Talk of the Town: After Hours WVBR-FM Podcasts

WVBR News Director Jack Donnellan recently sat down with New York Times Bestselling Author Tim Johnston for the latest episode of our “Authors on Air” series. Tim is the author of the novels DISTANT SONS, DESCENT, THE CURRENT, the story collection IRISH GIRL, and the Young Adult novel NEVER SO GREEN. A New York Times, USA Today, and Indie national bestseller, Descent has been published internationally and optioned for film. Also optioned for film, The Current won the Midland Authors 2020 Adult Fiction Award. The stories of Irish Girl won an O. Henry Prize, the New Letters Award for Writers, and the Gival Press Short Story Award, while the collection itself won the 2009 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. Tim’s stories have appeared in New England Review, New Letters, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, Double Take, Best Life Magazine, and Narrative Magazine, among others. After earning degrees from the University of Iowa and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Tim made a living for twenty-five years as a carpenter. He is the recipient of the 2015 Iowa Author Award and currently lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

This interview aired live on Talk of the Town on WVBR 93.5 FM on Saturday, February 10, 2024 at 3:00 PM.

Catch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com.

Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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WVBR News Director Jack Donnellan sat down with author, editor, and publisher Mark Wish. Mark and his wife recently founded an annual short story anthology, Coolest American Stories, which pushes its contributors to make their fiction as compelling as possible, reminding them that readers crave “unputdownable” storytelling. Mark’s latest book, which will be released in January 2024, is Necessary Deeds, published by Regal House Titles. We hear an excerpt from the novel, in which Matt Connell, a former literary agent who’s been in prison for four years for a crime of passion—homicide by strangulation after learning his wife slept with a friend—receives an early release to join an FBI undercover investigation of multiple murders in Manhattan.

This interview aired live on Talk of the Town on WVBR 93.5 FM on Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 3:00 PM.

Catch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com.

Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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WVBR News Director Jack Donnellan sits down with Ralph White alongside DZ Stone, a writer, journalist, and former WVBR staffer, for WVBR News’ newest series, Authors on Air. Ralph’s book, Getting Out of Saigon, is a political exposé, a refugee saga, a coming-of-age story, and a romance, and it is narrated by the only living person who knows exactly what happened inside that embassy during Saigon’s final two weeks when a powerful psychotic and a naïve young expatriate became locked in a test of wills with the lives of 113 refugees at stake.

This interview aired live on Talk of the Town on WVBR 93.5 FM on Saturday, September 9, 2023 at 3:00 PM.

Catch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com.

Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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WVBR News Directors Andrew Modrowsky and Jack Donnellan interview environmental activist and a pioneer of the “new economy movement", Helena Norberg-Hodge. Norberg-Hodge is the founder and director of Local Futures, a non-profit dedicated to renewing ecological and social wellbeing by strengthening local communities and local economies worldwide.
She is also the author of the international best-selling book, Ancient Futures, based on her personal experience of over 40 years living and working as a linguist, filmmaker and activist in Ladakh, on the Tibetan Plateau.
Norberg-Hodge has also been working on a new documentary through Local Futures, called Planet Local: A Quiet Revolution. In addition to that, she has been promoting World Localization Day, which occurs on June 21st, and calls on people to come together to explore the power of localization, and to honor the many initiatives, old and new, that foster ecological economies, thriving communities and healthy local food systems.

This interview, first released on AFTER HOURS, will be broadcasted live on WVBR 93.5 FM in August 2022. Special thanks to Helena Norberg-Hodge for making this episode possible.

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Catch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com.

Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

WVBR News Directors Andrew Modrowsky and Jack Donnellan interview NM State Senator, Cornell alum (and one-time kick returner on the football team) and author Bill O'Neill. O’Neill read from his recent poetry collection The Definition of Empty from University of New Mexico Press, as well as his recent novel Short Session from Red Mountain Press at Buffalo Street Books on June 4th at 2:00 PM. A native of rural Ohio, he was elected to the New Mexico Legislature in 2008 and is now in his second term in the New Mexico State Senate. O’Neill’s poems have appeared in numerous literary reviews, both regional and national, and his career has been framed by his work with nonprofits, with a focus on incarcerated juveniles and adults. In 2005, Governor Bill Richardson appointed him Executive Director of the NM Juvenile Parole Board. Named an Emerging Leader in 2016 by the University Of Virginia’s Darden School, he credits his early literary inspiration to mentors E.L. Doctorow and V.B. Price.

This interview, first released on AFTER HOURS, will be broadcasted live on WVBR 93.5 FM in August 2022. Special thanks to Bill O’Neill and Ben Tanzer for making this episode possible.

Andrew Modrowsky discusses the resignation of U.S. Representative Tom Reed (NY-23), Grace Fairchild investigates why the markets are down, and Jack Donnellan breaks down why you might want to reconsider your daily aspirin regimen. We also report on local news from the Ithaca/Tompkins County region, including booster vaccine availability, the Ithaca Summer Concert series, and a new program making TCAT buses free for local youth this summer. This episode features segments that originally aired on WVBR on May 14th and May 21st, our final live news broadcasts of the Spring 2022 season.