1888: The How, The Why

Marilyn Peterson Haus learned to read and write in a one-room school set in the midst of a sea of corn, and then rode a rickety yellow school bus seven miles to the nearest town (population 700) for middle and high school. Everything was oriented around the railroad that sliced through the tallgrass prairie, heading west. Marilyn’s own journey took her in the opposite direction, and after attending Augsburg College (now Augsburg University) in Minneapolis, she and her husband moved east and settled in western Massachusetts, where she raised three children, earned an MBA and launched a successful business career. After retiring from her day job, Marilyn followed her dream to become a writer, began attending a weekly writer’s workshop, and over the course of ten years, wrote and completed Half a Whole – her first book. When she isn’t writing, Marilyn can be found shoveling compost around the coneflowers, hostas, and day lilies that overflow her many flower gardens.Without These Books is a thank-you-inspired Vid

Philip J. Kowalski has taught courses in critical thinking and American literature at Wake Forest University and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He lives on the North Shore of Massachusetts.Canine in the Promised LandAtmosphere Press, 2021A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers during the pandemic. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.Without Books®, a division of Heritage Future, is an author-centric book initiative. Our resources support authors. We also provide access to millions of books.

Mary Dixie Carter’s debut novel The Photographer will be published in May 2021 by Minotaur Books - St. Martin’s Publishing Group in the US and by Hodder & Stoughton in the UK.Mary Dixie’s writing has appeared in TIME,  The Economist, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer,  The New York Sun, The New York Observer and other print and online publications.  She worked at The Observer for five years, where she served as the publishing director.  In addition to writing, she also has a background as a professional actor. Mary Dixie graduated from Harvard College with an honors degree in English Literature and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School.  She is the daughter of Dixie Carter and step-daughter of Hal Holbrook. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two young children. The Photographer is her first novel.Without These Books is a thank-you-inspired Video/Podcast. Each episode celebrates authors, books, and characters that changed us as writers, reade

Elizabeth Gauffreau writes fiction and poetry with a strong connection to family and place. She holds a B.A. in English from Old Dominion University and an M.A. in English/Fiction Writing from the University of New Hampshire. She is currently the Assistant Dean of Curriculum & Assessment for Champlain College Online, where she is an Associate Professor. Her fiction and poetry have been published in literary magazines and several themed anthologies. Her debut novel, Telling Sonny, was published by Adelaide Books in 2018. Liz lives in Nottingham, New Hampshire with her husband.Telling SonnyAdelaide Books, 2018A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers during the pandemic. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.Without Books®, a division of Heritage Future, is an author-centric book initiative. Our resources support authors. We also p

Keith Madsen is a retired minister who is using his retirement to pursue a lifelong interest in writing fiction. Keith has published short stories in Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Talking River, Short Story America and Adelaide. He is a member of the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Association. Keith lives in East Wenatchee, Washington with his wife Cathy, where he enjoys teaching chess to grade school children.The Sons and Daughters of ToussaintAdelaide Books, 2018A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers during the pandemic. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.Without Books®, a division of Heritage Future, is an author-centric book initiative. Our resources support authors. We also provide access to millions of books.

Courtney Zoffness’s debut, Spilt Milk (McSweeney’s, 2021), received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and BookPage, and was named “most anticipated” or “must-read” book by Good Morning America, LitHub, Refinery29, The Millions, Publishers Weekly, and others. Zoffness won the 2018 Sunday Times Short Story Award, the largest international prize for short fiction, amid entries from 38 countries. Other honors include fellowships from the Center for Fiction and MacDowell, and the Arts & Letters Creative Nonfiction Prize. Her writing has appeared in several outlets, including the New York Times, the Paris Review Daily, and Guernica, and she had essays listed as “notable” in Best American Essays 2018 and 2019. She directs the Creative Writing Program at Drew University, where she’s an Assistant Professor of English, and lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.Without These Books is a thank-you-inspired Video/Podcast. Each episode celebrates authors, books, and characters that changed us as wr

Donna Koros Stramella is a writer from Maryland whose fiction and nonfiction pieces have been published in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Scarlet Leaf Review, Columbia Magazine, and the Baltimore Sun. She is a previous award-winning journalist and video writer-producer. A graduate of the University of Tampa MFA in Creative Writing, she authored Coffee Killed My Mother and is currently working on a second novel.Coffee Killed My MotherAdelaide Books, 2020A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers during the pandemic. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.Without Books®, a division of Heritage Future, is an author-centric book initiative. Our resources support authors. We also provide access to millions of books.

