Épisodes

  • Emily Mitchell on the power of speculative fiction in strange times

    Emily Mitchell on the power of speculative fiction in strange times
    Nov 10 2025
    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 Mitchell’s created worlds, as in our own, technology bewitches, especially with its ability to heighten both connections and isolation. Whether being held by a giant and comforting machine, allowing micro-drones to record one’s every moment for a year to win prize money, or choosing self-mutilation in exchange for a bionic hand, these characters navigate technological and social change. The familiar can turn unrecognizable and disorienting—sometimes in a flash, sometimes gradually. Lyrical, haunting, and often funny, these stories ask us to consider what—and who—gets left out of a seemingly utopian future of technological advancements. Finely observed, thoughtful, and vivid, Mitchell’s stories get under your skin. It’s not that the best-laid plans could lead us astray—it’s that they may already have. Emily Mitchell, associate professor of English at the University of Maryland, is the author of a collection of short stories, Viral, and a novel, The Last Summer of the World. Her fiction has appeared in Harper’s, Ploughshares, The Sun, and elsewhere; her nonfiction has been published in the New York Times, the New Statesman, and Guernica. She serves as fiction editor for the New England Review. Author photo by J.M. Tyree.
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    51 min
  • Margaret Mooney, "Radical Family: Trailblazing Lesbian Moms Tell Their Stories"

    Margaret Mooney, "Radical Family: Trailblazing Lesbian Moms Tell Their Stories"
    Oct 27 2025
    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 insights into the pressures and pleasures of participating in what Newsweek magazine called "the gayby boom" in the years before the US Supreme Court recognized the constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Among the well-known contributors: Mooney, former Meteorologist-in-charge at the Madison National Weather Service and Gaines, founding emerita director of the UW Law School's Center for Patient Partnership; Community Shares of Wisconsin co-founder and retired Project Home executive director Denise Matyka and her wife, education consultant Margaret McMurray; retired Madison Police Detective Alix Olson and her late wife Martha Dixon Popp; former Dane County Judge Shelley Gaylord; former Wisconsin Historical Society Press editor-in-chief Kathy Borkowski, and Janet Wright, one of the co-founders of the Advocates for Battered Women, now known as Domestic Abuse Intervention Services. From Left: Meg Gaines, Stu Levitan, Margaret Mooney
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    54 min
  • Pernille Ipsen on feminism & found families in "My Seven Mothers"

    Pernille Ipsen on feminism & found families in "My Seven Mothers"
    Oct 13 2025
    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 women’s liberationists, they occupied three dilapidated apartment buildings in the center of Copenhagen. One became the country’s first Women’s House, the nerve center of the Women’s Movement in Denmark, and the other two were women-only communal living spaces that were Pernille Ipsen’s first home. In this intimate portrait of life during the exhilarating early days of women’s liberation in Scandinavia and dramatic social change around the globe, she tells the stories of these seven women, her seven mothers. Recounting her mothers’ history—from the passions and beliefs they shared to the political divisions over sexual identity that ultimately split them apart—Ipsen captures the individuality of each of her mothers as well as the common experiences that drew them together. As she deftly reflects the practical and emotional realities of her mothers’ women-centered life, Ipsen presents an engrossing picture of intersecting lives that, half a century ago, raised questions we still grapple with today: What is a family? Who is a woman? And who gets to decide? A chronicle of gender, sexuality, and feminism as it was constructed, contested, and lived, My Seven Mothers is an eye-opening account of the challenges and possibilities connected with liberation and radical social change during the 1970s. In this time of fierce struggles over family, sexuality, and child-rearing, it reminds us that new worlds are always possible. Pernille Ipsen was professor of gender and women’s studies and history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for fifteen years and is now a full-time writer. The Danish-language version of this book, Et åbent øjeblik (An open moment), was published in 2020 and was awarded the Montana Prize for literature, one of Denmark’s top literary prizes.
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    52 min
  • Mayor Dennis McBride, "A City on the Edge: Pandemic, Protest and Polarization"

    Mayor Dennis McBride, "A City on the Edge: Pandemic, Protest and Polarization"
    Sep 29 2025
    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 unique history of racial extremes – founded by east coast abolitionists in the mid-nineteenth century who made it a stop on the Underground Railroad, which by the early twentieth century had passed a “sundown law” requiring nonwhites to leave before dusk. And in the 21st century, a city where a Black police officer had fatally shot three persons of color in five years, the third coming less than four months before Black Lives Matter protests rocked urban areas around the country. Wauwatosa is politically liberal, home to the state’s largest medical center, the state's busiest mall, leading manufacturers, research parks, and several college campuses. Th best thing about Wauwatosa, of course, is that Bob Dylan immortalized it as Wow Wow Toaster in lyrics he wrote in late 1961 he called “On, Wisconsin,” which Milwaukee musician Trapper Schoepp developed into an actual song. Dennis McBride is Tosa’s 17th Mayor, elected to four-year terms in 2020 and 2024. He earned a journalism degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a master’s degree in public administration from Princeton University, and a law degree from New York University, and served 24 years as a Senior and Supervisory Trial Attorney for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Prior to his election as mayor, he served ten years on the Wauwatosa common council, including two terms as its president. He’s also a member of the UWM and Tosa East Athletics Halls of Fame. Attentive longtime BookBeat listeners may recall the name Dennis McBride from an episode in 2022 featuring his twin brother, UW Prof. Emeritus Dr. Patrick McBride talking about his memoir as the youngest Equipment Manager and Assistant Trainer in professional sports history, “The Luckiest Boy in the World,” which Dennis helped write.
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    1 h
  • David Michael Miller, "The Rise of Breese Stevens Field: Madison's ballpark and the team that made it home"

