Writing Westward Podcast

A conversation with geographer Andrew Curley about his book, Carbon Sovereignty: Coal, Development, and Energy Transition in the Navajo Nation (University of Arizona Press, 2023). Andrew Curley is a member of the Navajo Nation and an Assistant Professor in the School of Geography, Development and Environment at the University of Arizona. His book, Carbon Sovereignty: Coal, Development, and Energy...

A conversation with historian Peter Boag about their book Pioneering Death: The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-of-the-Century Oregon (University of Washington Press, 2022). Peter Boag is Professor and Columbia Chair in the History of the American West at Washington State University. He is a historian of gender, sexuality, the environment, and culture in the American West and the Pacific Northwest. Al...

A conversation with cartoonist Navied Mahdavian about his graphic novel memoir, This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America (Princeton Architectural Press, 2023). Navied Mahdavian is is a cartoonist and writer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker since 2018. You may have also seen his work in Readers Digest, Wired, and elsewhere. Find him at @naviedm on Instagram, on his substack...

A conversation with historian Natalia Molina about their book A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community (University of California Press, 2022). Natalia Molina is Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and Dean's Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. In 2020 she was named a MacArthur Fellow. Her most rec...

A conversation with Sarah Keyes about their book American Burial Ground: A New history of the Overland Trail (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023). Sarah Keyes is an assistant professor of history at the University of Nevada, Reno. She earned her PhD from the University of Southern California and studies the intercultural relations between Indigenous and Euro-American peoples. After securing pu...

A conversation with Heather Hansman about their book Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns, and The Future of Chasing Snow (Hanover Square Press, 2021). Heather Hansman is the author of Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns, and The Future of Chasing Snow (Hanover Square Press, 2021, paperback, 2023), and Downriver: Into the Future of Water in the West . She's a contributing editor at Outside magazine, and...

A conversation with historian Molly P. Rozum about their new book, Grasslands Grown: Creating Place on the U.S. Northern Plains and Canadian Prairies (University of Nebraska Press & University of Manitoba Press, 2021). Molly P. Rozum is associate professor of history and the Ronald M. Nelson Distinguished Professor and Chair of Great Plains and South Dakota History at the University of South D...

A conversation with literary scholar Michael K. Johnson about their book, Speculative Wests: Popular Representations of a Region and Genre (University of Nebraska Press, 2023).     Michael K. Johnson is Professor of American literature at the University of Maine at Farmington. His primary research areas are African American Literature and the literature and culture of the American West. Johnson's...

A conversation with geoscientist Ellen Wohl about their books, Something Hidden in the Ranges: The Secret Life of Mountain Ecosystems and Dead Wood: The Afterlife of Trees (Oregon State University Press, 2021 and 2022).   Dr. Ellen Wohl is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Colorado State University.    Selected additional titles by Wohl include: Rain Forest I...

A conversation with Andrea Geiger about their new book, Converging Empires: Citizens and Subjects in the North Pacific Borderlands, 1867-1945 (University of North Carolina Press, 2023).   Andrea Geiger is professor emerita of history from Simon Frasier University in British Columbia. With an international childhood spent in Japan, the Netherlands, India, and elsewhere, she had a successful first c...

A conversation with Melissa L. Sevigny about their book Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon (W. W. Norton, 2023).   Melissa L. Sevigny is a science journalist at the Arizona Public Radio station KNAU in Flagstaff. Her writing intersects science, nature, and history, with a focus on the American southwest. She earned a BS in Environmental Sc...

A conversation with Bryce Andrews about their book, Holding Fire: A Reckoning with the American West (Mariner Books, Harper Collins imprint, 2023).   Bryce Andrews is an award-winning author originally from Seattle but who has spent the majority of his adult life as a rancher and farmer in western Montana. His first book, Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West (Atria Books, Simon &...

A conversation with Craig Childs about their book, Tracing Time: Seasons of Rock Art on the Colorado Plateau (Torrey House Press, 2022).   Craig Childs is a multiple-award winning author with more than a dozen books (and countless shorter pieces) on outdoor adventures, wilderness, and science to his name. You can find information on his other books and writings at his website, www.houseofrain.com...

