Author interviews

The new season, with the theme of Northern Borderlands opens with guest Howard Frank Mosher, author of North Country: A Personal Journey, a chronicle of this Vermonter's trip across the North American continent along the border between Canada and the US. Ellen Rocco and Chris Robinson host.

Adirondack author and activist Barbara McMartin died yesterday at the age of 73. She had been battling breast cancer for more than two decades. McMartin spent thirty years exploring the region. She wrote more than twenty books, capturing the history and the environmental conflicts of the Adirondacks. She authored and edited a series of popular guidebooks. McMartin also sat on the state's Forest Preserve Advisory committee and served as its chairman. She was honored in 2004 by the Residents Committee for the Protection of the Adirondacks, with an Adirondack Park Defender award. Brian Mann traveled to McMartin's home in Canada Lake last year to talk with about her life and her final book The Privately Owned Adirondacks.

The yarn harlot comes to Canton tonight. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is author of a book called “At Knit’s End” Meditation for Women Who Knit Too Much”, author also of a funny web blog for people like her who are obsessed with knitting. Pearl-McPhee is a mother in her mid-thirties, a Canadian. She’s found echoes of her OWN fixation in the hearts of knitters across both Canada and the US. She’ll be at the St. Lawrence University Bookstore in Canton this evening from 6 to 8. Martha Foley spoke with her in May. She was at home in Toronto.

Canadian author Maggie Wheeler says she never intended to write a series of murder mysteries. But with the success of her first book, A Violent End, she's been called a prominent voice in preserving and celebrating the history of eastern Ontario. Specifically a stretch of the St. Lawrence River between Morrisburg and Cornwall, Ontario. It's an area known as Lake St. Lawrence and the Lost Villages. When the Seaway opened in 1958, six communities were lost in the planned flood. Wheeler will discuss her novels A Violent End and its sequel, The Brother of Sleep, Thursday evening at 7 and again Friday at 12:30 at the Potsdam Public Library. Todd Moe spoke with her at the Nightingale B&B in Ingleside, Ontario – the setting of her third novel due out next year. Wheeler says her books are historical fiction set along the 1950's St. Lawrence Seaway and the Power Project.

Todd Moe talks with Keene Valley writer Alden Dumas about his adventure novel, Mists of the Couchsacrage — Rescue from State Land. Dumas admits that his first novel is not a typical Adirondack book. It's the story of a plane crash and rescue during an ice storm, but it also delves into issues of land use and property rights. Dumas is a 4th generation Adirondacker who grew up in Tupper Lake and still hunts each fall in the Cranberry Lake area.

The lives and traditions of the settlers in the central and southern Adirondacks are the subjects of a new book by William "Jay" O'Hern. The book, Adirondack Characters and Campfire Yarns, is a treasury of Adirondack history and folklore. It's a collection of familiar and seldom written-about people and customs, and includes dozens of vintage photos. O'Hern lives in rural Camden, on the Tug Hill Plateau, where he worked as an elementary school teacher for 35 years. His family has visited the Adirondacks since the 1940s, and he told Todd Moe that his favorite pastime is bushwhacking.

Todd Moe talks with writer Pamela Cranston about her first book of poetry called Coming to Treeline. Cranston's poems celebrate the mountains, people and nature of the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks. The book is dedicated to her parents and in memory of her brother, David, who died in 1995. Cranston was born in New York City and was raised in New England. She and her family have summered in the Keene Valley area for more than 50 years. You can meet Pamela at "Fact and Fiction" bookstore in Saranac Lake, Saturday, July 2nd from 11am-1pm. On Sunday, July 3rd, she hosts a book party, open to the public, at the Keene Valley Library at 3 pm.

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is the author of a book called At Knit’s End, Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much. She also writes a funny web blog for people like her who are obsessed with knitting. Pearl-McPhee is a mother in her mid-thirties, a Canadian, who has found echoes of her OWN fixation in the hearts of knitters across both Canada and the US. She'll be at Kaleidescope Yarns in Essex Junction, VT tomorrow from 3 to 6. She took time out from her book tour to talk with Martha Foley.

Jonathan Schell, author of The Unconquerable World, wraps up our year-long exploration of books on war and peace. He talks with NCPR listeners and callers about his new thought-provoking study of nonviolence as a powerful force for political change in our world. Ellen Rocco, Chris Robinson and Dale Hobson host.

Dr. Bernd Heinrich is one of the country’s most prominent nature writers. Based in Burlington, Vermont, and Western Maine, Heinrich teaches biology at the University of Vermont. He has written classic nature books like Bumblebee Economics and Ravens in Winter. Over the weekend, the Adirondack Center for Writing hosted a seminar with Heinrich at the Paul Smiths Visitor Interpretive Center. Heinrich was joined in a public conversation by Dr. Curt Stager, a professor at Paul Smiths College. He was also joined by Chris Shaw, Vermont-based author of Sacred Monkey River, who teaches writing at Middlebury College. Their conversation treated the art of writing and the value of science as we look for the meaning and beauty in nature.