Monday, May 8, 2017: Author Ellen Meeropol

Joining us here is Ellen Meeropol, author of House Arrest and On Hurricane Island, whose newest book, Kinship of Clover weaves mental illness and climate activism.

Kate Raphael talks with Ellen about writing and fighting for social change.

"Activism and resistance can be a way for people to connect with each other in a more human way as well as a more earth friendly manner."

Click here to listen to entire show. 59:50


Also on today's show:
Activist and former political prisoner Bo Brown
Author Susan Griffin

Monday, August 1, 2016: Aya de Leon talks about her new novel

Tune in now for an hour-long conversation with Bay Area poet, author, activist and educator, Aya de Leon. 

On this special fund drive show, we talk about Aya's first novel, Uptown Thief, her writing career and growing up in the movement in Berkeley. Uptown Thief, just released from Kensington Press last week, is the story of a Puerto Rican/Nuyorican sex worker-turned-feminist health worker who turns to robbing rich men to save her clinic.  Aya discusses her views on sex work, trafficking and the challenges of marketing authentic, subversive fiction centering women of color.

We'll be offering copies of Uptown Thief and Aya's spoken word CD, "Joy in the Struggle" as thank you gifts for your donation during this special fund drive show.  It's the only time during this fund drive that these gifts will be offered (although they should be available on the website whenever you give - so if you can't listen live, you can still support us).

As you have probably heard, if you are a regular KPFA listener, we started this fund drive in the middle of the Democratic National Convention because we don't have the money to pay our bills.  So this is no joke.  If you want to keep KPFA on the air in this time of looming fascism, and if you want Women's Magazine and voices like Aya's to be part of it, please give whatever you can tomorrow.  It's the sad truth that we don't make as much money as a lot of other public affairs shows, and when we do, it's usually with self-help content or books or films by white feminists.  But centering women of color, LGBTQ voices and radical feminists is important to us and you can show that it's important to you by donating during this, our only show of this pledge drive.

Thanks so much to Aya and Kensington Press for donating the copies so that all of your tax-deductible donations will go directly to us.

Click now to listen to the entire show. 59:50 min.

Also on today's show:
Women's Community Calendar

May 30, 2016 – Summer Is For Reading: GODS OF TANGO, by Carolina de Robertis

Making your summer reading list?  You’re going to want to hear about this sexy new book:

GODS OF TANGO, by Carolina de Robertis, is a steamy story of music, migration, romance and identity.  Leda, a young Italian bride, arrives in Buenos Aires to find out that her husband has died. In seeking herself in her new country, Leda becomes Dante, playing violin in one of the bands taking the scandalous tango from the brothels and tenements to the high-society cabarets.  Carolina de Robertis is the award-winning author of The Invisible Mountain and Perla.

From de Robertis' website:
February 1913: seventeen-year-old Leda, carrying only a small trunk and her father’s cherished violin, leaves her Italian village for a new home, and a new husband, in Argentina. Arriving in Buenos Aires, she discovers that he has been killed, but she remains: living in a tenement, without friends or family, on the brink of destitution. Still, she is seduced by the music that underscores life in the city: tango, born from lower-class immigrant voices, now the illicit, scandalous dance of brothels and cabarets. Leda eventually acts on a long-held desire to master the violin, knowing that she can never play in public as a woman. She cuts off her hair, binds her breasts, and becomes “Dante,” a young man who joins a troupe of tango musicians bent on conquering the salons of high society. Now, gradually, the lines between Leda and Dante begin to blur, and erotic desires that she has kept suppressed reveal themselves, jeopardizing not only her musical career, but her life.

Richly evocative of place and time, its prose suffused with the rhythms of the tango, its narrative at once resonant and gripping, this is De Robertis’ most accomplished novel yet.

Carolina de Robertis will read from Gods of Tango at the Bay Area Book Fest, The Latino Experience as US Literature on Sunday, June 5th, 3:15 to 4:30 at the Marsh. For more information: www.bayareabookfest.org.

Listen now or Get MP3. 29:43 min







Click here to listen. 59:50 min

Also on today's show:
Erotic Integrity: How to Be True to Yourself Sexually by Claudia Six
Brooke Warner talks about She Writes Press