Sunday at 10:30 am central (and Monday at 1:30 pm central) get ready from some girl fights behind the pancake house!

Poet Dorianne Laux rumbles into the haunted studio (via phone call) and shakes things up with her unstoppable verse.

Dorianne Laux was born in Augusta, Maine, in 1952. She worked as a sanatorium cook, a gas station manager, a maid, and a donut holer before receiving a B.A. in English from Mills College in 1988.

Laux is the author of Facts About the Moon (W. W. Norton 2005), which was the recipient of the Oregon Book Award, chosen by Ai, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Her other collections include Smoke (BOA Editions, 2000); What We Carry (1994), finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Awake (1990), which was nominated for the San Francisco Bay Area Book Critics Award for Poetry.  read more »

Tune in Sundays at 10:30 am central or Mondays at 1:30 pm central.

Tune in Sunday August 17th at 10:30 am central (or the following Monday at 1:30 pm central).

This episode was recorded live at Revelations Bookstore and Cafe in the Heart of the Cultural District of Fairfield, Iowa. Part deux will feature Matt Jaffe, Klezmer violinist, accompanied by Jonathan Worcester on guitar.

Poets: Bill Graeser and Dan Troxell.

Bill Graeser is from Long Island and is the University's Locksmith. Dan is from Des Moines and is the host of "Readings at Zanzibar's" (it's the KGB of the Midwest, sweetheart). Hey, I've read there. This series rocks the beans in the roasting machine.

L'chaim!

Next episode: Sunday, August 3 at 10:30 am CT tune in for a fascinating interview with Jim Autry!

Autry is the retired president of the Meredith Magazine Group, and had a distinguished career as an editor and publisher. Autry has been active in many civic, charitable, and arts organizations, most notably working with disability rights groups for more than 35 years. He served as president, chairman, and chairman emeritus of the Epilepsy Foundation of America. He is a founding member of the board of Peoplefor the American Way. He is also a founder of the Des Moines National Poetry Festival.

Mr. Autry is the author of ten books, and his writings have appeared in several anthologies and magazines. He consults and speaks on leadership in this country and abroad. He was a featured poet in Bill Moyers' 1989 PBS series, The Power of the Word, and Garrison Keillor has featured his work on The Writer's Corner on NPR. He received a BA in Journalism from the University of Mississippi and holds four honorary degrees. In 1997-98, he held an endowed chair in leadership at Iowa State University, and has received the "Lifetime Service to the Public Humanities" award from the Iowa Humanities Board.

He says that his real claim to fame is that he is married to Iowa's former Lieutenant Governor, Sally Pederson.  read more »

Mark Cox chairs the Department of Creative Writing at UNC Wilmington and teaches in the MFA in Writing Program of Vermont College. He is the recipient of the Whiting Writers' Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Kansas Arts Commission Fellowship, two awards from the Vermont Council on the Arts, and a Bread Loaf Writers' conference Fellowship.

Cox has published poems in such magazines as American Poetry Review, Poetry, and Crazyhorse. Ampersand Press published his chapbook, Barbells of the Gods, in 1988. Godine published Smoulder, his first full-length collection in 1989. His second collection, Thirty-Seven Years from the Stone, and his latest book, Natural Causes, were both published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Next up is J. P. Dancing Bear, Sunday, June 15th at 10:30 am, central time.

J.P. Dancing Bear lives in Northern California. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in hundreds of publications including Shenandoah, Mississippi Review, Cimarron Review, Poetry East, North American Review, Atlanta Review, Verse Daily, The National Poetry Review, Poetry International, Marlboro Review, Hotel Amerika, Interim, Seattle Review, Permafrost, Puerto Del Sol, Controlled Burn, Cranky, Rattle, Americas Review, and Slipstream.

He is a founding editor of Disquieting Muses and was the Editor-in-Chief of Disquieting Muses/DMQ Review for five years. He is now the editor of The American Poetry Journal. Bear is the owner of Dream Horse Press, publisher of the first animal rights poetry anthology And We The Creatures, Ryan G. Van Cleave's The Florida Letters, C. J. Sage's Let's Not Sleep and Michael McNeilley's Situational Reality. He is the author of several chapbooks. Dancing Bear's poems have been nominated eight times for Pushcart Prizes. He is the host of "Out of Our Minds" a weekly radio show for public radio station KKUP featuring some of today's best contemporary poets. His chapbook, What Language, won the 2002 Slipstream Press Poetry Prize.  read more »

Sunday, June 1st at 10:30 am CT, worship and adore Maureen Alsop. Maureen is the author of Apparition Wren, published by Main Street Rag in 2007.

 read more »

Sunday, May 18th at 10:30 am CST tune in for Mary Swander. (She brought her banjo!)

Mary's Swander's most recent work is a forthcoming book of poetry entitled The Girls on the Roof (Turning Point Press, 2009). This long narrative poem is the story of a mother and daughter stuck on top of the roof of catfish dive on the banks of the Mississippi River for three days during the 1993 flood. There, they discover they’ve both had an affair with the same man.  read more »