To Be Read

The Book Show – Radio Show Features Engaging Conversations and Interviews with Writers and Authors

In recent years, many people have lamented the declining book review sections of many daily newspapers. Despite that sad loss, digital media is offering more and more great book content for book lovers.

The Book Show is a long-running radio show on WAMC, the NPR station in Albany, New York. The Book Show interviews a wide variety of novelists, biographers, and non-fiction writers.

Recent interviews have included: Richard Ford, author of the new novel Canada; Lauren Groff, author of Arcadia; Hazel Rowley, biographer of FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt in her book Franklin and Eleanor; Jay Parini, author of The Passages of H.M., a new novel about the life of Herman Melville; and, Helen Simonson, author of the new new novel, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand.

Back episodes are available on iTunes and other podcast directories. However, newer episodes of The Book Show are available on the site’s website, but not available as a podcast feed (sigh).

Former host of The Book Show, Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina is is the Kathe Tappe Vernon Professor in Biography at Dartmouth College, where she also chairs the English Department. She is the author or editor of seven books of nonfiction which have been widely reviewed, and has appeared numerous times on British radio and television. Her books are Carrington; Black London; Black Victorians/Black Victoriana; Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Unexpected Life of the Author of the Secret Garden; as well as the Norton Critical Edition of The Secret Garden, the Annotated Secret Garden, and Mr. and Mrs Prince: How an Extraordinary 18th Century Family Moved out of Slavery and into Legend. Gretchen has been hosting The Book Show since 1997.

Current host of The Book Show, Joe Donahue has been part of the book world since childhood. His first job was as a library assistant, during college he was a clerk at an independent book store and for the past 25 years he has been interviewing authors about their books on the radio.

He is also the host of The Roundtable on WAMC/Northeast Public Radio, a 3-hour general interest talk show. Notable authors he has interviewed include: Kurt Vonnegut, John Irving, John Updike, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Arthur Miller, Stephen King, Amy Tan, Anne Rice, Philip Roth, E.L Doctorow, Richard Russo, David Sedaris and Maya Angelou.

He has won several awards for his interviews, including honors from the Associated Press, the Edward R. Murrow Awards, the New York State Association of Broadcasters, The Headliners, The National Press Club and the Scripps-Howard Foundation.

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