Author2Author

Bill welcomes authors Tyron Greer and Beth Weir to the show, who were two of seven contributors to the essay and poetry collection Writing While Masked, a book born from the challenges of lockdown. Tyson Greer is an award-winning writer who, for twenty years, ran her own media company, Tyson Greer….Writes, writing on topics from art to virtual reality for national, regional, and local magazines. She also wrote and directed corporate television and documentaries, which aired on local cable and KCTS-9, and taught screenwriting for the University of Washington. Tyson authored a book for the Microsoft Press Strategic Technology series that was published in eight languages and has contributed to, ghost-written, or edited other non-fiction books. She is also an accomplished visual artist whose works are in U.S. private collections. Beth Weir is a former elementary teacher and college professor in education with an interest in literacy acquisition.  She has had a life-long interest in oral storytelling and is the author of Introducing Children to Folk Tales. She has published articles in airline and gardening magazines and blogged on behalf of Dunn Gardens when she worked as the director for five years.

Bill welcomes author and teacher Nancy Slonim Aronie to the show. Nancy is the author of Writing from the Heart. She has been a regular contributor to National Public Radio's All Things Considered. She was recognized for excellence in teaching all three years she taught at Harvard University for Robert Coles. She has joined with physicians and writers from Columbia University's program in narrative medicine to lead workshops using her Writing from the Heart. Her latest book is Memoir as Medicine: The Healing Power of Writing Your messy, Imperfect, Unruly (but Gorgeously Yours) Life Story.

Bill welcomes filmmaker and debut novelist P. David Ebersole to the show. David is an award-winning independent filmmaker and television director working in both narrative and documentary. Born and raised in Hollywood, he is the son of a psychologist and his step-father was the City Editor of the Los Angeles Times. His credits include the documentary HIT SO HARD (2012) about drummer Patty Schemel of the seminal grunge band Hole. Along with his husband and business partner Todd Hughes, he is Executive Producer and Director of several documentaries including the new, MY NAME IS LOPEZ (2021) about trailblazing Latino rock and roller Trini Lopez. 99 Miles From LA is his debut novel.

Bill welcomes historical novelist Connie Hertzberg Mayo to the show. Connie grew up in Westchester County, New York, but moved to Massachusetts to get a Literature degree from Tufts University and never ended up leaving. Her first book, THE ISLAND OF WORTHY BOYS, (2015, She Writes Press) won the 2016 Gold Medal for Best Regional Fiction in the Independent Publisher Book Awards. Connie’s short story, “Little Breaks”, was published by Calyx Journal in 2017. Her latest novel, THE SHARP EDGE OF MERCY, is available now from Heliotrope Books. Connie works as a Systems Analyst and empty-nests with her husband and two feuding cats.

Bill welcomes bestselling author Charles Wheelan to the show. Charles is a senior lecturer and policy fellow at the Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College, a former correspondent for The Economist, and the author of assorted books that attempt to make serious topics more accessible, including Naked Economics, Naked Money, Naked Statistics, the family memoir We Came, We Saw, We Left, and, most recently, Write For Your Life: A Guide to Clear and Purposeful Writing (and Presentations).

Bill welcomes bestselling YA author Wendelin Van Draanen to the show. Wendelin Van Draanen has written more than thirty novels for young readers and teens. She is the author of the 18-book Edgar-winning Sammy Keyes series—often called “The new Nancy Drew”—and wrote Flipped, which was named a Top 100 Children’s Novel for the 21st Century by School Library Journal and became a Warner Brothers feature film, with Rob Reiner directing. Her latest novel, The Peach Rebellion, explores the lives and loves of three young women who come from completely different backgrounds and join forces to take a stand against the patriarchy.

Bill welcomes novelist Carol Lawrence to the show. Carole is an award-winning novelist, poet, composer, and playwright. In addition to Edinburgh Twilight, Edinburgh Dusk, and Edinburgh Midnight in the Ian Hamilton Mysteries series, she has authored novellas, short stories, and poems—many of them translated internationally. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee for poetry and has won the Euphoria Poetry Prize, the Eve of St. Agnes Poetry Award, the Maxim Mazumdar playwriting prize, the Jerry Jazz Musician award for short fiction, and the Chronogram Literary Fiction Award. Her plays and musicals have been produced in several countries, as well as on NPR; her physics play, Strings, nominated for an Innovative Theatre Award, was produced at the Kennedy Center. A Hawthornden Fellow, she is on the faculty of NYU and Gotham Writers Workshop, as well as the Cape Cod Writers Center and San Miguel Writers’ Conference. Her most recent novel is Cleopatra's Dagger.

Bill welcomes debut novelist Caitlin Barasch to the show. Caitlin Barasch earned her BA from Colorado College and her MFA from New York University. Her work has appeared in more than a dozen publications, including Catapult, Day One, The Forge, and Hobart. A former bookseller, Caitlin currently teaches creative writing at the Writers Circle. She was born and raised in New York and now lives in Brooklyn. A Novel Obsession is her debut novel.

Bill welcomes poet Kim Dower to the show. Kim, the City Poet Laureate of West Hollywood (October 2016 – October 2018), has published four collections of poetry: Air Kissing on Mars, described by the Los Angeles Times as, “sensual and evocative . . . seamlessly combining humor and heartache,” Slice of Moon, called “unexpected and sublime,” by “O” magazine, Last Train to the Missing Planet, “poems that speak about the grey space between tragedy and tenderness, memory and loss, fragility and perseverance,” said Richard Blanco, and Sunbathing on Tyrone Power’s Grave, winner of the 2020 Independent Publishers Book Award Gold Medal for Poetry.  Her fifth Collection, I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom, (April 19, 2022) is “Deftly constructed, inherently interesting, impressively insightful, thought-provoking, and truly memorable,”Midwest Book Review.Kim’s work has been featured in numerous literary journals including Plume, Ploughshares, Rattle, The James Dickey Review, and Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac." Her poems are included in several anthologies, notably, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, and Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes & Shifts of Los Angeles. She teaches poetry workshops for Antioch University, UCLA Extension Writer’s Program, West Hollywood Library and the Los Angeles LGBT Center.  www.kimdowerpoetry.com

Bill welcomes bestselling British suspense author Philip Gray to the show. Philip Gray, under the pseudonym of Patrick Lynch, is the coauthor of six thrillers that have sold over a million copies worldwide. He published, as Philip Sington, Zoia’s Gold, The Einstein Girl, and The Valley of Unknowing. His most recent novel is the historical suspense novel Two Storm Wood.