The Last Word: Conversations with Writers

A welcome return to KSFR by multi-award-winning poet Mary Gilliland from Ithaca, New York. Described by Mary Oliver as … “not afraid of delight…and the hard tasks of anger, pain, and deep caring,” Mary Gilliland shares her depth of perception from her collections, The Devil’s Fools and Ember Days which will be published next year. Mary generously shares how a poem evolves, sometimes captured in a...

A fascinating glimpse into archetypal psychology with artist and therapist Dr. Nina Ross in our studio with her new book, Intimacy with Images: The Art of Archetypal Psychology. With over 35 years in practice, Nina takes us on a quiet journey into our own psyche that informs the layers of our lives and how we may see the world. We get a tiny taste of what our unique creativity may tell us and how...

Welcome in the festive spirit as we celebrate the spoken word with three of this year’s Collected Works Holiday Players. Settle softly into the timeless enchantment of Christmas morning in Northern New Mexico with gifted writer Alfredo Celadon Lujan as he reads his award-winning story, Mis Crismes. Ward off The Grinch with delightful Santa Fe theater veterans Jim and Carol McGiffin celebrating the...

An essential must-listen interview for all writers, from beginners to seasoned, with the co-founders of the Santa Fe Writers Institute. I’m joined by Dr. Katherine Ortega Courtney who is a celebrated author and nationally acclaimed expert on trauma and healing and Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, a Pulitzer-nominated author of 16 books and a seasoned TV and film producer. Their combined wisdom and unique p...

 Award-winning environmental journalist, Ben Goldfarb, joins me today from Colorado with his fascinating and compassionate new book, Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping The Future of Our Planet. Described as sweeping and spirited Crossings is also filled with humor and hope. Ben is an avid adventurer who brings his research and the science to life and shares his perception with listeners in a w...

All You Have to do is Call sounds like easy advice.  But for women in late 1960’s Chicago it is a suggestion filled with deeply conflicted emotions in the days before Roe vs. Wade became law. And again now.  Best selling novelist Kerri Maher began researching and writing All You Have To Do Is Call several years before the Supreme Court overthrew Roe vs. Wade last year.  She brings to life the voic...

 A fascinating insight into the Western United States with historian Betsy Gaines Quammen in her new book True West: Myth and Mending on The Far Side of America. Her extensive travels and conversations with people on all sides of the political spectrum and of all the different cultures that make up the West bring much needed clarity and integrity to our sometimes distorted images of this magnifice...

It’s my fourth anniversary hosting The Last Word and celebrating with me are intrepid travel journalists Judith Fein and Paul Ross, aka Cowboy Poet PJ Ross. Judie is back with more stories from her very popular book How to Communicate with Dead and How Cultures Do It Around The World. She meets a real Ghost during a ceremony in Brazil and honors the beautiful rituals of our Mexican neighbors for w...

A fascinating insight into writing and researching a historical novel, Leaving Lissadell, with Helen Molanphy, KSFR Board Vice-President. Helen’s Irish roots and admiration of Irish revolutionary Constance Gore-Booth Markiewicz have inspired her for decades and nurtured the creative seeds of Leaving Lissadell. As a Professor Emeritus in Political Science and author of The American Penal System, He...

Imagine yourself in the excitement at NASA’s manned space center in Houston in the time leading up to the first moon launch in 1969. In elegant and evocative prose Isa Arsen takes us there in her debut novel, Shoot The Moon, described as “deep, bold and crackling smart” we travel backwards and forwards and backwards time and again with Isa’s protagonist Annie from her childhood in Santa Fe’s east...

 An insight into one of this country’s appalling injustices, the life imprisonment in adult penitentiaries of teenagers as young as 13 who have been convicted of murder. Author, activist and retired pediatrician Bettye Kearse joins me to speak about an upcoming local event to help to bring awareness that may change young people’s lives, to be tried in juvenile courts and given a real chance to und...

Fourteen months out from the next general election is it possible to break big money’s stranglehold on our electoral system ? Former Santa Fe attorney and social justice activist for more than 40 years, Bruce Berlin joins me with his critically acclaimed book, Breaking Big Money’s Grip on America. With lobbyists and super PACs soliciting seemingly unlimited funds from corporations and individuals...

