Madison BookBeat

Stu Levitan, Andrew Thomas, Sara Batkie, David Ahrens, Lisa Malawski
  • 5.0 (4)
  • BOOKS
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY

Madison BookBeat highlights local Wisconsin authors and authors coming to Madison for book events. It airs every Monday afternoon at 1pm on WORT FM.

  1. 4D AGO

    Jeff Oloizia's "Writing Forward" Wisconsin Literary Podcast

    Jeff Oloizia was our guest on Book Beat with John Quinlan discussing his new weekly WI Literary Podcast "Writing Forward," which debuted on May 6th. We learned about the purpose of the cutting edge podcast, and about the man behind it. The Brookfield native and 2007 UW alum left Wisconsin post-graduation, not necessarily expecting to return, settling into "an itinerant existence" in exotic places like Japan, San Francisco and New York as a journalist, and eventually earning a professorship as part of graduate studies in Wilmington, North Carolina. (This included a stint as an editor at the New York Times.) As reported in this week's Cap Times, he once thought he had leave Madison to live a life of literature. “It felt important to leave and go to the places where I thought writers were,” Oloizia said. After more than a dozen years interviewing famous people in these exotic locales, he returned home to Madison in 2020 to write extraordinary stories about the Wisconsin everyman as a prolific contributor to publications like Madison Magazine. And this week, he creates a literary podcast interviewing Wisconsin authors walking a similar path back to their own roots here. A fascinating show about a fascinating guy. New editions of "Writing Forward" are available each week wherever podcasts are available. For more on Jeff, his podcast, and the overall scope of his work, visit his website at www.jeffoloizia.com .   Photo courtesy of Jeff Oloizia

    55 min

  2. APR 27

    Dean Robbins, Books For Kids

    Stu Levitan welcomes author and editor Dean Robbins, for a discussion about his career writing illustrated books for children – 13 of them at last count, inspirational stories about such role models as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., polio-eradicator Dr. Jonas Salk, NASA computer scientist Margaret Hamilton, the young Pakistani Noble Laureate Malala Yousafzai, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, suffrage leader Alice Paul, human rights activists Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, astronaut Alan Beam , and more.  Dean’s books have been favorably reviewed in the New York Times and Daily News, USA Today, the Smithsonian Air & Space magazine, Publisher’s Weekly, Forbes magazine, along with the Madison, Milwaukee and Wisconsin statewide media.     Steady BookBeat listeners will recall Dean’s appearance last July for a conversation about his first book for adult readers, Wisconsin Idols: 100 Heroes Who Changed the State, the World, And Me, from the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. Longtime Madisonians may remember Dean as the arts editor for Isthmus from 1991 to 2008, when he succeeded Marc Eisen as editor. Dean moved to the UW in 2014 as Communications Director for the Division of Continuing Studies and since 2019 has been editor of the alumni magazine On Wisconsin. It was a pleasure to welcome him back to Madison BookBeat.

    55 min

  3. APR 20

    Choosing to Die with author Theresa Evans

    Author Theresa Evans of Sturgeon Bay discusses important end of life issues around her support of her mother in experiencing Assisted Death.  "Choosing to Die: A Daughter's Story Of Supporting Her Mother's End Of Life Through Assisted Death," is about the journey her family took once her mother decided to define the date and terms of her death in the context of a small southwestern Ontario town. Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAID, has been legal in Canada since 2016.  By 2023, over 60,000 Canadians had chosen to die this way.  By contrast, the United States has some of the most restrictive laws in the world around MAID.   Canada allows a physician to administer the medications that will end a human life, often intravenously.   However, in the US, one must be able to ingest the medication on their own, which can add additional stress and danger.  For example, what if a person can't swallow, or if they vomit back the medication?  What if because of the difficulties they face in attempting to die on their own, they lapse into a coma and don't die?  Evans maps out what a more compassionate, patient-empowering approach in the US could mean. Presented like a journal, Evans uses the metaphor of her mother's garden to powerful effect. Choosing to Die describes the author's vivid first hand experience, and is useful for caregivers, death doulas, and other professionals and volunteers involved in hospice care and palliative care.  Mos of all, Choosing to Die is a gift for anyone seeking clarity and compassion in the midst of one of life's most confounding decisions.

    55 min

  4. APR 13

    Lisa Low on poetry's capacity to unlock identity

    On this episode of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie is joined by author Lisa Low to talk about her new poetry collection, Replica. Stand-up comedy, a celebrity non-apology, observations of racism, and the slipperiness of nostalgia underpin Replica. In poignant, witty poems, Lisa Low navigates the tensions of solidarity and hostility in white spaces as she sets out to write differently about race. “The problem of being with a white man is also a problem of writing,” Low says in a prose poem that turns writing about identity on its head. She peers in from outside the poem, as if through an open ceiling. The poem itself becomes a site of investigation—a counterpoint to constricting narratives about Asian American identity—reimagined as a dollhouse, a stage with props, an image the speaker wears like a bodysuit. Replica asks what it means to represent yourself and your experiences in a world where you are indistinguishable from others. Lisa Low is the author of Crown for the Girl Inside, winner of the Vinyl 45 Chapbook Contest from YesYes Books. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize, and her poems have appeared in Copper Nickel, Ecotone, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago. Cover design by adam bohannon, with art by Yuqing Zhu

    48 min

  5. MAR 23

    Doug Metoxen Kiel on the ongoing fight for Indigenous nationhood

    On this episode of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie is joined by author Douglas Metoxen Kiel to talk about their new book, Unsettling Territory. How did the Oneida Nation of northeastern Wisconsin—stripped of nearly all its reservation lands by the early twentieth century—rise to become a powerful political and economic force in Native America and the present-day Midwest? Doug Kiel traces the journey of resurgence, adaptation, and nation rebuilding of the Oneida people, who navigated federal policies and socioeconomic shifts to chart their own future, transforming adversity into opportunity. Kiel shows how Oneidas harnessed New Deal programs to advance their goals of self-determination; how urban migration, often seen as a marker of Indigenous displacement, became a tool of community empowerment; and how the Nation has reclaimed land and authority despite predictable backlash from neighboring towns. Drawing on extensive archival records, family photographs, and oral histories—including stories from his grandmother—Kiel highlights the everyday acts that have sustained the Oneida Nation across generations and offers vital insights into the broader fight for Indigenous nationhood in twenty-first-century America. Doug Kiel, a citizen of the Oneida Nation, is associate professor of history at Northwestern University. They live in Chicago, IL.

