Writing Westward Podcast

A conversation with Leah Sottile about her Bundyville Podcast and longform journalism. Visit https://longreads.com/bundyville.   Leah Sottile is a freelance journalist whose features, profiles, investigations and essays have been featured by the Washington Post, The New York Times Magazine, Playboy, Outside, The Atlantic, Vice and several others. She is currently the T. Anthony Pollner Distinguish...

A conversation with Debra Gwartney about her book I Am a Stranger Here Myself , published by the University of New Mexico Press in 2019.   Debra Gwartney is a former journalist and current author and memoirst who teaches in the MFA program at Pacific University. I Am a Stranger Here Myself was published in 2019 by the University of New Mexico Press and won the River Teeth Literary Nonfictin Prize....

A conversation with Eric Perramond about water in the American West and his book, Unsettled Waters: Rights, Law, and Identity in the American West , published by the California University Press in 2019.   Eric P. Perramond is Professor of Environmental Science and Southwest Studies and W.M. Keck Director of the Hulbert Center for Southwest Studies at Colorado College.  Unsettled Waters: Rights, La...

A conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist, John Branch, about his book The Last Cowboys: A Pioneer Family in the New West . John Branch is a New York Times sports reporter. Branch's previous work has received considerable acclaim. In 2011 and 2012 he ws a finalist for Pulitzer Prizes in feature writing, and in 2013 his multimedia project "Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunn...

Conversation with historian David A. Chang about his award-winning book The World and All Things Upon It: Native Hawaiian Geographies of Exploration , published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2016.   A conversation with David A. Chang about his award-winning book The World and All Things Upon It: Native Hawaiian Geographies of Exploration , published by the University of Minnesota Press i...

A conversation with Professor Beth Lew Williams and her award-winning 2018 book, The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America (Harvard University Press, 2018)     Beth Lew-Williams is an Assistant Professor and Philip and Beulah Rollins Bicentennial Preceptor in the Department of History at Princeton University. The Chinese Must Go recently won the 2019 Ray Alle...

A conversation with geographer Terence Young about his book, Heading Out: A History of American Camping (Cornell University Press, 2017)   Terence Young is a professor emeritus of geography at California State Polytechnic University. He has published widely on camping, parks, sustainability, and other topics of the environment, geography, and history. Heading Out won the 2018 Hal K. Rothman Award...

A conversation with historian Flannery Burke about her award winning book A Land Apart: The Southwest and the Nation in the Twentieth Century (University of Arizona Press, 2017)     Flannery Burke is Professor of History at Saint Louis University. She holds a Ph. D. and M.A. in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and B.A. in history from Bryn Mawr College. Burke is an historian of the...

A conversation with poet Tacey M. Atsitty about her new collection, Rain Scald: Poems , published by the University of New Mexico Press in 2018.     Atsitty holds undergraduate degrees from Brigham Young University and the Institute for American Indian Arts, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University. Her work has appeared in multiple collections and journals and earned her such accola...

A conversation with historian Stephen Pyne about his ongoing work on the history of Fire in America.   In 2015, the University of Arizona Press published his Between Two Fires: A Fire History of Contemporary America . As companion pieces to that book, his is currently published a 9-volume series entitled " To the Last Smoke ." Volumes 1-6 on Florida , California , The Northern Rockies , The Southw...

A conversation with Benjamin Johnson about his book Escaping the Dark Gray City: Fear and Hope in Progressive-Era Conservation , published by Yale University Press in 2017.   Benjamin Johnson is an Associate Professor of History at Loyola University in Chicago. He is also the author of Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten Rebellion and Its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans (Yale Un...

A conversation with Victoria Lamont about her book Westerns: A Women's History , published in 2016 by the University of Nebraska Press as part of the " Postwestern Horizons " Series.   Victoria Lamont is an Associate Professor of English and the Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Waterloo. ----more---- Podcast Notes: Host and Producer Brenden W. Rensink is Assistant Dire...

A conversation with Louis S. Warren about his book, God's Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America , published in 2017 by Basic Books and recipient of the 2018 Bancroft Prize.   Louis Warren is the W. Turrentine Jackson Professor of Western U.S. History at the University of California, Davis. He previously authored The Hunter's Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twent...