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  1. Logan Ward

    January 25, 2008 by pete

    See You In a Hundred Years

    Original airdate: June 22, 2007

    Logan Ward and his wife, Heather, had traveled the world—Kenya, France, Peru. But nothing compared to their next adventure: a trip back in time, living the life of dirt farmers in rural Virginia circa 1900.

    Disillusioned by city life, the Wards pulled their son out of daycare and traded skyscrapers for silos in search of simpler times. Adopting strict rules that limited them to only the tools that were available at the turn of the century, they faced a year of struggles, where unremarkable feats—putting food on the table, attending a neighbor’s 4th of July party—became the worthiest accomplishments of their lives.

    With no phone, no computer, and few distractions aside from irritable livestock and a plague of garden pests, Logan and Heather began to reconnect and rebuild their fractured marriage. More than that, they found what they didn’t know they were looking for—community. As the skepticism of neighbors and family turned to admiration, the Wards developed a network of support and love bound by neither time nor technology. By renouncing everything from cell phones to supermarkets they discovered what’s important in life, whether a hundred years ago or a hundred years in the future.

    Logan’s chronicle of the Wards’ four seasons in the farming community of Swoope is an honest and compelling account of one family’s struggle to reclaim their lives from our fast-paced, materialistic society—a memoir for our modern age. See You in a Hundred Years is for anyone who has ever daydreamed about the good old days—and wondered how good they really were.

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    Visit the author’s website:

    www.loganward.com
     

    Category Nonfiction | Tags: | 2 Comments

  2. Kelly Justice and Ward Tefft

    December 21, 2007 by pete

    The Year in Review

    Original airdate: December 21, 2007

    Joining me today are Kelly Justice, manager of Fountain Bookstore in Shockoe Slip and Ward Tefft, owner of Chop Suey Books in the Fan and Chop Suey Tuey in Carytown. Our conversation is a loose dialogue about everything from the death of print, the birth of cellphone fiction and the soon-to-be-extinct “Page Turning Buzz.” We also discuss several of our favorite books of the year, including “No One Belongs Here More Than You” by Miranda July, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie and “Jamestown” by Matthew Sharpe.

    Happy Holidays, and thanks for tuning in all year…

    Liz 

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    Category Local | Tags: | No Comments

  3. Michael Knight

    December 14, 2007 by pete

    The Holiday Season

    Original airdate: December 14, 2007

    About the book: “In the spirit of Truman Capote’s classic holiday book, A Christmas Memory, award-winning writer Michael Knight delivers a poignant meditation on loss, legacy, and love, at a particularly complicated time of year. In The Holiday Season, the Posey men are still figuring out how to be a family years after the death of the wife and mother who bound them together. As Thanksgiving nears, hairline fractures in the Poseys’ relationships finally splinter and crack over what should be, but never is, a simple question: where to spend the holidays. Patriarch Jeff wants everything to remain how it was when his wife was alive, but his oldest son thinks it’s time to move on and establish fresh traditions. Caught in the middle is younger son, Frank, a struggling actor who, as the conflict between his father and brother escalates, is finally forced to choose between them. The companion piece, Love at the End of the Year, is an intoxicating tale that weighs up love in its many forms over the course of a single, magical Alabama New Year’s Eve.”

    Thanks for tuning in.

    Liz 

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    Category Fiction | Tags: | No Comments

  4. Richard Fine

    December 7, 2007 by pete

    Talking About the Writer’s Strike

    Original airdate: December 7, 2007

    On November 5th, 2007 the Writers Guild of America officially put down their pens and picked up their picket signs. Since that day, the cinematic scribes have shut down Hollywood, put the late night talk shows into repeats, stopped a presidential debate and kept every syndicated radio show hypothesizing about its outcome for five weeks. But what is it really all about?

    In the 80’s the Writer’s Guild of America accepted a token residual for the re-release of their work on home video. The digital future holds billions in potential revenue for the studio owning conglomerates but where do the writers fall in this category? The producers say that the future of downloading video is too tentative to sign any type of official agreement.  The once burnt writers are crying, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

    My guest this week, Richard Fine, is a Professor of English and former chair of the English Department at VCU, where he has taught since 1979.  He was educated at Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania.  He routinely teaches courses in 20th century American literature as well as courses in film and film history.  He is the author of “West of Eden: Writers in Hollywood, 1928-1940″ and “James M. Cain and the American Authors Authority,” an account of the controversial attempt to organize American writers nationwide in the late 1940s.

    On this show we discuss the long history of writers versus producers and why what they do is so unique and difficult. At the end of the show, Mr. Fine gives a stunning speech on the necessity of good writers and why they will always be “at a premium.”

    Richard Fine is also the founding director of VCU’s innovative Glasgow Artists and Writers Workshop, a month-long program held at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland every other summer, and has been a visiting professor at two different French universities. He is currently at work on two quite varied projects, one about the doctrine of moral rights as it relates to intellectual property law in France and the United States, and the other a study of how the American press related to the military during the Second World War.

    Thanks for tuning in.

    Liz 

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    Category Nonfiction | Tags: | No Comments

  5. Susan Hume Frazer

    November 30, 2007 by pete

    The Architecture of William Lawrence Bottomley

    Original airdate: November 30, 2007

    About the book: Refined country houses, gracious urban dwellings, posh Broadway cafés, exotic nightclubs, and a high-rise apartment building that, 80 years after its construction, is still considered the epitome of tony living in Manhattan these are among the many achievements of William Lawrence Bottomley, one of the best American architects of the first half of the 20th century. During his 40-year career, Bottomley designed and executed over 180 commissions for his clients. An uncompromising perfectionist with refined taste, he oversaw virtually every facet of his projects, from interior ornamentation and decoration to the surrounding landscape design.

    THE ARCHITECTURE OF WILLIAM LAWRENCE BOTTOMLEY is the first comprehensive study of this master architect and designer. Richly illustrated with archival photographs and floor plans, the book examines 34 of the architect s structures nationwide and includes a catalogue of 185 commissions and a comprehensive bibliography.

    Susan Hume Frazer, PhD, is an independent scholar, writer, and lecturer in American architecture and the decorative arts, and president of Hume-Frazer Associates, LLC, a firm devoted to architectural history research and consultation. She resides with her husband, Jack, and their Westie, Simon, in the Fan District of Richmond, Virginia, surrounded by buildings designed by William Lawrence Bottomley.

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    Category Nonfiction | Tags: | 2 Comments

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