The Write Question

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet Victoria Chang, author of ‘With My Back to the World’ (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), a collection that engages with the paintings and writings of celebrated abstract artist Agnes Martin.

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ we’re celebrating 50 years of children’s programming on Montana Public Radio. During this episode, host Lauren Korn speaks with critic, biographer, and historian Leonard S. Marcus, one of the world’s leading writers and scholars on children’s books and the people who create them.

On this mini episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Jacqueline Winspear, author of twenty novels, eighteen of which comprise the Maisie Dobbs series. The last installment in that series, ‘The Comfort of Ghosts,’ will be published June 4, 2024. Jacqueline is appearing in Helena, Montana, on Monday, May 13, 2024, at the Helena Civic Center as a guest of the Lewis & Clark Library and the Lewis & Clark Library Foundation.

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with author and environmental activist Rick Bass, author of ‘With Every Great Breath’ (Counterpoint Press), a collection of new and selected essays spanning nearly thirty years: from 1995-2023.

In this episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet Melissa Kwasny, author of ‘The Cloud Path’ (Milkweed Editions), a collection that reckons with grief and its subsequent healing.

On this mini episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Chloe Salmon, a director and producer at ‘The Moth Radio Hour’ and part of the editorial team behind ‘The Moth Presents: A Point of Beauty: True Stories of Holding on and Letting Go’ (Crown Publishing Group).

In this mini episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Métis author Toni Jensen, author of ‘Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land’ (Ballantine Books; Penguin Random House). Toni will be giving a reading in collaboration with the University of Montana’s Creative Writing Program on April 12, 2024, at the Missoula Art Museum.

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Tessa Hulls about her graphic memoir, ‘Feeding Ghosts’ (MCD; Farrar, Straus & Giroux), the story of three generations of women in her family: her grandmother, Sun Yi; her mother, Rose; and Tessa herself.

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Carmen Maria Machado, the headlining author at the 2024 Get Lit! Festival in Spokane, Washington, which takes place April 11th-14th.

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Marie-Helene Bertino, author of ‘Beautyland,’ a novel about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe.

For this mini episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with National Book Award Finalist Min Jin Lee, author of the novels ‘Pachinko’ and ‘Free Food for Millionaires.’ Min Jin is also the editor of ‘The Best American Short Stories’ anthology for 2023 and will be traveling to Kalispell, Montana, for the Wachholz College Center’s WCC Speaker Series on March 18, 2024.

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Michael Finkel, author of ‘The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession,’ a true crime narrative that centers Stéphane Breitwieser, who carried out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years—in museums and cathedrals all over Europe—and stole more than three hundred objects.

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with packers Arnold “Smoke” Elser and Eva-Maria Maggi, co-authors of ‘Hush of the Land: A Lifetime in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.’

In a cutting room floor excerpt from this week’s conversation with Arnold “Smoke” Elser and Eva-Maria Maggi, host Lauren Korn asks the two what they’ve learned from each other.

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Elise Atchison about her award-winning debut novel, ‘Crazy Mountain’ (Sowilo Press).

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Kathleen McLaughlin, author of ‘Blood Money: The Story of Life, Death, and Profit Inside America’s Blood Industry’ (Atria/One Signal Publishers), out now in paperback!

In the second part of a two-part conversation, host Lauren Korn speaks with poet, farmer, and Missoula, Montana, county commissioner Josh Slotnick about his second book of poetry, ‘If Only’ (Sandyhouse Press).

In the first part of a two-part conversation, host Lauren Korn speaks with poet, farmer, and Missoula, Montana, county commissioner Josh Slotnick about his second book of poetry, ‘If Only’ (Sandyhouse Press).

This week, ‘The Write Question’ creator and former host, Chérie Newman, returns Montana Public Radio to talk with Lauren about her debut memoir, ‘Other People’s Pets: Critters, Careers, and Capitalism in Yellowstone Country.’

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Alexandra Teague, author of ‘Spinning Tea Cups: A Mythical American Memoir’ (Oregon State University Press).

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet Emily Riddle, author of ‘The Big Melt’ (Nightwood Editions), a debut collection rooted in Nehiyaw (Cree) thought and urban millennial life events.

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ just in time for the holidays, “piecast” host Lauren Korn speaks with “pie lady” Kate Lebo, author of the cookbook ‘Pie School: Lessons in Fruit, Flour & Butter’ (Sasquatch Books).

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with cartoonist Navied Mahdavian, author of the graphic memoir, ‘This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America’ (Princeton Architectural Press).

Host Lauren Korn speaks with Heather White, author of ‘One Green Thing: Discover Your Hidden Power to Help Save the Planet’ and the founder of a non-profit of the same name. Heather will be discussing both her book and her non-profit at the Missoula Public Library on December 6, 2023, at 6:30PM.

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet D.M. Bradford, author of the collection ‘Bottom Rail on Top’ (Brick Books), a kind of archives-powered unmooring of American histories of antebellum Black life and emancipation.

