Katie’s guest Josh Fortenbery plays live tracks and reflects on the writing and music of his debut album. Southeast Alaska grown and produced, No Such Thing as Forever is getting strong reviews in Americana circles from across the country to across the pond. Fortenbery’s songwriting is informed by both his immediate and the greater human family. “I’m just trying to be honest about my grief, anxiety, and carelessness, and hope that resonates with people,” he says. “I’m trying to remember...

Katie's guest for this episode is Kate Troll, author of a memoir with an unusual focus. It chronicles, as she entered her seventies, meeting two siblings for the first time. And how these discoveries both challenged and strengthened her newfound family and her relationships with the siblings she grew up with. All in Due Time, A Memoir of Siblings, Genealogy, Secrets and Love, can be found at bookstores in Alaska and online.

In this episode, host Katie Bausler chats with Lucian Childs, author of Dreaming Home, a powerful collection of six linked short stories on the outing of a gay teenager by his younger sister, his father’s violent reaction and how that trauma ripples through the course of four decades. The stories, set in Texas, the San Francisco Bay Area and Florida, deftly weave issues like conversion therapy, Queer Youth homeless, combat veteran PTSD, and the AIDS pandemic. Since its summer 2023 release...

In her debut album, Sisters of White Chapel, Alaskan writer and musician Annie Bartholomew brings a fresh approach to traditional folk music, channeling the under told stories of some of the working women of Alaska's Gold Rush. And as she tells 49 Writers Active Voice producer and host Katie Bausler, sex work was the only choice for many women in late 19th century mining towns. Bartholomew wanted to know more about their lives. So she wrote an album of short stories. A few of the haunting...

Beth Ann Mathews, her husband Jim and nine year old son Glen were living a full and vibrant life in Alaska’s capital Juneau, which, as she describes lies, “between the ocean and a retreating glacier, a dynamic landscape that challenged and nurtured us.” She could not have imagined the challenges the family trio would overcome when Jim sustained a rare type of stroke brought on by a relatively common task. They’re the focus of her debut book, "Deep Waters, a Memoir of Loss, Alaska Adventure...

Acclaimed author Melinda Moustakis on her debut novel, Homestead. In this first 49 Writers Active Voice Podcast taped LIVE, we go back in time to the last years before Alaska became a state, and the tumultuous relationship of unlikely homesteaders. Inspired by the story of the author's grandparents, Homestead was reviewed "absolutely remarkable" by the Historical Novel Society. And "spare, exquisite, tough and lovely" by the New York Times. Pre-book signing chat with host Katie Bausler...

Tommy Orange on his commended debut novel "There, There", which tells the intertwining stories of Native Americans en route to a pow wow in Orange's hometown of Oakland, California. He discusses what to expect from the highly anticipated sequel, the current reckoning of the past genocide of Native Americans, white supremacy and the quest for hope versus hate. Since its 2018 publication,"There, There" has been placed on academic reading lists and a TV series based on the book is in the...

Linnea Lentfer reads passages from and discusses her debut novel. "Hold the Tide" is told by a young girl who like Lentfer, is raised hunting deer and gathering berries in remote and wild Southeast Alaska. Unlike the author, her protagonist grew up in a prior century, the child of a shunned and threatened single mother. Lentfer began writing her book when she was 12, the same age as her narrator. "Hold the Tide" was published as she graduated from high school and began college. "More than...

Ohio author Bonnie Proudfoot discusses and reads passages from her debut novel with Active Voice host and producer Katie Bausler. Goshen Road is told through the alternating voices of a working class family in rural Appalachia over the course of a generation. The book holds stories of a far from easy life in a time of societal transition in one of the most culturally rich and misunderstood parts of the United States.

