Brian Turner and Bruce Weigl

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on March 5, 2008.

Brian Turner (right) and Bruce Weigl at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Wednesday, March 5, 2008. Photo: Don Usner
Brian Turner is a soldier-poet whose debut book of poems, Here, Bullet, won the New York Times “Editor’s Choice” selection. His poetry has been published in Poetry Daily, The Georgia Review and other journals, and in the Voices in Wartime Anthology. Here, Bullet is a harrowing, beautiful first-person account of the Iraq war featuring poems that reflect Turner’s experiences as a soldier. The poems speak with compassion, sympathy, and horror of the first-hand experience of war and with immediacy of loss, beauty, comradeship, and longing for home and the familiar; he deplores the violence and acknowledges the grief and terror of war.

>Bruce Weigl is the author of 12 collections of poetry, most recently Declension in the Village of Chung Luong which created “an eloquent spokesman for an entire generation of Americans whose lives were broken by the war and a country whose moral confusion desperately needed addressing.” His memoir, The Circle of Hahn, tells of his childhood in Ohio; his induction into the U.S. Army in 1967, and year in Vietnam that led to his passion for that country’s poetry and culture; and of a redemptive meeting in 1996 with his daughter-to-be at an orphanage outside Hanoi. He also has three collections of essays as well as translating and publishing books of Vietnamese poetry. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Harpers, and many other publications. In 2006 he was awarded a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.

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Length: 1:39:59; Size: 23.5 MB


Linh Dinh with Charles Alexander

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on February 27, 2008.

Linh Dinh (right) in conversation with Charles Alexander at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Wednesday, February 27, 2008. Photo: Don Usner
Linh Dinh is the author of Fake House, where we meet American and Vietnamese characters such as a white man considering ordering an Asian mail-order bride; a Vietnamese man wondering why more young women in his village don't accept money to marry foreigners; and a white woman who believes she's the ugliest female in the world. His second volume of stories, Blood and Soap, was chosen by the Village Voice as one of the best books of 2004. Dinh has also authored four books of poetry including Jam Alerts, All Around What Empties Out, American Tatts, and Borderless Bodies. He is also the editor of the anthology Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam.

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Length: 1:18:32; Size: 37.2 MB


Eamon Grennan with Dennis O’Driscoll

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on February 13, 2008.

Eamon Grennan (right) in conversation with Dennis O'Driscoll at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Wednesday, February 13, 2008. Photo: Don Usner
Eamon Grennan has said, "As far as I'm concerned, poetry is about elegy. Every poem is a memory of some kind, a celebratory elegy. Poems are like shells. Something is gone and that's why you write." His volumes of poetry include So It Goes, Still Life with Waterfall, and his latest, The Quick of It. He writes in both the ancient tradition of mournful remembrance in attention to the natural world and the modern impulse to seize and preserve the moment. Grennan returns to his native Ireland yearly for "voice transfusions" from his home in New York, where he teaches at Vassar College.

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Length: 1:32:24; Size: 22.1 MB


Mike Davis with Susan Straight

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on January 16, 2008.

Mike Davis in conversation with Susan Straight at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Wednesday, January 16, 2008. Photo: Don Usner
Mike Davis was born in Fontana, California, 60 miles east of Los Angeles in 1946, and is a veteran of 1960's civil rights and anti-war movements. From his first book, Prisoners of the American Dream (1986), about unionism in the United States, to his most recent, Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb (2007), Davis' fearless writing in 18 books shines a fresh light on economic, social, environmental, and political injustice. Some of his other books include City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, Magical Urbanism, Planet of Slums, Dead Cities, In Praise of Barbarians, and No One is Illegal. He is currently working on a book about climate change, water, and power in the U.S. West and northern Mexico. A former meat cutter and long-distance truck driver, Davis has been a fellow at the Getty Institute and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1998. He teaches at the University of California, Irvine.

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Length: 0:57:39; Size: 13.8 MB


Naomi Klein with Laura Flanders

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on December 12, 2007.

