Dialogue with Marcia Franklin

  Marcia Franklin talks with National Book Award-winning author and world traveler Barry Lopez about his philosophy of writing and his penultimate memoir,  Horizon. In December 2020, the Sun Valley Writers' Conference awarded Barry Lopez with the inaugural Writer in the World Prize in recognition of his singular voice in the landscape of English Literature. Lopez died on December 25, 2020. Don't f...

  Marcia Franklin talks with author Brando Skyhorse about his life and works, focusing on his memoir,  Take This Man.  In the book, Skyhorse writes about what it was like to grow up thinking he was Native American and then to find out that was not true. He also discusses the topic of his next novel,  Wall. Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the  Dialogue  website  for more  conversations that ma...

  Marcia Franklin talks with Emily Ruskovich, the author of  Idaho: A Novel.  In 2019, the novel won the Dublin Literary Award, worth more than $100,000. Ruskovich reflects on what it has been like to win the award. The two also discuss the plot of  Idaho,  whose setting is based on the landscape of Ruskovich's childhood in northern Idaho. Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the  Dialogue  websit...

Host Marcia Franklin talks with political scientist Yascha Mounk about identity, political divides and his outlook on America. Mounk is the author of several books, including "The People vs. Democracy," "The Great Experiment," and "Stranger in My Own Country." Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the  Dialogue  website  for more  conversations that matter. Originally Aired: 11/18/2022 The intervie...

Catherine Grace Katz talks with host Marcia Franklin about "The Daughters of Yalta," her first book. In it, she illuminates the contributions that Anna Roosevelt, Sarah Churchill and Kathleen Harriman made during the seminal 1945 meeting of world leaders at Yalta, which included their fathers, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Averell Harriman. Don't forget to subscribe, and visit...

Host Marcia Franklin talks with author Kalani Pickhart about her debut novel, "I Will Die in a Foreign Land." Based on the Maidan uprising in Ukraine in 2013 and 2014, the book's publication coincidentally occurred a few months before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Pickhart talks about what that's been like, and why she was drawn to write about Ukraine. Don't forget to subscribe, and visit...

Marcia Franklin talks with Yale Professor of History Joanne Freeman about her book  The Field of Blood.  In it, Freeman illustrates how the U.S. Congress leading up to the Civil War was a more violent body than previously thought. Franklin asks her about parallels to current tensions in Congress. Freeman also discusses her next book, "Hunting for Hamilton," and the value of studying history. Don't...

Host Marcia Franklin talks with author Kali Fajardo-Anstine about her short story collection, "Sabrina & Corina," which was a finalist for a National Book Award, and her novel, "Woman of Light." Both draw on her own multicultural history to tell stories set in Colorado. Originally Aired: 11/11/2022 The interview is part of Dialogue's series,  "Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference,...

Sarah Broom unpacks her National Book Award-winning memoir, "The Yellow House," which chronicles the devastating effects that decades of neglect and bureaucratic amnesia have had on her childhood neighborhood of New Orleans East. The book also pays homage to the house she and her 11 siblings grew up in, which was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina, but which lives on in Broom's prose. Originally Aired...

  Marcia Franklin talks with author Rebecca Donner about "All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days," which chronicles the life of Mildred Harnack, her great-great-aunt. Harnack and her husband helped found one of the largest resistance groups against the Nazis. They were both discovered, however, and killed. Mildred is the only known American woman to be executed on the direct orders of Hitler. Don't...

Marcia Franklin talks with author Patricia Nelson Limerick about her books about the American West. Limerick shares her views that the West has been overly romanticized and that history has ignored the contributions of women and people of color in settling the West. Originally aired: 04/17/1997

Marcia Franklin talks with maritime writer and historian Nathaniel Philbrick, the speaker at the 2013 Idaho Humanities Council Distinguished Humanities Lecture. Philbrick is the author of numerous books, including most recently "Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution," which looks at the deadliest battle of the American Revolution and how it influenced the birth of our country. A sailor, Philb...

Journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Eliza Griswold talks with host Marcia Franklin about her book  Amity and Prosperity , which investigates the effects of fracking in a southwestern Pennsylvania community. The two discuss how Griswold researched the book and the rural-urban divide in American politics. Griswold also talks about her forthcoming book of poetry. Don't forget to subscribe, a...

Dialogue host Marcia Franklin talks with historical novelist Lois Leveen about two of her works: The Secrets of Mary Bowser , about a former slave who was a spy in the Confederate White House, and Juliet's Nurse , which imagines the life of the nurse in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Franklin asks Leveen about how she researches her ideas and what she hopes readers will glean from her works. Orig...

  As the United States heads for what portends to be a raucous convention season, Dialogue host Marcia Franklin talks with Eric Liu, the founder of Citizen University in Seattle, about whether it's even possible in a seemingly fractured society to have a civil discussion about politics. Liu, also the executive director of the Citizenship and American Identity Program at the Aspen Institute, is try...

  Marcia Franklin talks with author Richard Ford, who won a Pulitzer Prize for  Independence Day,  a book in his Frank Bascombe series, and who was nominated for a Pulitzer for his most recent book in the series  Let Me Be Frank With You.  Ford talks with Franklin about his themes, his writing style, his muse and his thoughts on race relations. Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the  Dialogue  w...

  Marcia Franklin interviews author Kevin Powers, a veteran of the war in Iraq. His first work, "The Yellow Birds," was a finalist for the National Book Award. The novel depicts the friendship between two American soldiers in Iraq trying to keep each other alive, and the emotional journey of one of them as he returns home. Powers, who was a speaker at the University of Idaho's annual Hemingway con...

Marcia Franklin continues her conversation with Boise-based outdoor writer Michael Lanza, focusing on tips for hiking and camping, including some of the best gear and small essentials to pack. The two also talk about ways to keep safe in the backcountry. Lanza, the former Northwest editor for Backpacker magazine, has written three books about hiking, as well as many articles chronicling his worldw...

  Marcia Franklin talks with Idaho outdoor writer and photographer Michael Lanza about some of the best backcountry trips in our region. Lanza, the former Northwest editor for Backpacker magazine, has written three books about hiking, as well as many articles chronicling his worldwide adventures backpacking, climbing, skiing and paddling. "Before They're Gone," his book about his family's adventur...

Marcia Franklin talks with poet Richard Blanco, the first LatinX and gay inaugural poet. Blanco wrote a poem for President Obama's second inaugural and read it at the ceremony. He discusses the process of writing the inaugural poem, "One Today," how the piece reflected his life and his philosophy of writing, the themes of his work, and the power of poetry to change lives. Mr. Blanco was the keynot...

As Russia's dominance on the international stage increases, along with its presence in the American presidential election, Dialogue host Marcia Franklin talks with journalist Jill Dougherty about Russian President Vladimir Putin. Dougherty, who reported for CNN for 30 years, most recently as its Foreign Affairs Correspondent, was also the network's Moscow Bureau Chief and White House Correspondent...

Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist Dave Barry hams it up with host Marcia Franklin at the 2014 Sun Valley Writers' Conference. The two talk about Barry's various misadventures in the Gem State, including tree-climbing, snowmobiling and trout fishing—and what he thinks the new motto for Idaho should be. They also discuss Barry's partnership with Ridley Pearson on the  Peter and the Starcatchers  book...

  Marcia Franklin talks with Robert MacNeil, the veteran journalist, author, and former co-host of the  NewsHour  on PBS. MacNeil, who was born in Canada, talks about becoming an American, how the news profession changed over the course of his career, and his love for the English language. Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the  Dialogue website  for more conversations that matter!  Originally A...

  In his book,  Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution , U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer lays out his judicial philosophy, that judges should decide cases in a way that allows the public to maximize participation in government through what he calls "active liberty." Marcia Franklin talks with Justice Breyer about the precepts of "active liberty, why he wanted to write t...

Marcia Franklin interviews Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson about her book, The Warmth of Other Suns . The work, about the Great Migration of African-Americans from the south to other parts of the country, took Wilkerson 15 years to research and write. They discuss the reasons for the migration, its influence on the country, and how the book's success has affected Wilkerson. Orig...