminist Studies, Bridges, So to Speak, Suspect Thoughts, Windy City Times, and many other journals. She has a MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland.

Handmade Love is already available and shipping. You can order it directly from A Midsummer Night's Press with free shipping here:

http://amidsummernightspress.typepad.com/amsnp/2010/02/handmade-love.html

It will also ship from Amazon beginning April 1st. Here is the Amazon page (you can also leave comments/reviews on the book for Amazon readers and users):

http://www.amazon.com/Handmade-Love-Julie-R-Enszer/dp/0979420857/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267904433&sr=8-1

If you prefer to support independent distributors, think about ordering it from Small Press Distribution here:

http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9780979420856/handmade-love.aspx

Finally, I have very snazzy postcards of the book cover. I'm happy to mail you one or many. Just drop me a line at JulieREnszer@gmail.com and let me know if you would like a few.

Elizabeth Oakes: The Luminescence of All Things Emily : Jerome Charyn: The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson

2010-02-24T20:48:00.006Z

This Thursday, February 26th, at 5:00 (EST), Elizabeth Oakes visits Merry Gangemi on Woman-Stirred Radio.

In the foreword of Elizabeth Oakes's exquisite volume of poems, The Luminescence of all Things Emily, Oakes tells us that her book "sets Dickinson in the context of her life" (1), a simple statement that belies the astute compassionate insights Oakes achieves in this engrossing collection.

The poems are fun and light, dark and brooding, sorrowful, quirky, passionate, sexy, and emotionally intelligent: "It's the smallest things/ that linger about my sister" Oakes confides through the voice of Vinnie, Emily's younger sister, "the quiet stirring of her spoon/ and the click it made as she/ lay it carefully on the saucer,..." (42).

Poems engaging the long-standing love affair between Austin Dickinson and Mable Todd Loomis are powerful and erotic, fully embracing the credibility of this adulterous affair: 'Even when they were halfway around the world/ from each other, he could feel her in the dusk/ of evening, she him in the wind that blew her skirt" (20).

All of the poems that re-imagine Susan Huntington Dickinson seem to shimmer with love and desire; the kind of desire that fires up the mind: "When my strange sister-in-law/ wrote that she split the dew, I knew/ what she meant./ Unlike truth and beauty, we lay/ on the same pillow./ Like ice turning to water/ and then water to mist/ we were" (30). They honor the friendship between Emily and Sue by virtue of their openness and the obvious affection for these two friends: "I have learned more/ from her, Emily wrote/ about Sue, than from/ anyone except Shakespeare" (31).

So please tune in for this special interview beginning at 5:00 (est). Elizabeth Oakes won the 2004 Pearl Poetry Prize for her first book, The Farmgirl Poems. She holds a PhD from Vanderbuilt University and is the co-founder and co-editor, with Jane Olmstead, of the Kentucky Feminist Writer Series. Oakes's poems and her published scholarship can be found in, among others, Louisville Review, Women's Studies: an Interdiciplinary Journal, Room of One's Own, 24 Hours, and the Harvard Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.

This Thursday also features Jerome Charyn, author of The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson, a decidedly daring book that examines Emily as a gun fully-loaded and ready to roll. If you ever wondered what ED would be like as a hot number about town, this is the book you'll want to read. Charyn is on at 4:15.

Jerome Charyn has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and has received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His other novel is Johnny One-Eye.He lives in Paris and New York.

Mystery Writer Ellen Hart on Woman-stirred

2010-02-17T14:33:00.002Z

This Thursday, February 18th, at 4:15 (eastern) Merry Gangemi welcomes mystery writer extrodinaire Ellen Hart to Woman-Stirred Radio.

Ellen is a five-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery, as well as a three-time winner of the Minnesota Book Award for Best Popular Fiction. Entertainment Weekly recently named her one of the "101 movers and shakers in the gay entertainment industry." For the last eleven years, Ellen has taught "An Introduction to Writing the Modern Mystery" through the The Loft Literary Center, the largest independent writing community in the nation. Her newest novels are No Reservations Required, A Sophie Greenway Mystery (June 2005) and The Mortal Groove, A Jane Lawless Mystery (December 2007). Sweet Poison, the next Jane Lawless mystery, will be released in November of 2008. The Mortal Groove has been nominated for this year's Lambda Literary Award. Ellen lives in Minneapolis with her partner of 30 years (ellenhart.com).