Naomi Klein (right) in conversation with Laura Flanders at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Wednesday, December 12, 2007. Photo: Don Usner
Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and author of the international bestseller No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, called "a movement bible" by The New York Times. Her book Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate was published in 2002 and in 2004 she and Avi Lewis released The Take, a feature documentary about Argentina's worker-occupied factories. Klein writes a regular column for The Nation and The Guardian. Her latest book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, was published earlier this year.

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Length: 1:36:50; Size: 22.2 MB


Richard Powers with Brad Leithauser

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on November 14, 2007.

Richard Powers (right) in conversation with Brad Leithauser at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Wednesday, November 14, 2007. Photo: Don Usner
Richard Powers has said, "fiction can travel anywhere, and probably should." He is the author of nine novels that explore connections among disparate disciplines such as photography, artificial intelligence, music composition, molecular biology, game theory, and American business. His recent novel, The Echo Maker, which won the 2006 National Book Award, is a gripping mystery that explores the improvised human self and the even more precarious brain that splits us from and joins us to the rest of creation. His other novels include Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, Prisoner's Dilemma, The Gold Bug Variations, Operation Wandering Soul, Galatea 2.2, Gain, Plowing the Dark, and The Time of Our Singing. He has been called one of the greatest American novelists of his generation.

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Length: 1:13:27; Size: 16.8 MB


Carl Safina with Julie Packard

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on March 28, 2007.

Carl Safina (left) in conversation with Julie Packard at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Wednesday, March 28, 2007. Photo: Don Usner
Carl Safina is the president of Blue Ocean Institute, whose main focus is using science, art, and literature to inspire a "sea ethic"—a closer relationship with the sea. His first book, Song for the Blue Ocean, takes readers on a global journey of discovery probing for truth about the world's changing seas, weaving adventure, science and political analysis along the way. His newest book, Voyage of the Turtle, is an impassioned account of the plight of ocean-dwelling turtles. Safina is also author of Eye of the Albatross and co-author of Seafood Lover's Almanac.

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Length: 1:21:39; Size: 56.1 MB


Tim Flannery with Amy Goodman

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on October 24, 2007.

Tim Flannery (right) in conversation with Amy Goodman at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Wednesday, October 24, 2007. Photo: Don Usner
Tim Flannery is on a mission. He believes human activity is drastically altering the earth's climate, and in time these changes will have a devastating effect. In The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What it Means for Life on Earth, he traces the story of climate change over millions of years and exposes the substantial, human-induced impact and likely effects if this process continues. He then proposes a plan to halt, and ultimately reverse, this trend. The book has been published in 32 countries and has played a key role in international discussion of the issue. A regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and The Times Literary Supplement, Flannery also contributes to NPR and the BBC.

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Length: 1:40:30; Size: 46.1 MB


Martin Espada with John Nichols

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on October 3, 2007.

Martin Espada (left) in conversation with John Nichols at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Wednesday, October 3, 2007. Photo: Don Usner
Martin Espada, called "the Pablo Neruda of North American authors" by Sandra Cisneros, has published thirteen books as a poet, essayist, editor and translator. Of his most recent collection of poems, The Republic of Poetry, Samuel Hazo writes: "Espada unites in these poems the fierce allegiances of Latin American poetry to freedom and glory with the democratic tradition of Whitman, and the result is poetry of fire and passionate intelligence." His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Harper's, The Nation, and The Best American Poetry.

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Length: 1:27:32; Size: 40.1 MB


Ana Castillo with Ruth Lopez

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on October 12, 2000.

Ana Castillo is a novelist, poet, essayist, and translator, whose books include Peel My Love Like an Onion; Loverboys; So Far from God; and Massacre of the Dreamers.

Born in Chicago of Mexican ancestry, Ms. Castillo has been honored with an NEA fellowship, an American Book Award, and the Carl Sandburg Prize. Ms. Castillo, whose work has explored the issues of war, ecology, oppression, and exploitation, is current working on a novel about women working in sweatshop conditions along the Mexican border.

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Length: 1:21:45; Size: 20.5 MB