    50 min

  6. FEB 10

    Melissa Faliveno makes the case for Midwestern gothic

    On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie chats with author Melissa Faliveno about her debut novel, Hemlock, now available from Little, Brown. Sam, finally sober and stable with a cat and a long-term boyfriend in Brooklyn, returns alone to Hemlock, her family’s deteriorating cabin deep in the Wisconsin Northwoods, where her mother disappeared years before and never returned. But a quick, practical trip takes a turn for the worse when the rot and creak of the forest starts to creep in around the edges of Sam’s mind. It starts, as it always does, with a beer. As Sam dips back into the murky waters of dependency, the inexplicable begins to arrive at her door in the forms of a neighbor who leaves no trace, a talking doe who sounds just like Sam’s missing mother, and a series of mysterious gifts that might be a welcome or a warning. And as Sam’s stay extends—as the town’s grip on her tightens and her body takes on a strange new shape—the borders of reality begin to blur, and she senses she is battling something sinister—whether nested in the woods or within herself. Melissa Faliveno is the author of the essay collection Tomboyland, named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, New York Public Library, Oprah Magazine, Electric Literature, and Debutiful, and recipient of a 2021 Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement from the Wisconsin Library Association. Her essays, interviews, and reviews have appeared in Esquire, Paris Review, Kenyon Review, and Literary Hub, among many others. A first-generation college graduate, Melissa received a BA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She is currently the Margaret R. Shuping Fellow and assistant professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

    53 min

  7. 12/29/2025

    Doug Bradley, "The Tracks of My Years: A Music-Based Memoir"

    Stu Levitan welcomes back to the program Doug Bradley to discuss his new book The Tracks of My Years: A Music-Based Memoir, just out from the good people at Legacy Book Press. And it is exactly what the subtitle promises – Doug recounting the literal soundtrack of his life, putting the seminal events of his first quarter century or so in the context of the music that  accompanied, or symbolized, those events. And since most of the events recounted took place in the sixties and seventies, it’s a pretty great 46-song setlist, which you can find on Spotify.  https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2SiTq5A3GboxJ4uTNdMGJ1 Doug spent his early childhood in Philadelphia with his parents and older doo-wop singing brother, in a house filled with music. The family moved to Ohio for two years, then the Pittsburg suburb  of Clairton, where Doug graduated from Thomas Jefferson HS in 1965, doing some party DJ work along the way, thanks to his brother’s record collection. He was admitted to Notre Dame but couldn’t afford the tuition; as a scholarship student to Bethany College in Bethany WV, Class of ’69, he was a Big Man on Campus as two-term chairman of the Social Committee , booking a lot of major pop acts. That's how he came to share a joint with the Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick and a drink with jazz legend Count Basie, play some pick-up hoops with Smokey Robinson’s Miracles, and hold Dionne Warwick’s hand on a tragic night in American history. He was drafted into the US Army in March 1970 and fortunately for him aced the job aptitude test and so was made an Army journalist, first domestically and then in 1970-71 at the Army’s Vietnam HQ in Long Binh. After his honorable discharge, he finally acceded to the entreaties of his high school mentor – whose interest in Doug may have been more that academic – and he received an MA in English from Washington State University in 1972. He also acceded to the entreaties of his wife, Pam Shannon, and relocated to Madison in 1974, where he was one of the first employees and later president of the community-based service center Vet’s House, which helped him work through some of his postwar issues. Pam also got him to appreciate the Grateful Dead, which gives her bonus points. Never a student at the UW, he spent more than 30 years in various communications and marketing positions there, including 15 years as director of public information at UW Extension, where his father-in-law Ted Shannon was a top administrator. He also for many years co-taught with his co-author Prof. Craig Werner a course based on their award-winning book “We Gotta Get Out of this Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War.” Doug later continued the theme, writing Who’ll Stop The Rain: Respect, Remembrance and Reconciliation in post-Vietnam America, both books the subject of a BookBeat episode in February 2020. It’s a pleasure to welcome back to Madison BookBeat the 2025 recipient of the Vietnam Veterans of America’s Excellence in Arts Award, Doug Bradley

    1h 15m

  8. 12/08/2025

    The Year in Books: three Madison booksellers on how their 2025 went

    On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie chats with Madison booksellers Mira Braneck from A Room of One’s Own, Hilary Burg from Mystery to Me, and Molly Fish from Lake City Books to see how their 2025 went.  Take a listen to learn about the new releases they loved, event highlights from the past year, recommended reads that'll keep you cozy this season, and what's in store for them in 2026. And for those still doing some holiday shopping, stick around until the end to hear their order deadlines this December! Photo by Jessica Ruscello.

    50 min
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About

Madison BookBeat highlights local Wisconsin authors and authors coming to Madison for book events. It airs every Monday afternoon at 1pm on WORT FM.

Information

  • Creator
    Stu Levitan, Andrew Thomas, Sara Batkie, David Ahrens, Lisa Malawski
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    81
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2025 Madison BookBeat
  • Show Website
    Madison BookBeat