So please tune in, this coming Thursday, February 18th at 4:15 (eastern) for a delightful interview with Ellen Hart. Want to join the conversation? The air studio phone number is 802.454.7762.

Bywater Books on Woman-Stirred Radio

2010-02-03T15:32:00.004Z

Please join Merry Gangemi as she welcomes the women of Bywater Books, Val McDermid and Kelly Smith, this Thursday, February 4th at 4:15 (EST).

Since the heyday of lesbian presses in the 1970s and 1980s, books written by and for lesbians continue to attract and nourish an enormously rich culture, if you will, of lesbian life. But how have things changed? Does the internet drive cultural production or drive it into the ground? What does all this mean for lesbian literary production in the 21st century? How have presses adapted? And what about the quality of the work? Have lesbian readers co-opted hetero-forms of romance novels or soft porn? Does lesbian trash bring in the bucks but demean and diminish the significance of lesbian literature? Is there a new sensibility in lesbian publishing?

These are just some of the questions publishers Val McDermid and Kelly Smith will talk about tomorrow, Thursday, Feb 4th at 4:15, on Woman-Stirred Radio.

So tune in, Central Vermont, to 91.1 fm or stream us live at WGDR.org

Lenin, Sasha, and the Second March First

2010-01-26T23:32:00.006Z

This Thursday, January 27th, at 4:15 p.m. (eastern), Merry Gangemi welcomes Philip Pomper, William F. Armstrong Professor of History at Wesleyan University, to Woman-Stirred Radio for a discussion of his latest book, Lenin's Brother: The Origins of the October Revolution

Lenin's Brother is an accessible and engaging history of Alexander Ulyanov (Sasha), the oldest brother of Vladimir Lenin. The book details and explores the complex family dynamics and psychology of the Ulyanov family, and how Alexander Ulyanov (Sasha) turned away from an undeniably promising and brilliant career in biology to become one of the leaders of the Second March First, a small group of would-be assassins of Tsar Alexander III.

" History has largely forgotten Alexander, but... his younger brother, Vladimir, went on to lead the October Revolution of 1917 and head the new Soviet government under his revolutionary pseudonym 'Lenin.' Probing the Ulyanov family archives, historian Philip Pomper uncovers Alexander’s transformation from ascetic student to terrorist,... Vividly portraying the psychological dynamics of a family that would change history, Lenin’s Brother is a perspective-changing glimpse into Lenin’s formative years—and his subsequent behavior as a revolutionary.

So please tune in or stream Woman-Stirred Radio live at WGDR. If you'd like to join in the conversation call the air studio 802.454.7762.

Mystery Writer Ellen Hart visits Woman-Stirred Radio

2010-01-19T20:45:00.005Z

This Thursday, January 21st, at 5:00 (eastern) Merry Gangemi welcomes mystery writer extrodinaire Ellen Hart to Woman-Stirred Radio.

Ellen is a five-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery, as well as a three-time winner of the Minnesota Book Award for Best Popular Fiction. Entertainment Weekly recently named her one of the "101 movers and shakers in the gay entertainment industry." For the last eleven years, Ellen has taught "An Introduction to Writing the Modern Mystery" through the The Loft Literary Center, the largest independent writing community in the nation. Her newest novels are No Reservations Required, A Sophie Greenway Mystery (June 2005) and The Mortal Groove, A Jane Lawless Mystery (December 2007). Sweet Poison, the next Jane Lawless mystery, will be released in November of 2008. The Mortal Groove has been nominated for this year's Lambda Literary Award. Ellen lives in Minneapolis with her partner of 30 years (ellenhart.com).

So please tune in, this coming Thursday, January 21st at 5:00 (eastern) for a delightful interview with Ellen Hart. Want to join the conversation? The air studio phone number is 802.454.7762.