Host Lauren Korn speaks with Andrew Limbong about NPR’s interactive book list of staff favorites, “Books We Love.”

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Stephanie Land, author of ‘Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education’ (Atria/One Signal Publishers).

In this mini episode of ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren speaks with the host and executive editor of ‘Hidden Brain,’ Shankar Vedantam, about “Healing 2.0,” a month-long series that considers how we can change our lives—by taking a closer look at the stories we tell ourselves about our lives, the nature of loss, and whether we should try to do away with grief altogether.

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet Maya Jewell Zeller, author of ‘out takes/ glove box’ (New American Press). The two talk about Maya’s birth story, childhood, and motherhood; cars, trucks, and traveling; and Maya’s primal self—a psychology (and a poetics) borne of the sea and the woods, of the natural world.

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ comedienne and writer Charlotte Macorn sits down with host Lauren Korn in the “city of many shoulders” for a live pledge week episode.

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren speaks with Livingston, Montana-based poet (and former Montana Poet Laureate) Michael Earl Craig, author of ‘Iggy Horse’ (Wave Poetry).

Livingston, Montana-based poet Michael Earl Craig (“Earl”) reads a poem from ‘Iggy Horse’ (Wave Poetry).

Livingston, Montana-based poet Michael Earl Craig (“Earl”) reads a poem from ‘Iggy Horse’ (Wave Poetry).

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Erin Pringle, Spokane, Washington-based author of ‘Unexpected Weather Events’ (Awst Press).

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ in advance of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s appearance in Missoula, host Lauren Korn speaks with the author of ‘Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants’ (Milkweed Editions).

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with with Alicia Elliott, an established writer of non-fiction, about her debut novel, ‘And Then She Fell’ (Dutton Books, 2023).

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren speaks with poet Dara Barrois/Dixon (née Dara Wier) about the ethics of art-making and how her latest book of poetry, ‘Tolstoy Killed Anna Karenina’ (Wave Poetry), both elucidates and confounds those ethics—particularly as it’s read alongside Barrois/Dixon’s essay titled almost identically, “Why Tolstoy Killed Anna Karenina” (Action, Spectacle).

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren speaks with Healy, Alaska-based writer Christine Byl about her debut novel, ‘Lookout’ (Deep Vellum Publishing), which tells the story of the Kinzlers, a complex working-class family firmly rooted in northwestern Montana.

In Lauren’s conversation with podcasters and authors Nick Mott and Justin Angle, the three talk about the nuances of wildfire: ‘This is Wildfire: How to Protect Yourself, Your Home, and Your Community in the Age of Heat’ (Bloomsbury Publishing) “offers everything you need to know about fire in one useful volume.”

This week during ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren returns to her 2022 conversation with Charmaine Wilkerson, author of ‘Black Cake,’ the story of a mother, a woman, whose traumas and histories she hid from her children—children who, after her death, are forced to confront their mother’s past, as well as their own identities in light of such shocking revelations.

What is Claire Boyles’ American West? This week, host Lauren Korn returns to her 2021 conversation with the Colorado-based writer, the author of ‘Site Fidelity’ (W. W. Norton & Company).

This week during ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren returns to her 2021 conversation with Idaho-based poet and essayist Robert Wrigley, who talks to trees—and about the difference between poetry and prose, about fatherhood, about music, and more!

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren returns to her 2022 conversation with novelist Jenny Tinghui Zhang about her debut novel, ‘Four Treasures of the Sky’ (Flatiron Books), the heartbreaking story of young Daiyu, kidnapped from Zhifu, China, in 1882.

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren returns to her conversation with poet Kaveh Akbar, whose sophomore poetry collection, ‘Pilgrim Bell’ (Graywolf Press), empties the self of the self—of one’s nation, or nations, of one’s family, of one’s knowledge—leaving only one’s hollowed, and hallowed, body.

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ in the final half of a two-part conversation, host Lauren Korn speaks with Vancouver, Canada-based journalist John Vaillant, author of ‘Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World’ (Alfred A. Knopf).

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ in the first of a two-part conversation, host Lauren Korn speaks with Vancouver, Canada-based journalist John Vaillant, author of ‘Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World’ (Alfred A. Knopf).

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ we’re airing an encore: host Lauren Korn’s conversation with Bryce Andrews, author of ‘Holding Fire: A Reckoning with the American West’ (Mariner Books, HarperCollins), now out in paperback!

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren returns to her conversation with poet Lynn Melnick; the two chat about her debut memoir, ‘I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton’ (University of Texas Press).

This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren returns to her conversation with poet Charles Finn about his collaborative collection, ‘On a Benediction of Wind: Poems and Photographs from the American West,’ a collection of free verse and prose poems, paired with a black-and-white landscape photographs from the Pacific Northwest and the American Southwest taken by photographer Barbara Michelman.

This week on The Write Question, Lauren returns to her conversation with Andrew Sean Greer, or “Andy,” for this encore broadcast; the two chat about the follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel ‘Less,’ ‘Less Is Lost’ (Little, Brown and Company).