Madison BookBeat

Stu Levitan welcomes the biographer of modern Madison, award-winning columnist Doug Moe, for a conversation about his latest book, Saving Hearts and Killing Rats: Karl  Paul Link and the Discovery of Warfarin. It’s the first detailed look at one of the most important and most honored biochemists of the 20th century — the brilliant, unconventional, and seemingly bipolar University of Wisconsin scie...

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie talks with author Denise S. Robbins about her debut novel The Unmapping. There is no flash of light, no crumbling, no quaking. Each person in New York wakes up on an unfamiliar block after the buildings all switch positions overnight. The power grid has snapped, thousands of residents are missing, and the Empire State Building is on Coney Islan...

Stu Levitan interviews former U.S. Ambassador to Norway (1993-1997) Tom Loftus about his new book, Mission to Oslo, Dancing with the Queen, Dealmaking with the Russians, Shaping History (Mineral Point: Little Creek Press, 2024). Amb. Loftus served during a pivotal period in diplomatic and military history, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It was a time of optimism, but it was...

Jane Hirshfield—widely regarded as one of America’s greatest living poets—joins Madison Book Beat for a rich conversation about poetry, the natural world, and the human condition. The New York Times Magazine has called her work “some of the most important poetry in the world today,” and her latest collection, The Asking: New & Selected Poems , showcases the depth and range of a life devoted to...

A book club is a great way to build community—bringing people together around shared interests, while also introducing them to new perspectives and ideas. Today, Bill Tishler hosts his inaugural episode centered on community. Tishler, who is also a local elected official, has been hosting book clubs in his district. On today’s episode, four area residents join him in the WORT studio to share their...

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with AJ Romriell on his debut memoir Wolf Act (University of Wisconsin Press, 2025). Wolf Act is a “memoir in essays,” and these essays take on a variety of forms. The work is divided into three different Acts, and each act is made up of chapters that are both interlinked but can also stand on their own as well. While the majority of...

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie chats with Wisconsin Poet Laureate Brenda Cárdenas about her new position and the exciting plans she has in the works during her service. Brenda Cárdenas was born and raised in Milwaukee and has also lived in Beaver Dam, Appleton, Menasha, and Fond du Lac. She obtained her undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and a Mas...

Tana Elias has more than three decades of experience at the Madison Public Library. After one year in the role, she’s “just settling in” to the position as Director of the MPL. Elias sits down with Madison Book Beat host David Ahrens for a conversation about the history, funding, services and evolution of the Madison Public Library system, which has nine libraries in the city, operates the mobile...

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie chats with author Christine Wenc about her new book Funny Because It’s True: How The Onion Created Modern American News Satire . In 1988, a band of University of Wisconsin–Madison undergrads and dropouts began publishing a free weekly newspaper with no editorial stance other than “You Are Dumb.” Just wanting to make a few bucks, they wound up b...

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with Steven Duong on his debut poetry collection At the End of the World There is A Pond (Norton 2025). "Tell all the truth but tell it slant." Taking Emily Dickinson's dictum as a guiding principle, poet Steven Duong delivers a collection startlingly clear, formally innovative, and consistently funny. At the End of the World There is...

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie chats with author Theresa Okokon about her debut memoir in essays,  Who I Always Was . When Theresa Okokon was nine, her father traveled to his hometown in Nigeria to attend his mother’s funeral…and never returned. His mysterious death shattered Theresa as her family’s world unraveled. Now a storyteller and television cohost, Okokon sets out to...

As 2024 draws to a close, David Ahrens reflects on his bountiful year of reading. He's joined by Chali Pittman, Andrew Thomas, and callers throughout the hour to share their recommendations.  New York Times bestseller James by Percival Everett is a clear favorite. It's a re-imagining of Huckleberry Finn from a distinctly different point of view. That's not the only retelling worth reading — Demon...