Sexuality & Socialism: Sherry Wolf on Woman-Stirred Radio

2010-01-12T19:15:00.008Z

This Thursday on WSR please join me, Merry Gangemi, in welcoming author and lesbian activist Sherry Wolf. We'll talk about her new book, Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics and Theory of LGBT Liberation (Haymarket, 2009). Fluidly-written and delightfully accessible, Sexuality and Socialism recounts and explores the history of the LGBT liberation movement, and articulates strategies and possibilities in achieving equality and full citizenship.

Sherry Wolf is a member of the editorial board of International Socialist Review, Wolf has written articles on a variety of topics ranging from the war in Iraq to the struggle of women to gain access to abortion. Her articles “Stonewall: The birth of gay power,” and “The Myth of the Black/Gay Divide” as well as essays and lectures can be seen in Monthly Review, Znet, and on CounterPunch, and on YouTube.

Praise for Sherry Wolf and Sexuality and Socialism:

"'What humans have constructed they can tear down.' This is the powerful insight of this rare book that is at once politically important, theoretically and historically sophisticated, and clearly written. Sexuality and Socialism is enlivened in its engagement with a number of controversies, including those over the alleged biological determination of homosexuality, the myth of Black homophobia, and the consequences of postmodernist theories for the politics of gay liberation. Above all else, Wolf puts forward a cogent defense of the Marxist tradition—long and wrongly reviled as homophobic in itself—as a way to explain how LGBT oppression arose and what we can do to put it to bed” (Dana Cloud, University of Texas at Austin).

The Ticking Is the Bomb: An Interview with Nick Flynn

2010-01-07T18:47:00.004Z

Today at 4:15, Nick Flynn visits Woman-Stirred Radio to discuss his new memoir The Ticking Is the Bomb, a memoir that explores the insidious, subtle consequences of the political crimes the United States has perpetrated since September 11, 2001.

"Flynn artfully interweaves passages from his childhood, his relationships with women, and his growing obsession: a questioning of terror, torture, and the political crimes we can neither see nor understand in post-9/11 American life" (WW Norton)

Shadows are ever-present in America today. We posit, as a consumer society, that whatever doesn't bring us pleasure is useless; it also precludes us from being curious about what Washington is doing in our name. This is what Nick Flynn alludes to in The Ticking is the Bomb: the fact that Americans accept "a potential truth buried in a tangible lie." But what else can we learn from Flynn? Probably that no one is free from responsibility and that we cannot claim whatever we dislike or find distasteful as unreal, as in not real.

So please tune in to Woman-Stirred Radio. on WGDR 91.1 fm (in Central Vermont) or stream us live at WGDR.

Want to join in the discussion? Call the air studio at 802.454.7762.

Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 pm (eastern). For more information about Woman-Stirred Radio, click here.

2010 Schedule

2009-12-21T18:55:00.004Z

This post will be updated as the year progresses and Woman-Stirred Radio interview dates are confirmed. Schedule of interviews for 2010:

Jan 14
5:00 Sherry Wolf, Sexuality and Socialism

Jan 21
5:00 Ellen Hart, The Mirror and the Mask (rescheduled for Feb 21st)

Jan 28
Philip Pomper, Lenin's Brother:

Feb 4
4:15 Kelli Smith and Val McDermid, publishers: Bywater Press

Feb 11
5:00 Dacher Keltner, The Compassionate Instinct

Feb 18
4:15 Ellen Hart, The Mirror and the Mask

Feb 25
4:15 Jerome Charyn, The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson
5:00 Elizabeth Oakes, The Luminescence of Everything Emily

March 18
4:15 Brad Watson, Aliens in the Prime of their Lives: Stories

April 22
5:00 Elizabeth Bradfield, Approaching Ice

Guest Schedule 2009

2009-12-19T17:32:00.002Z

Listen to Woman-Stirred Radio on WGDR Goddard College community radio. Tune in to 91.1 fm if you're in Central Vermont. Or stream it live at WGDR by clicking on the "Listen Live" link each Thursday between 4pm and 6pm (Eastern).

Merry loves it when listeners call in! Have a question for a guest? The air studio phone is (802) 454-7762.

