Madison BookBeat

McNally transcript Stu Levitan welcomes historian, author and music publicist Dennis McNally, whose new book is The Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties. And while it’s mainly about San Francisco, with a bit of New York and London thrown in, it does feature several individuals and events pertaining directly to Madison. So that’s why you get to hear about it here....

On this episode of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie is joined by author Lisa Fishman to talk about her deubt novel, Write Back Now! Acclaimed poet Lisa Fishman’s debut novel tracks a peripatetic 1970s childhood and the uprooted friendship between girls who stay connected by mail, until they don’t. It opens in a borrowed house in wintry Nova Scotia, where the adult narrator faces the first-ever b...

Stu Levitan welcomes Nancy Kathman, for a conversation about her engaging new memoir, “Love, Cuba, Goats and Music,” about her life cutting sugarcane in Cuba, co-founding the Southwest Dairy Goat Cooperative and exploring world music with the late Bob Queen, founder of so many of the hallmark east side music festivals.

On this episode of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie is joined by author Sahar Mustafah to talk about her new novel, The Slightest Green . In the middle of dinner one evening, Intisar Jaber receives a phone call that will upend her quiet life in Chicago: her father is dying and she must go to Palestine to pay her final respects. But Intisar hasn't seen or heard from Hafez for nearly two decades,...

  Jeff Oloizia was our guest on Book Beat with John Quinlan discussing his new weekly WI Literary Podcast "Writing Forward," which debuted on May 6th. We learned about the purpose of the cutting edge podcast, and about the man behind it. The Brookfield native and 2007 UW alum left Wisconsin post-graduation, not necessarily expecting to return, settling into "an itinerant existence" in exotic place...

Stu Levitan welcomes author and editor Dean Robbins, for a discussion about his career writing illustrated books for children – 13 of them at last count, inspirational stories about such role models as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., polio-eradicator Dr. Jonas Salk, NASA computer scientist Margaret Hamilton, the young Pakistani Noble Laureate Malala Yousafzai, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, suffra...

Author Theresa Evans of Sturgeon Bay discusses important end of life issues around her support of her mother in experiencing Assisted Death.  "Choosing to Die: A Daughter's Story Of Supporting Her Mother's End Of Life Through Assisted Death," is about the journey her family took once her mother decided to define the date and terms of her death in the context of a small southwestern Ontario town. M...

On this episode of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie is joined by author Lisa Low to talk about her new poetry collection, Replica . Stand-up comedy, a celebrity non-apology, observations of racism, and the slipperiness of nostalgia underpin Replica . In poignant, witty poems, Lisa Low navigates the tensions of solidarity and hostility in white spaces as she sets out to write differently about ra...

On this episode of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie is joined by author Douglas Metoxen Kiel to talk about their new book, Unsettling Territory . How did the Oneida Nation of northeastern Wisconsin—stripped of nearly all its reservation lands by the early twentieth century—rise to become a powerful political and economic force in Native America and the present-day Midwest? Doug Kiel traces the j...

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie chats with author Melissa Faliveno about her debut novel, Hemlock , now available from Little, Brown. Sam, finally sober and stable with a cat and a long-term boyfriend in Brooklyn, returns alone to Hemlock, her family’s deteriorating cabin deep in the Wisconsin Northwoods, where her mother disappeared years before and never returned. But a qui...

Stu Levitan welcomes back to the program Doug Bradley to discuss his new book The Tracks of My Years: A Music-Based Memoir, just out from the good people at Legacy Book Press. And it is exactly what the subtitle promises – Doug recounting the literal soundtrack of his life, putting the seminal events of his first quarter century or so in the context of the music that  accompanied, or symbolized, t...

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie chats with Madison booksellers Mira Braneck from A Room of One’s Own , Hilary Burg from Mystery to Me , and Molly Fish from Lake City Books to see how their 2025 went.  Take a listen to learn about the new releases they loved, event highlights from the past year, recommended reads that'll keep you cozy this season, and what's in store for them...

WORT 89.9FM Madison · Cheryl Schiltz - When the World Falls Away Lisa Malawski talks with Cheryl Schiltz today on Madison Bookbeat, November 24, 2025. Cheryl Schiltz  is no stranger to silence—but not the peaceful kind. After a reaction to antibiotics destroyed her vestibular system—the part of the inner ear responsible for balance—Cheryl was plunged into a world of disorientation, instability, an...

