49 Writers Active Voice Podcast

Our latest episode was recorded with the keynote speaker for the 2025 North Words Writers Symposium in Skagway, Alaska.  Pulitzer prize nominee Eowyn Ivey talks with guest host Summer Christiansen about her writing discipline, the challenges and joys of writing from rural Alaska and why her latest book, Black Woods, Blue Sky,  is her most personal yet. Learn more about Eowyn and her work at her we...

Shauna Potocky is a poet and painter who spent a decade as park ranger in Yosemite National Park. She is now a devoted resident of the community of Seward, Alaska. Along with the Kenai Peninsula, it is the inspiration for her second collection of poems and artwork,  Sea Smoke, Spindrift and Other Spells. On a visit to Juneau she talked with host Katie Bausler about poetry, community and the value...

Katie’s guest Josh Fortenbery plays live tracks and reflects on the writing of his debut album. Southeast Alaska grown and produced, No Such Thing as Forever is getting strong reviews in Americana circles from across the country to across the pond. Fortenbery’s songwriting is informed by both his immediate and the greater human family. “I’m just trying to be honest about my grief, anxiety, and car...

Katie's guest for this episode is Kate Troll, author of a memoir with an unusual focus. It chronicles, as she entered her seventies, meeting two siblings for the first time. And how these discoveries both challenged and strengthened her newfound family and her relationships with the siblings she grew up with. All in Due Time, A Memoir of Siblings, Genealogy, Secrets and Love, can be found at books...

In this episode, host Katie Bausler chats with Lucian Childs, author of Dreaming Home , a powerful collection of six linked short stories on the outing of a gay teenager by his younger sister, his father’s violent reaction and how that trauma ripples through the course of four decades. The stories, set in Texas, the San Francisco Bay Area and Florida, deftly weave issues like conversion therapy, Q...

In her debut album, Sisters of White Chapel, Alaskan writer and musician Annie Bartholomew brings a fresh approach to traditional folk music, channeling the under told stories of some of the working women of Alaska's Gold Rush. And as she tells 49 Writers Active Voice producer and host Katie Bausler, sex work was the only choice for many women in late 19th century mining towns. Bartholomew wanted...

Beth Ann Mathews, her husband Jim and nine year old son Glen were living a full and vibrant life in Alaska’s capital Juneau, which, as she describes lies, “between the ocean and a retreating glacier, a dynamic landscape that challenged and nurtured us.”  She could not have imagined the challenges the family trio would overcome when Jim sustained a rare type of stroke brought on by a relatively com...

Acclaimed author Melinda Moustakis on her debut novel, Homestead. In this first 49 Writers Active Voice Podcast taped LIVE,  we  go back in time to the last years before Alaska became a state, and the tumultuous relationship of unlikely homesteaders. Inspired by the story of the author's grandparents,  Homestead was reviewed "absolutely remarkable" by the Historical Novel Society. And "spare, exqu...

Tommy Orange on his commended debut novel "There, There", which tells the intertwining stories of Native Americans en route to a pow wow in Orange's hometown of Oakland, California. He discusses what to expect from the highly anticipated sequel,  the current reckoning of the past genocide of Native Americans, white supremacy and the quest for hope versus hate.  Since its 2018 publication,"There, T...

Linnea Lentfer discusses and reads passages from her debut novel. "Hold the Tide" is told by a young girl raised like Lentfer, hunting deer and gathering berries in remote and wild Southeast Alaska.  Unlike the author, her protagonist grew up in a prior century, the child of a shunned and threatened single mother. Lentfer began writing her book when she was  12, the same age as her narrator. "Hold...

Ohio author Bonnie Proudfoot discusses and reads passages from her debut novel with Active Voice host and producer Katie Bausler. Goshen Road is told through the alternating voices of a working class family in rural Appalachia over the course of a generation. The book holds stories of a far from easy life in a time of societal transition in one of the most culturally rich and misunderstood parts o...

Thanks to writer and musician Erin Heist for sharing her creative journey on the 49 Writers Active Voice podcast, an audio forum on the role of writers and artists in these challenging times. Learn more about Erin and where to hear her EP, Another Rainy Day at erinheist.com  Please subscribe and follow the 49 Writers Active Voice podcast on Apple, Spotify and 49writers.org. And help spread the wor...

