Writers@WRUV

Esteemed Vermont author Chris Bohjalian rounded out our year  May 20, when he joined us in the studio to read from his brand new novel, Secrets of Eden.

Listen to the show.

Visit the author’s website.

Bohjalian’s other novels include the New York Times bestsellers, Skeletons at the Feast, The Double Bind, Before You Know Kindness, The Law of Similars and Midwives.

Chris won the New England Book Award in 2002, and his novel, Midwives, was a number one New York Times bestseller, a selection of Oprah’s Book Club, a Publishers Weekly “Best Book,” and a New England Booksellers Association Discovery pick. His work has been translated into over 25 languages and twice become movies (“Midwives” and “Past the Bleachers”).

He has written for a wide variety of magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Reader’s Digest, and theBoston Globe Sunday Magazine, and has been a Sunday columnist for Gannett’s Burlington Free Presssince 1992. Chris graduated from Amherst College, and lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.

Marc Estrin, co-founder and first coordinator of the Burlington Peace and Justice Center, has been engaged lately in thinking about some of the most recent manifestations of anti-Semitism: often from ultra-right Jews who target centrist rabbis and anyone who criticizes Israel. His musings led him to bring to the studio his 2005 book The Education of Arnold Hitler. He reads from the book and even shares his original, darker ending for this story about history, identity and anti-Semitism.

Listen to the show.

Read an excerpt from The Education of Arnold Hitler.

Visit Estrin’s website.

Marc Estrin is a writer and activist, living in Burlington.  His novels, Insect Dreams, The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, The Education of Arnold Hitler, Golem Song, and The Lamentations of Julius Marantz have won critical acclaim.  Insect Dreams was recently published in German by Parthas Verlag, Berlin. His memoir, Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater (with Ron Simon, photographer) won a 2004 theater book of the year award. Two novels, The Annotated Nose, and Skulk appeared in November 2008, and The Good Doctor Guillotin in September 2009. His Tsim-Tsum is forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil Books. He is currently working on a novel about the dead Tchaikovsky. He helped found and was the first coordinator of the Burlington Peace and Justice Center, working on anti-war campaigns, and most recently has stood for more than eight years in all weather with a Monday-through-Friday peace vigil in Burlington.

In her early 20s, Rachel Kling was a promising young writer, being mentored by the likes of Philip Roth and Louise DeSalvo. One of her lines even earned her a guest appearance in the Roth novel Deception. But then, after being accepted into Columbia University‘s prestigious graduate program in creative writing, she suffered a breakdown that eventually led her to a catatonic state: six weeks of her life in which she walked and minimally interacted with others but of which she has no memory.

After three years of writing, Kling has completed a novel about the experience, which she is now marketing to agents. She shares the first chapter of the novel in this appearance on Writers@WRUV.

Listen to the show.

Read the first chapter of her novel.

Kling lives in Burlington, where, in addition to writing two hours every day, she is working her way to a black belt in the Japanese martial art of Aikido.