Stu Levitan welcomes Cary Segall  for a conversation about his engaging new book A Talk in the Woods: Voices Along the Appalachian Trail (Back Burner Books), recounting stories of the people he met along the world's longest hiking-only trail. Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the mid-1930s, the 2,197.4-mile Appalachian Trail runs through 14 states, from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mo...

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie chats with author Emily Mitchell about her new short story collection, The Church of Divine Electricity , now available from University of Wisconsin Press. Delightfully blending literary fiction with speculative genres, the stories in The Church of Divine Electricity somehow manage to feel as though they could take place today. In Emily Mitchel...

Stu Levitan welcomes Margaret Mooney, editor of  Radical Family:  Trailblazing Lesbian Moms Tell Their Stories and her wife Meg Gaines to discuss this collection of nine first-person accounts from mainly Madison-area lesbians who gave birth, adopted or came out between 1980 and 2003. Just out from the good people at the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, the collection offers many important insig...

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie talks with author Pernille Ipsen about the new translation of her memoir, My Seven Mothers (University of Minnesota Press.) On New Year’s Eve in Copenhagen in 1972, seven women had a child together: one gave birth and six others attended. They had met a year earlier at a feminist women’s camp on a small island and now, with about twenty other w...

Stu Levitan welcomes Wauwatosa Mayor Dennis McBride for a conversation about his new book A City on the Edge: Pandemic, Protest and  Polarization. It's a gripping and insightful first-person account of what it was like to be the newly elected chief executive of a Wisconsin city during the twin traumas of 2020 – the onset of COVID and the murder of George Floyd.  In particular, a city with its own...

David Michael Miller transcript Stu Levitan welcomes David Michael Miller for a conversation about his new book, The Rise of Breese Stevens Field: Madison's ballpark and the team that made it home, the Centennial Edition. You may know Breese Stevens Field today as a city, state, and national landmark at 917 East Mifflin Street, the place for professional soccer and ultimate frisbee, concerts, and...

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie talks with author Ron Rindo about his latest novel, Life, & Death, & Giants (St. Martin's Press). Gabriel Fisher was born an orphan, weighing eighteen pounds and measuring twenty-seven inches long. No one in Lakota, Wisconsin, knows what to make of him. He walks at eight months, communicates with animals, and seems to possess extraordin...

WORT 89.9FM Madison · A Kinship with Ash: Heather Swan In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Lisa Malawski sits down with Wisconsin poet, essayist, and environmental humanities scholar Heather Swan . A lecturer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Swan brings a unique blend of ecological insight and lyrical depth to her writing, exploring the fragile intersections between humans and the na...

WORT 89.9FM Madison · Time, Beauty, and Grief, Betsy-Korbinyr_7-28-25 In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Lisa Malawski sits down with local author Betsy Korbinyr who is an award-winning author and retired social worker based in Madison, Wisconsin. With over 30 years of experience in hospice, medical, mental health, and school social work, she brings a deep understanding of aging, loss, and...

Robbins, Dean Transcript Stu Levitan welcomes the very successful author, editor, and broadcast personality, Dean Robbins to discuss his latest book, Wisconsin Idols, 100 Heroes Who Have Changed the State, the World, and M e, (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2025) . It's a collection of engaging short essays about 100 outstanding musicians, thinkers, actors, athletes, creators, and boundary-br...

On July 7th, Madison BookBeat host Bill Tishler welcomed Steven Davis, professor of political science at Edgewood University, to WORT 89.9 FM to discuss Davis’s new book, The Other Public Lands: Preservation, Extraction, and Politics on the Fifty States’ Natural Resource Lands (Temple University Press, 2025). While national parks and federally managed lands often dominate the conversation, Davis’s...

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie talks with author Kristina Amelong about her debut memoir, What My Brother Knew (She Writes Press). As a boy, Jay Amelong predicted the accident that caused his death, down to the color of the car that hit him. "I will die young, while riding my bike," he told friends and family repeatedly. "It won't be much longer. I want you to be prepared."...