Khalisa Rae is a poet and journalist in Durham, NC that speaks with furious rebellion. She is the author of Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat (Red Hen Press 2021). Her essays are featured in Autostraddle, Catapult, LitHub, as well as articles in B*tch Media, NBC-BLK, and others. Her poetry appears in Frontier Poetry, Florida Review, Rust & Moth, PANK, Hellebore, Sundog Lit, HOBART,among countless others. She is the winner of the Bright Wings Poetry contest, the Furious Flower Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, and the White Stag Publishing Contest, among other prizes. Currently, she serves as Assistant Editor for Glass Poetry and founder of Think in Ink and Women Speak. Her second collection Unlearning Eden is forthcoming from White Stag Publishing January 2022.Without These Books is a thank-you-inspired Video/Podcast. Each episode celebrates authors, books, and characters that changed us as writers, readers, and as people. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast. Watch on our YouTube channel or at wit

Born and raised in the Bay Area, Steven Armstrong is an award-winning filmmaker, screenwriter, and author. He spent several years in the nonprofit world of maternal health, becoming inspired by countless stories of resilience, while working as an editor and staff writer reviewing films. Steven holds a BA in Creative Arts from San Jose State University and an MFA in Writing and Consciousness from the California Institute of Integral Studies. His work has appeared in the Samizdat Literary Journal.Dragon DaughterAtmosphere Press, 2021A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers during the pandemic. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.Without Books®, a division of Heritage Future, is an author-centric book initiative. Our resources support authors. We also provide access to millions of books.

Rebecca Handler is a writer who lives and works in San Francisco. Rebecca’s stories have been published and awarded in several anthologies, and she blogs regularly at www.onewomanparty.com. Edie Richter is Not Alone is her debut novel, and in a Starred Review, Booklist writes, "Handler's Edie has joined the ranks of unforgettably eccentric, intelligent women protagonists.” Kirkus Starred Review says, "A tragicomic exploration of the collateral damage of Alzheimer's disease... Handler gets it right from the title on out. Edie is definitely not alone.”Without These Books is a thank-you-inspired Video/Podcast. Each episode celebrates authors, books, and characters that changed us as writers, readers, and as people. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast. Watch on our YouTube channel or at withoutbooks.org.Without Books®, a division of Heritage Future, is an author-centric book initiative. Our resources support authors. We also provide access to millions of books.Rebecca Handler selected When Death Tak

Jennifer Acker is founder and editor in chief of The Common, and author of the debut novel The Limits of the World, a fiction honoree for the Massachusetts Book Award. Her memoir “Fatigue” is a #1 Amazon bestseller, and her short stories, essays, translations, and reviews have appeared in the Washington Post, Literary Hub, n+1, Guernica, The Yale Review,and Ploughshares, among other places. Acker has an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and teaches writing and editing at Amherst College, where she directs the Literary Publishing Internship and LitFest. She lives in western Massachusetts with her husband. Without These Books is a thank-you-inspired Video/Podcast. Each episode celebrates authors, books, and characters that changed us as writers, readers, and as people. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast. Watch on our YouTube channel or at withoutbooks.org.Without Books®, a division of Heritage Future, is an author-centric book initiative. Our resources support authors. We also provide acce

Ty Seidule is the Chamberlain Fellow at Hamilton College, a New America Fellow, and was recently named to the Confederate Base Naming Commission. In 2015, his five-minute video lecture, “Was the Civil War About Slavery?” became a social media sensation with more than 30 million views. He served in the U.S. Army for thirty-six years, retiring as a brigadier general in 2020, after teaching at West Point for two decades.Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on the Significance of Race is a ten-part podcast series of informed and enriching dialogues to help us better understand our world – how we got here, who we are, and where we are going as a society. This series engages in conversations with scholars, artists, filmmakers, and activists to investigate racial inequality, systemic racism, racial terrorism, and racial justice and reconciliation. Through education, art, and storytelling, we can all learn to be allies and engage the world to help evolve to a place of compassion and social equity.Guest: Ty Se

Joshua M. Greene is a popular lecturer on Holocaust history and an author whose biographies have sold more than a half-million copies worldwide. Greene’s groundbreaking book on the Dachau war crimes trials, Justice at Dachau: The Trials of an American Prosecutor, was deemed “riveting—history writing at its best” by Douglas Brinkley, presidential historian for CNN. His renowned work on survivor testimony, Witness: Voices from the Holocaust, was the basis of a feature documentary for national PBS and chosen as “One of the Best Holocaust Films” by Facets Media.  A former instructor at Hofstra and Fordham Universities, Greene is the recipient of numerous awards for his books and films. He sits on the board of Yale University Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies and has served as director of strategic planning for the United Nations Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders.  He is the author, most recently, of the forthcoming,“Unstoppable: Siggi B. Wilzig’s Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor to Wall S