Zara Chowdhary sits down with David Ahrens to talk about her exquisite memoir  The Lucky Ones  (Penguin, 2024). In 2002, Zara Chowdhary was sixteen years old and living with her family in Ahmedabad, India, when a train fire claimed the lives of sixty Hindu passengers — and upended the lives of millions of Muslims. Instead of taking her school exams that week, Zara is put under a three-month siege,...

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie chats with Madison booksellers Iris Tobin from  A Room of One’s Own , Hilary Burg from  Mystery to Me , and Molly Fish from  Lake City Books  to see how their 2024 went.  Take a listen to learn about the new releases they loved, event highlights from the past year, reads they recommend for people who want to get back into the habit, and what’s...

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with folx from LGBT Books to Prisoners and A Room of One's Own bookstore on the Wisconsin Department of Corrections’ recently-implemented restrictions on book donations, the condition of prison libraries, and the current state of abolition activism. “On the whole, people tend to take prisons for granted. It is difficult to imagine lif...

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Lisa Malawski talks with local Madison author Tammy Borden.  Tammy is a professional copywriter turned novelist. She has had a whirlwind of a year since releasing her novel, Waltraud. She has reached thousands of readers on 5 continents, had more than 70 speaking or book-related events, and approximately one thousand reviews! Waltraud was self-published b...

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie speaks with author, geologist, and Lawrence University professor Marcia Bjornerud about her new book,  Turning to Stone . Earth has been reinventing itself for more than four billion years, keeping a record of its experiments in the form of rocks. Yet most of us live our lives on the planet with no idea of its extraordinary history, unable to i...

In his 1979 Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand wrote, “We are as gods, so we might as well get good at it.” Based on his time on the Mississippi River, however, Boyce Upholt concludes “that we do not make very good gods.” In the final pages of The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi , Upholt reflects, “The river is an unappeasable god, and to react to it with fear and awe is no...

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Lisa Malawski talks with local Madison author Ann Garvin. Ann Garvin became an author at age fifty. Ann Garvin Ph. D. is a nurse, a professor, and USA Today Bestselling Author. She thinks everything is funny and a little bit sad. Ann writes stories about people who do too much in a world that asks too much from them. Ann is the founder of the multiple awa...

Today on the show, incoming host Ella Saph speaks with the first-place winners in the 2024 Wisconsin People & Ideas Writing Contest. Cambridge writer Bob Wake took home the gold for his poem "Mending Ruth," and Madison poet Diya Abbas took home the prize for their poem “Al-Eashiq." Both will present at a reading next week at the Wisconsin Book Festival, which will feature all the winners of th...

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie speaks with festival director Jane Rotunda and author Jessica Calarco about her book  Holding It Together , ahead of Calarco’s appearance at the Wisconsin Book Festival on Thursday, October 17th. Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net  chronicles the devastating consequences of our DIY society and traces its root causes by d...

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with E.M. Tran on her debut novel, Daughters of the New Year (2022, Hanover Square Press). Daughters of the New Year is a novel about the three Trung sisters and their mother. It’s also a novel about Vietnam and its long history of colonization at the hands of the Chinese, Japanese, and French. We catch glimpses of civil war and Ameri...

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie speaks with author  Jennifer Kabat  about her memoir  The Eighth Moon  from Milkweed Editions, ahead of Kabat’s appearance at A Room of One’s Own on  Tuesday, September 10th . A rebellion, guns, and murder. When Jennifer Kabat moves to the Catskills, she has no idea it was the site of the Anti-Rent War, an early episode of American rural populi...

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Lisa Malawski talks with Kathleen Paris about her book Gentle Comforts For Women Grieving the Loss of a Beloved Life Companion. As an author, educator, and management consultant, Paris has assisted organizations over the past thirty years to plan for new realities and improve their systems and organizational climate. She currently holds the title of Disti...

In this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie speaks with Milwaukee-based author  Katharine Beutner  about her Edna Ferber Award-winning novel,  Killingly , which is out now in paperback from  Soho Crime . Massachusetts, 1897: Bertha Mellish, “the most peculiar, quiet, reserved girl” at Mount Holyoke College, is missing. As a search team dredges the pond where Bertha might have drowned, he...