    David Michael Miller, "The Rise of Breese Stevens Field: Madison's ballpark and the team that made it home"
    Sep 22 2025
    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 community events. But once upon a time, it was the place for baseball, especially as the home field from 1926 to 1942 for the Madison Blues, five-time pennant winners in three different leagues in the 1930s, and for many other activities as well. Over its first hundred years, everything from marbles to the National Football League. It's the oldest city-owned and operated athletic field in Madison and the oldest extant masonry grandstand in Wisconsin. It bears the touch of the notable local architects Claude and Stark and the federal largesse of the New Deal and served as the backdrop to some of the most noted athletes of the 30s and 40s. It's a great Madison story which David Michael Miller tells with a verve and nerve befitting its sporty milieu, dozens of well-chosen photographs and some hard-won statistics.
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    1 h et 20 min
  • Ron Rindo on animal medicine, Amish life & the Packers

    Ron Rindo on animal medicine, Amish life & the Packers
    Sep 8 2025
    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 extraordinary athletic talent. But when the older brother who has been caring for him dies, Gabriel is taken in by his devout Amish grandparents who disapprove of all the attention and hide him away from the English world. But it’s hard to hide forever when you’re nearly eight feet tall. At seventeen, Gabriel is spotted working in a hay field by the local football coach. What happens next transforms not only Gabriel’s life but the lives of everyone he meets. Ron Rindo is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. He has published one previous novel, Breathing Lake Superior, and three short story collections. He lives in Pickett, Wisconsin.
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    53 min
  • A Kinship with Ash: Heather Swan’s Poetic Reckoning with Nature and Loss

    A Kinship with Ash: Heather Swan’s Poetic Reckoning with Nature and Loss
    Aug 25 2025
    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 natural world. Her poetry collection, A Kinship with Ash, published by Terrapin Books, is a meditation on grief, resilience, and ecological awareness. Through vivid imagery and quiet urgency, Swan’s poems invite readers to consider their place in a world marked by environmental loss and transformation. The collection is both an elegy and call to attention—an exploration of what it means to live with reverence in a time of ecological crisis. Rather than seeking solace in an untouched wilderness, Swan’s work turns toward the overlooked and the endangered: insects, birds, ash trees, and the quiet spaces where life persists. Her writing is rooted in Wisconsin’s landscape but reaches far beyond, drawing connections between personal sorrow and planetary grief. A mother, beekeeper, and award-winning author, Swan’s reflections are informed by her deep engagement with environmental literature and her own lived experience. Her previous nonfiction book, Where Honeybees Thrive: Stories from the Field, received the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award and explores the global plight of pollinators through stories of hope and activism. When not writing or teaching, Heather Swan can be found hiking, observing insects, or crafting essays that bridge science and poetry. Her work has appeared in The Sun, Aeon, Emergence, Terrain, and Minding Nature, among others. A Kinship with Ash is a lyrical reckoning with loss—both personal and ecological—and a reminder that kinship can be found in the smallest creatures and quietest places.
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    48 min
  • The Journey Within: Exploring Life and Nature in Wisconsin’s Parks

    The Journey Within: Exploring Life and Nature in Wisconsin’s Parks
    Jul 28 2025
    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 resilience to her writing. Her debut book, Time, Beauty, and Grief: A Hike Through Wisconsin’s 50 State Parks, is part memoir, part trail guide, and part reflection on growing older. Korbinyr set out to hike five miles in each of Wisconsin’s 50 state parks within a single year. The result is a life-affirming collection of essays exploring grief, healing, resilience, and the natural beauty of her home state. It is the first book to feature all 50 Wisconsin state parks, making it both a practical guide and a heartfelt meditation on growing older. Rather than focusing on far-flung adventures, Korbinyr chose to explore the natural beauty of her home state, offering readers an accessible and heartfelt journey through all 50 Wisconsin state parks. The book blends practical hiking tips with personal essays that touch on grief, healing, and the search for meaning in later life. A woman turning 65 ends up with one of her hiking boots in the grave as she embarks on a Quest to complete five miles in all 50 Wisconsin State Parks in one year. Life, like hiking, is unpredictable—despite preparation, the terrain can surprise you. Korbinyr’s reflections encourage readers to reject ageist stereotypes and embrace aging with curiosity, courage, and color. In addition to her writing, Betsy is a certified thanatologist (CT), trained in death, dying, and bereavement counseling—a perspective that subtly informs her reflections on life’s transitions. She is also an avid traveler and hiker, having explored trails across England, Ireland, India, and the U.S. When not writing or speaking at local events, Betsy enjoys gardening, creating art, and hiking, often reflecting on life with humor and humility. Time, Beauty, and Grief: A Hike Through Wisconsin’s 50 State Parks Korbinyr’s debut book is part trail guide, part memoir, and part philosophical reflection on aging. It’s the first book to include all 50 parks and encourages readers to embrace aging with curiosity and courage.
    • Published by Little Creek Press
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    47 min