Guest details updated Dec 19, 2009

January 8
4:15 Beth Robinson, executive director of VT Right to Marry
5:00 Charlie Barasch, Dreams of the Presidents
February 5
4:15 Retta Dunlop, advocate for Vermonters for Better Education
February 12
4:15 Kim Bobo, Wage Theft in America: A Crisis We Can Solve
February 19
5:00 Judith Arcana, 4th Period English
March 5
4:15 Maxine Kumin, Still to Mow
March 12
4:15 Ben Binstock, Vermeer's Family Secrets
5:00 JD Glass, X
March 2
4:15 Alicia Ostriker, feminist scholar, poet
5:00 Elaine Parker, discussion of her experiences in Antartica
April 9
4:15 Rigoberto Gonzales, discussion of queer Latina/Latino poetry and writing
5:00 Eaven Boland, New and Collected Poems
April 16
4:15 Martha Serpas, The Dirty Side of the Storm
April 30
5:00 Lisa Williams, A Woman Reading to the Sea
May 7
4:15 Mary Roach, Bonk
5:00 Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Calligraphy of the Witch.
May 14
4:15 Kim Addonizio, Ordinary Genius: A Guide to the Poet Within
5:00 Kate Clinton, I Told You So
May 21
4:15 Martha Nell Smith, Dickinson Electronic Archives
5:00 Alison J. Pugh, Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture
May 28
4:15 John Amen, Pedestal Magazine
5:00 Matt Rothschild, Democracy in Print: The Best of the progressive Magazine 1909-2009
June 4
4:15 Ray Raphael, Founders: The People Who Brought You a Nation
5:00 Sasha Abramsky, Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger and How to Fix It
June 18
4:15 Julie R. Enszer, Lesbian Poetry Archive
June 25
4:15 Adam Reid, Thoroughly Modern Milkshakes
5:00 Nathaniel Bellows, Why Speak?
July 16
4;15 April Bernard, Romanticism
July 23
4:15 Janelle Orsi, The Sharing Solution
5:00 Dick Lehr, The Fence: A Police Cover-Up Along Boston¹s Racial Divide
July 30
4;15 Diane Levine
5:00 Allison Pugh, Longing and Belonging: parents, children, and consumer culture
August 6
5:00 Denise Giardina, Emily’s Ghost
August 13
4:15 Elana Dykewomon Risk!
August 20
4:15 Sarah Schulman, The Mere Future
5:00 Orson Gregory, poet and musician
September 3
4:15 Jan Steckel, Mixing Tracks
September 10
4:15 Jane Satterfield, Daughter of Empire: A Memoir of a Year in Britain and Beyond
September 17
4:15 Electa Arenal, Sor Juana
October 8
5:00 Diane Lefer, California Transit
October 15
4:15 Anna Thomas, Love Soup Vegetarian Epicure)
5:00 Jim Lahey, My Bread
October 22
4:15 Linda Gordon, Dorothea Lange: A life without limits
5:00 Linda Nathan, The Hardest Questions Are Not on the Test
November 5
4:15 Lesley Wheeler, Heathen
5:00 James Schwartz, In Pursuit of the Gene: from Darwin to DNA
December 3
5:00 Martin Duberman, Waiting to Land: A (Mostly) Political Memoir
December 10
4:15 Guest co-host Julie R Enszer: A Celebration of Emily Dickinson's Birthday: various poets read original poems about or inspired by ED
5:00 Martha Nell Smith, a discussion of ED and her impact on lesbian identity and literary history
December 17
5:00 Nona Caspers, Little Book of Days
December 24
4:00 - 9:30
A Special double-header of Christmas music

Previous guests:
Bettina Aptheker, Joan Armatrading, Alison Bechdel, Dr Helen Caldicott, Catie Curtis, Elana Dykewomon, Lillian Faderman, Charles Flowers, Judy Grahn, Janis Ian, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Jane Rule, and many others.

Woman-Stirred Radio is a writer's collective and cultural blog dedicated to bringing the amazing talent and creative spirit of Queer Culture to the world at-large, and to preserving this culture for future generations. Woman-Stirred Radio is funded in part by a grant from the Samara Foundation of Vermont.

Some Thoughts on Beginnings and Endings: Woman-stirred radio in 20099

2009-12-18T20:17:00.006Z

Yesterday's interview with Nona Caspers was my last interview of 2009, wrapping up a year of changes: Nicki Hastie gone, WSR intern Mikael Yowe moved on (he finished up his BA), I expanded the universe of interviews and guests to the straight world, knowing that exclusion is problematic on any front. And I have certainly challenged myself, interviewing some very smart writers, musicians, and policy makers.

