Writers Latitude Joe Samuel Starnes

A Refugee’s American Dream: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to the U.S. Secret Service was published in print in February and released as an audiobook narrated by actor Tim Lounibos in October. In this discussion, which features Lounibos reading selections, Oun and Lounibos and coauthor Joe Samuel Starnes discuss the book and take questions from the audience at the Collingswood Book Festival. Oun’s story includes hard memories of his childhood in Cambodia where his father was executed by the Khmer Rouge and he and his surviving family were enslaved in the Killing Fields for almost four years. Oun later survived a year of homelessness then nearly four years in refugee camps. Arriving in America, seventeen and penniless, Oun struggled, washing dishes at a Chinese restaurant for $3.15 an hour. He persevered, earning college degrees before completing thousands of hours of training to pursue a career in the Secret Service. Through it all, Oun displays truly inspiring resilience that leads to great achievements.
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About the Book: www.lethounbook.com
 
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This panel recorded at the Collingswood Book Festival focuses on the lives of heavyweight boxing champions Joe Frazier and Jersey Joe Walcott. Mark Kram Jr., author of Smokin’ Joe: The Life of Joe Frazier, and Vincent Cream, Walcott’s grandson who wrote the foreword of the 2012 biography of Walcott, discuss the fighters.

Miles’ novel Anatomy of a Miracle, published in 2018, was selected as the town book for the 2019 Collingswood Book Festival. This discussion from the festival explores the novel and his close friendship with Mississippi author Larry Brown.

This panel recorded at the 2019 Collingswood Book Festival features Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch leading a discussion with Jo Piazza, author of the politically minded novel Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win, and Shauna L. Shames, coauthor of Survive and Resist: The Definitive Guide to Dystopian Politics.

My all-time favorite bookstore, Port Richmond Books—with an inventory of several hundred thousand used and rare books in an old movie house in Philadelphia—is closing this fall. I celebrate the store’s glorious 16 years in business with Greg Gillespie, founder and owner, and writer William Hastings. We also discuss the future of bookselling, the devastation of a digital culture in which rolling robots deliver books, and much else.

A longtime veteran of the Philadelphia Fire Department, Tony Knighton is the author of Three Hours Past Midnight, a crime novel, and Happy Hour and Other Philadelphia Cruelties, a novella and collection of short stories. He discusses his gritty Philadelphia-based work, the city he knows like the back of his hand, the late Larry Brown, and much else.