A conversation with Anne F. Hyde about her book, Born of Lakes and Plains: Mixed-Descent Peoples and the Making of the American West (W. W. Norton, 2022).   Anne Hyde is Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma and Editor-in-Chief of the Western Historical Quarterly.   Some of her other publications include: The West in the History of the Nation , vols 1 & 2, co-edited with William F...

A conversation with Timothy Paul Bowman about his book You Will Never be One of Us: A Teacher, A Texas Town, and the Rural Roots of Radical Conservatism (University of Oklahoma Press, 2022).   Timothy Paul Bowman is Associate Professor History and Chair of the Department of History at West Texas A&M University where has also helped adminsiter the Center for the Study of the American West . Bow...

A conversation with Prof. Alaina E. Roberts about her book, I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021).   Alaina E. Roberts is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh , where she studies the intersection of Black and Native American life from the Civil War to the modern day. Dr. Roberts is the author of  I’ve Been H...

A conversation with Prof. Cameron Blevins about his recent book, Paper Trails: The US Post and the Making of the American West (Oxford University Press, 2021), and his associated digital history and mapping website, Gossamer Network .   Cameron Blevins is associate professor in the History Department at the University of Colorado Denver. He is a historian and a leader in the growing field of digit...

A conversation with historian Kevin Waite about his award-winning book, West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire (University of North Carolina Press, 2021).   Kevin Waite is an assistant professor of history at Durham University in the United Kingdom. His 2021 book, West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire won the 2022 Wiley-Silver Prize from the Cen...

A conversation with Josh Garrett-Davis about his essay collection, What is a Western? Region, Genre, Imagination (University of Oklahoma Press, 2019).   Josh Garrett-Davis is the Gamble Associate Curator at the Autry Museum of the American West , author of multiple books and many public-facing shorter articles and pieces. He collected some of these, and penned a number more, for his richly illustr...

A conversation with Robert Chaney about is book, The Grizzly in the Driveway: The Return of Bears to a Crowded American West (University of Washington Press, 2020).   Robert Chaney is a journalist based in Montana and the managing editor of one of the region’s major newspapers, The Missoulian. Much of his work in the past decades has focused on the environment and the thorny issues of managing our...

A conversation with historian Christian S. Harrison about his book, All the Water the Law Allows: Las Vegas and Colorado River Politics (University of Oklahoma Press, 2021).   Christian S. Harrison is an environmental historian in Nevada. He hold a PhD in History from the University of Nevada Las Vegas, teaches government at Coronado High School in Henderson, NV, and is a board member of the nonpr...

A conversation with historian Jon T. Coleman about his book, Nature Shock: Getting Lost in America (Yale University Press, 2020).   Jon T. Coleman is the Andrew V. Tackes College Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He his author of three books, the multiple-award winning Vicious: Wolves and Men in America (Yale University Press, 2004), Here Lies Hugh Glass: A Mountain Man, a Bear...

A conversation with Corinna Cook about her collection, Leavetakings: Essays (University of Alaska Press, 2020).   Corinna Cook is a former Fulbright Fellow, an Alaska Literary Award recipient, and a Rasmuson Foundation awardee. She has a Ph. D. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Missouri. Her collection of essays, Leavetakings: Essays , was published in 2020 by the University o...

A conversation with Sarah Deutsch about her book, Making a Modern U.S. West: The Contested Terrain of a Region and its Borders, 1898-1940 (University of Nebraska Press, 2022).   Sarah Deutsch is a professor of history at Duke University. Her book, Making a Modern U.S. West: The Contested Terrain of a Region and its Borders, 1898-1940 , was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2022 in t...

A conversation with Sara Humphreys about her book, Manifest Destiny 2.0: Genre Trouble in Game Worlds (University of Nebraska Press, 2021).   Dr. Sara Humphreys is an assistant teaching professor of English at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. She holds a BA at Nipissing University in English, my MA at the University of Toronto in English , and my PhD at the University of Wat...