Last January I interviewed Beth Robinson, the driving force behind the success of Vermont's right to marry movement. In February, I interviewed a local woman, Retta Dunlop, who is a Fundamentalist and home-schooler. Now that was an interesting situation, but in the end I learned something about how well dialogue and patience can work. February also brought us the amazing Judith Arcana. March gave us interviews with poet Maxine Kumin, art scholar Ben Binstock, NY writer and musician JD Glass, and feminist writer Alicia Ostriker. in early April, I went to the National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB) in Portland Oregon, where I met Troy Williams, a young queer activist from Salt Lake City, who has an absolutely fantastic radio program. Poetry Month brought us Eavan Boland, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Martha Serpas, and Lisa Williams. Mary Roach returned to talk about Bonk, and Alicia Gaspar de Alba was a first time guest. may also brought the incomparable Kate Clinton, and writer Kim Addonizio, policy-maker Alison Pugh, and one of my favorite people, Dickinson scholar Martha Nell Smith.

I want to thank everyone, with special thanks to my dear friend, Julie R Enszer, an invaluable colleague, brilliant scholar, and fellow believer in the value of Woman-Stirred Radio to lesbian culture as well as, well, all the other cultures that continue to thrive in America.

If you have a suggestion for a guest, please contact me and we'll take it from there.

Nona Casper's Little Book of Days

2009-12-14T21:35:00.005Z

This week on Woman-Stirred Radio, Merry Gangemi welcomes Nona Caspers back to Woman-Stirred Radio to talk about Little Book of Days, and read from her most recent publication.

The book is disarmingly relevant and very, very interesting as Caspers presents layered meditations on the ordinary--and not so ordinary--everyday occurrences that spark and sometimes roost within us: sounds from the street, the sun bleeding through the window, memories, scents, love, passion, and past and present difficulties.

Nona Caspers is the author of the recent Little Book of Days and Heavier than Air, which received the Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction and was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice.

Nona is a recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship, an Iowa Review Fiction Award, a Joseph Henry Jackson Award, a Barbara Deming Award, and a LAMBDA nomination among other honors. Her stories have been widely published in literary journals and anthologies such as Ontario Review, Cimarron Review, Iowa Review, WOMEN ON WOMEN and the HERS series. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University.

So please tune in or stream it live. This Thursday, December 17th at 5 p.m. (eastern) and 2 p.m. (pacific). If you want to join in the conversation, go to WGDR, and click Listen Live.

Happy Birthday Emily Dickinson!!

2009-12-07T19:37:00.011Z

This Thursday, Woman-Stirred Radio presents a special two-hour program to celebrate the birthday of one of the most imagined, and distinctly American poets of all time: Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, born December 10, 1830.
In the first hour Julie R. Enszer and Merry Gangemi will read the original work of poets from around the country, and welcome poets who will read their original poems about or inspired by Emily Dickinson, including:
Barbara Crooker, Carol Dorf, Charlotte Mandel, Claire Keyes, Elizabeth Oakes, Jane Satterfield, Janet McCann, Julie Moore, Lesley Wheeler, Rachel Dacus, Susan Rich, and Tamiko Beyer.

In the second hour, Martha Nell Smith visits Woman-Stirred Radio to talk about the possibilities of Emily Dickinson, and unpack some of the myriad ways in which Dickinson's legacy has enriched and sustained the creativity and scholarship of millions of women, redefining and re-imagining the ferocious brilliance of the Belle of Amherst (how I dislike that moniker!!). Martha Nell and Merry will also talk about the intensely passionate and intellectual relationship between Emily and her beloved sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert Dickinson.

So please join Merry Gangemi and her guests on Thursday, December 10th from 4 to 6 pm (eastern) for a delightful celebration of Emily Dickinson's 107th birthday.

Tune in at 91.1 fm (in Central Vermont) or stream the show live at WGDR Community Radio. Want to join the conversation? Call 802.454.7762 or send an email with your questions and comments to mgangemi@vtlink.net
or julierenszer@gmail.com.

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.