Joshua M. Greene is a popular lecturer on Holocaust history and an author whose biographies have sold more than a half-million copies worldwide. A former instructor at Hofstra and Fordham Universities, Greene is the recipient of numerous awards for his books and films. He sits on the board of Yale University Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies and has served as director of strategic planning for the United Nations Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders.Unstoppable: Siggi B. Wilzig’s Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor to Wall Street LegendInsight Editions, 2021A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers during the pandemic. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.Without Books®, a division of Heritage Future, is an author-centric book initiative. Our resources support authors. We also provide access to millions of books.

S. Kirk Walsh is a writer living in Austin, Texas. Her work has been widely published in The New York Times Book Review, Longreads, StoryQuarterly, and Electric Literature, among other publications. Over the years, she has been a resident at Ucross, Yaddo, Ragdale, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Walsh is the founder of Austin Bat Cave, a writing and tutoring center that provides free writing workshops for young writers throughout Austin. The Elephant of Belfast is her first novel. Without These Books is a thank-you-inspired Video/Podcast. Each episode celebrates authors, books, and characters that changed us as writers, readers, and as people. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast. Watch on our YouTube channel or at withoutbooks.org.Without Books®, a division of Heritage Future, is an author-centric book initiative. Our resources support authors. We also provide access to millions of books.S. Kirk Walsh selected Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones for her episode of Without These Books

Annabelle Gurwitch is an actress, activist, and author of five books including The New York Times bestseller and Thurber Prize finalist I See You Made an Effort. She’s written for The New Yorker, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, LA Magazine and Hadassahamongst other publications. Without These Books is a thank-you-inspired Video/Podcast. Each episode celebrates authors, books, and characters that changed us as writers, readers, and as people. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast. Watch on our YouTube channel or at withoutbooks.org.Without Books®, a division of Heritage Future, is an author-centric book initiative. Our resources support authors. We also provide access to millions of books.Annabelle Gurwitch selected Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich for her episode of Without These Books.

Scott O’Connor is the author of A Perfect Universe: Ten Stories, the novels Zero Zone, Untouchable, and Half World and the novella Among Wolves. He has been awarded the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, and his stories have been shortlisted for the Sunday Times/EFG Story Prize and cited as Distinguished in Best American Short Stories. Additional work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Paris Review, Zyzzyva, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He teaches creative writing at Cal State Channel Islands and in workshops around Los Angeles.Without These Books is a thank-you-inspired Video/Podcast. Each episode celebrates authors, books, and characters that changed us as writers, readers, and as people. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast. Watch on our YouTube channel or at withoutbooks.org.Without Books®, a division of Heritage Future, is an author-centric book initiative. Our resources support authors. We also provide access to millions of books.Scott O'Connor select

Peter Friedrichs is a pastor of a religiously liberal and socially progressive church. He lives in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania with his wife and biggest supporter, Irene. They are the proud parents of two adult daughters and grandparents of three elementary-aged boys.And the Stars Kept WatchAtmosphere Press, 2021A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers during the pandemic. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.Without Books®, a division of Heritage Future, is an author-centric book initiative. Our resources support authors. We also provide access to millions of books.

Jacqueline T. Johnson is an avid reader, who dared to fulfill a dream with her debut novel Test of Time. "Writing is an expression of who I am. It's where my emotions, thoughts, and dreams come alive."Test of TimeCreatespace, 2013A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers during the pandemic. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.Without Books®, a division of Heritage Future, is an author-centric book initiative. Our resources support authors. We also provide access to millions of books.

Seth Greenland is the author of five novels. He is a playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and one of the original hosts of the Los Angeles Review of Books Radio Hour. His first memoir, A Kingdom of Tender Colors, was published in 2020. Greenland’s play, Jungle Rot, won the Kennedy Center/American Express Fund For New American Plays Award and the American Theater Critics Association Award. Television credits include a two-year stint as a writer-producer on the Emmy-nominated HBO series Big Love. His essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Quillette, the Jewish Journal, and the French literary journal America. Greenland lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the author Susan Kaiser Greenland. He is currently at work on a new novel.Without These Books is a thank-you-inspired Video/Podcast. Each episode celebrates authors, books, and characters that changed us as writers, readers, and as people. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast. Watch on ou