"Last year felt like we were all going through a bunch of rainy days," Erin Heist told Active Voice host Katie Bausler. When the pandemic shut down life as we know it, this Alaskan singer-songwriter had a ready outlet, a songwriting project complete with an online writing group and deadlines. The result is her debut recording, Another Rainy Day, a collection of songs of "grit, loss, and redemption," recorded, mixed and produced with her cousin, producer and DJ Patrick Troll.

Emily Wall is a poet and professor of English and Creative writing at the University of Alaska Southeast. Our conversation was recorded on a mild day in April 2021 on the patio of her family home overlooking Gastineau Channel in Douglas, Alaska.

Kathryn H. Ross on her journey confronting racism as a young, black woman after a relatively discrimination-free childhood, and her debut essay and poetry collection, Black Was Not A Label, "a heart song of who I am, what I’ve gone through and my hope for the future."

In 2018, Vered Mares and partners opened the Writer’s Block bookstore and café’ in Anchorage, Alaska's Spenard neighborhood. It quickly became a vital gathering space for writers and artists. Also since 2018, Katie Bausler has hosted this Active Voice podcast: 49 Writers forum for exploration and discussion with writers and artists in these challenging and changing times.

Environmental Historian and author Bathsheba DeMuth explores the past to better understand the present. As the COVID-19 pandemic settles in for the foreseeable future, the Brown University Professor and host Katie Bausler look back to the flu pandemic of 1918, and infectious diseases brought by European explorers that devastated indigenous peoples going back hundreds of years. And the impact of political denial on public health.

Thanks to Jackie Venson for being our first guest singer song writer on the 49 Writers Active Voice podcast, an audio forum on the role of writers in these challenging times for artists and truth tellers. Learn more about Jackie Venson and hear her music at jackievenson.com. Listen and subscribe to the Active Voice podcast on Apple, Spotify, Simplecast or 49writers.org.

How do writers grapple with facts when the truth seems up for grabs? Author and New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean offers thoughts on a current conundrum and her writing life over the course of three decades and counting.

Author Annie Boochever on Fighter in Velvet Gloves: Alaska Civil Rights Hero Elizabeth Peratrovich.

49 Writers co-founder and author Andromeda Romano-Lax has published her fourth novel, Plum Rains.

Gustavus based writer Kim Heacox sounds a warning bell and gives hope for the future in this packed exchange with host Katie Bausler. Kim's wilderness activism has infused his writing and photography of than a dozen books over the past twenty-five years. His novel, Jimmy Bluefeather, won the 2015 National Outdoor Book Award. And his 2005 memoir, The Only Kayak is rife with prescient realizations about the times we live in. His latest focus is on writing opinion pieces for daily newspapers .

State Writer Laureate Ernestine Hayes has spent a good part of her life bearing witness. The author of the American book award winning, Blonde Indian and the Tao of Raven, Hayes is known for bringing out the connections between all things.

Travel writer and author of the acclaimed Global Soul, Pico Ayer is an eternal optimist in a seemingly pessimistic world.

When not spending time in endangered and beautiful places or teaching writing, Pam Houston lives with horses, goats and dogs in her cherished home of almost 30 years, an off the grid ranch in the high country of Colorado. In this episode, Pam tells host and producer Katie Bausler that it is metaphors that get her through this seminal moment for the natural world. And discusses her latest book, Deep Creek,Finding Hope in the High Country.

Beauty-of fauna, flora and most of all-place is part of everything she writes, says Joanna Lilley. The author of a short story collection and two books of poetry, Lilly grew up in the UK and lives in Whitehorse Yukon, Her first novel, Worry Stones, published in late 2018, is set in in Canada, Britain and the Scottish highlands. And as she tells Active Voice pocast host Katie Bausler, the places she has lived are as relevant to her writing as the people who raised her and the times in which...

Former commercial fisherman and Alaska writer laureate Nancy Lord’s work’s been infused with the political and the environmental since well before the 2016 election. Her 2011 book Early Warming showed Alaska on the front lines of climate change. Her latest novel, PH, tells the story of ocean acidification through all too human characters, humor and grace.