A priceless interview for all animal lovers with Santa Fe’s Hersch Wilson, recently retired volunteer firefighter after 33 years, soccer coach, organizational consultant, master storyteller, former dancer, author of the acclaimed Firefighter Zen and today’s newly released Dog Lessons: Learning the Important Stuff from Our Best Friends. Listen and you might tear up and deeply relate to the wisdom s...

 Mary L. Grow’s beautifully rendered story Night Train to Odessa is set 100 years ago in Ukraine as it is torn apart by civil war and the Bolshevik revolution. Yet events could be mirror images of Ukraine now, of loss of all that is loved and familiar and the desperate need to flee certain death and horror overnight. I ask the author how she creates a novel so immersive, suspenseful and intimate a...

Standing at the gravesite of their grandmother, three young children and their mother were asked to make a solemn promise that they would never, ever, put their Dad in a nursing home. Decades later, their father is deep in the trenches of vascular dementia, and they try to care for him and for their exhausted, burned out, elderly but determined mother. Then, on Christmas Day as the family gathers,...

 Since she was five years old, Bettye’s mother has reminded her of the family credo, “Always remember you’re a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president.” Her book, The Other Madisons: The Lost History of A President’s Black Family” is Bettye’s gift to her own descendants and to all of us to remember that the Founding Fathers may have laid the foundations for our country, but the actua...

A mouth-watering treat for listeners today with three-time James Beard award-winning culinary writer Anya von Bremzen with her new book, National Dish: Around The World in Search of Food, History and The Meaning of Home. Part geography, part history and an exploration of deep cultural roots, we begin in Paris with the classic home-cooked dish, pot au feu, and travel with Anya onto Naples, Italy, t...

Today, a delightful and fun chat with author and playwright Rosemary Zibart and director Nick Stofocik ahead of their long-awaited production City Mice. How does a playwright find a director and actors who can turn her long-nurtured seed idea and carefully-crafted script into a play ready for the audience and critics? What happened when Rosemary handed over City Mice to Nick? The answer may surpri...

Genies and magic rampage through the KSFR studio for 23 minutes with Albuquerque author Hugh Fritz as he brings Book One of his Mystic Rampage series to life with Made To Be Broken. Listening to Hugh reading in character is an intriguing delight as we learn about Darren, Soleil and Flarence and how they came to be in the author’s fascinating mind. Host Carly Newfeld enjoys learning about the fanta...

 A perfect show for a hot day as visual artist and poet Susan Gardner joins me with her perceptive and calming new volume of poetry, Love and The Weather. Described by fellow poet and The Last Word guest, Mary Gilliland, “Susan Gardner’s hand is practiced in the patience of noting every stage of a process, every stroke of a moment, be that the journey of water from cloud to sea, or a meeting with...

How long can you keep a secret and what happens when the secret is accidentally revealed? Award-winning author Carlyn Montes De Oca joins me with her new book, Junkyard Girl: A Memoir of Ancestry, Family Secrets and Second Chances. In her early fifties, Carlyn did a DNA test for fun, intrigued by her Mexican heritage and large, close-knit family. But when the results came back she was thrown into...

Lark Ascending: Magic, Mystery and Mayhem in A Spiritual Community is a perfect description of poet and playwright Meleth Delia Batteau’s delightful coming-of-age story set in the early days of the famous Findhorn Community in Northern Scotland. Shy 18-year-old Lark has been trained as a classical ballerina and realizing that ballet is her mother’s dream for her, not her own dream, escapes her rar...

A mysteriously delicious tale set in Venice in the early 18th Century invites you to step aside from your busy, modern life and listen to award-winning author Julia Fine. In her new book, Maddalena And The Dark, we meet 15 year old Maddalena born into the privileged Venetian society of the day and Luisa, also 15, who as a foundling has been raised in the Ospedale della Pieta home for orphans where...

 “Imagine a place of infinite beauty, peace and healing …. there is a sound that can take you there.” Words of Ashana who offers us a glimpse into that sound as she speaks about her beautiful book, “Crystal Singing Bowls: The Angelic Sound of Healing, Relaxation and Spiritual Awakening.” Let yourself rest into her music and learn about the quartz crystal bowls and her personal path as a classicall...

 A fascinating conversation with former US Ambassador Mark Asquino in the KSFR studio with his exciting memoir, Spanish Connections: My Diplomatic Journey from Venezuela to Equatorial Guinea. Reading a little like a spy thriller and an adventurous travelogue throughout, we journey around the world through the author’s nearly 40 years in the foreign service and learn the mysterious origin of his pe...