In conversation with Active Voice host and producer Katie Bausler, Emily Wall touches on her current project, chapbooks in the personas of three renowned women, the difference between good and bad poetry, the annual literary journal she oversees, her meeting with esteemed poet William Stafford (who wrote a poem about it), and what initially drew her to poetry. Learn more about Emily Wall and her p...

Writers and artists discuss their work in these challenging, changing times with host and producer Katie Bausler on the 49 Writers Active Voice podcast. Episode 15 guest Kathryn H. Ross is the  author of Black Was Not A Label, a memoir collection of essays and poetry chronicling her life from early childhood to her mid-20s. Themes include racism, identity, faith and their impact on Black Americans...

We’ve reached a last straw in the struggle for justice for black people in this country. Add to that mass inequality magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic. What’s an artist, writer or activist to do? Writer’s Block co-owner Vered Mares and Active Voice host Katie Bausler discuss elevating the voices of black and brown writers. And Mares experience with racism and freedom of religion as a high school...

Environmental Historian and author Bathsheba DeMuth explores the past to better understand the present. As the COVID-19 pandemic settles in for the foreseeable future, the Brown University Professor  and host Katie Bausler look back to the flu pandemic of 1918, and infectious diseases brought by European explorers that devastated indigenous peoples going back hundreds of years.  And the impact of...

Tired of division, strife and the feeling that half the country just doesn’t get it? Want more joy in your life? In the world? Then you might like to meet our first guest songwriter, Jackie Venson. Host Katie Bausler caught up with the Austin based guitarist and vocalist on her latest visit to Southeast Alaska. The  conversation began with how her manager came up with the title of Jackie's latest...

Susan Orlean is best known for her books The Orchid Thief, Saturday Night, Rin Tin Tin, and most recently, The Library Book, published in October, 2018. Now out in paperback, it’s a story she was compelled to tell about the largest library fire in US history and how it renewed a lifelong love and appreciation for the magic of libraries. 49 Writers Active Voice host and producer Katie Bausler met w...

Author Annie Boochever on Fighter in Velvet Gloves: Alaska Civil Rights Hero Elizabeth Peratrovich. Boochever collaborated with this story of Elizabeth Peratrovich's life for young readers with her son, Roy Peratrovich Jr. This highly recommended work arrives at a time when issues of race and racism are clearly unsettled. Show Links: Annie Boochever Fighter In Velvet Gloves 49 Writers Please subsc...

49 Writers co-founder and author Andromeda Romano Lax has published her fourth novel, Plum Rains. Andromeda lives for a while in the places where her novels are set, for this one in Japan and Taiwan. The book takes place a decade from now and takes on several issues, including robots, immigration, privilege, and human connection. The Paris Review lauds it for, “engineering a world that is a charac...

Gustavus based writer Kim Heacox sounds a warning bell and gives hope for the future in this packed exchange with host Katie Bausler. Kim's wilderness activism has infused his writing and photography of than a dozen books over the past twenty-five years. His novel, Jimmy Bluefeather, won the 2015 National Outdoor Book Award. And his 2005 memoir, The Only Kayak is rife with prescient realizations a...

State Writer Laureate Ernestine Hayes has spent a good part of her life bearing witness. The author of the American book award winning, Blonde Indian and the Tao of Raven, Hayes is known for bringing out the connections between all things. She is also a member of the faculty at the University of Alaska Southeast. She says to better understand our present we need to look our past, and the history o...

Travel writer and author of the acclaimed Global Soul, Pico Iyer is an eternal optimist in a seemingly pessimistic world. Pico Iyer is also a contributor to major news publications, the author of two novels and nine works of nonfiction. His latest effort is The Art of Stillness, Adventures in Going Nowhere. Pico’s Ted Talks have millions of viewers and he’s been hanging out with the Dali Lama for...

When not spending time in endangered and beautiful places or teaching writing, Pam Houston lives with horses, goats and dogs in her cherished home of almost 30 years, an off the grid ranch in the high country of Colorado. In this episode, Pam tells host and producer Katie Bausler that it is metaphors that get her through this seminal moment for the natural world. And discusses her latest book, Dee...

Beauty-of fauna, flora and most of all-place is part of everything she writes, says Joanna Lilley . The author of a short story collection and two books of poetry, Lilly grew up in the UK and lives in Whitehorse Yukon, Her first novel, Worry Stones , published in late 2018, is set in in Canada, Britain and the Scottish highlands. And as she tells Active Voice pocast host Katie Bausler, the places...