Shows
Locally Produced Talk
Wordy Birds
Liz Humes | Friday Noon - 12:30pm
Books are wonderful and deeply rewarding but the truth is most people don’t read -very often. They’re also expensive and time consuming. Wordy Birds is a program about books and ideas that airs every Friday at noon on WRIR. Host Liz Humes has read a book a week since February 2005, when the first version of Wordy Birds debuted on WRIR 97.3 FM.
The program brings to the airwaves both local and international best-selling authors. The only limitation in topics covered is that the interviews are done face to face. It’s not high-brow book radio, it’s a book show for people who don’t read, hosted by someone that does. In turn you get researched informed conversations that are informed, engaging and sometimes funny.
An archive of Wordy Birds can be found on www.wordybirds.org. Publicists and authors interested in interviews can email Liz at liz(dot)humes@gmail.com.
Thanks for tuning in.
Recent Blog Entries
7/27/12 Wordy Birds: Farm Beat
In the late 1960’s poet Allen Ginsberg bought an isolated, broken-down farm in upstate New York as a haven for himself and his worn-out, burned out Beat Generation friends. He hoped to create an Elysium where Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky and Herbert Huncke could escape from urban pressures and drug addictions.
Gordon Ball was 22 at the time and had just arrived in New York (recently released from jail in Mexico). He was hired as “farm manager” to plant crops, rehab the house and do the chores. He also tended to the nonstop guests, their erratic/erotic behavior, and spent time with Ginsberg discussing poetry and the Cultural Revolution that was challenging America. His story about that time is the memoir being discussed today. It’s called, East Hill Farm, Seasons with Allen Ginsberg.
Gordon Ball, today, is an award winning film-maker, author of three books, editor of three volumes of Allen Ginsberg’s poetry and teaches English at Virginia Military Academy.
Tune in at Noon, as Liz talks to Gordon Ball about his life on the farm.
7/27/12 Wordy Birds: Farm Beat
In the late 1960’s poet Allen Ginsberg bought an isolated, broken-down farm in upstate New York as a haven for himself and his worn-out, burned out Beat Generation friends. He hoped to create an Elysium where Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky and Herbert Huncke could escape from urban pressures and drug addictions.
Gordon Ball was 22 at the time and had just arrived in New York (recently released from jail in Mexico). He was hired as “farm manager” to plant crops, rehab the house and do the chores. He also tended to the nonstop guests, their erratic/erotic behavior, and spent time with Ginsberg discussing poetry and the Cultural Revolution that was challenging America. His story about that time is the memoir being discussed today. It’s called, East Hill Farm, Seasons with Allen Ginsberg.
Gordon Ball, today, is an award winning film-maker, author of three books, editor of three volumes of Allen Ginsberg’s poetry and teaches English at Virginia Military Academy.
Tune in at Noon, as Liz talks to Gordon Ball about his life on the farm.
7/20/12 Wordy Birds: You Will Recognize Genius
On the evening of March 26th, 1969, John Kennedy Toole parked his car in a lonely and utterly unremarkable field outside of Biloxi, Mississippi. He unwound a newly purchased length of garden hose, pinched one end of it in the space between the top of the driver’s window and the doorframe, and inserted the other end into the car’s exhaust pipe. He got inside, shut the door, and started the engine. Ninety-Three miles away, a manuscript--written by Toole--sat atop an armoire in New Orleans...waiting to be discovered, published, and praised as one of the best works of American Literature of the Twentieth Century. It would go on to earn a Pulitzer Prize in fiction. But in 1969, it collected dust as its author slumped behind the wheel.
Today Liz talks to Cory McLaughlin, author of Butterfly in the Typewriter: The Short Tragic Life of John Kemmedy Toole and the Remarkable Story of A Confedracy of Dunces
Tune in today at Noon!
7/6/12 Wordy Birds: In a Single Bound
Today Liz talks to Graphic Novelist Chris Irving about the history of comics and the artists and writers who create them. There are shocking twists, dramatic turns, and triumphant leaps worthy of any graphic novel. Tune in today at NOON on WRIR for the whole story.
6/29/12 Wordy Birds: Alice Medrich, or The Chocolate Connection
Today on Wordy Birds, Liz sits down with the First Lady of Chocolate, author Alice Medrich. Tune in to hear recipes from her new cookbook, tricks and tips, and how she helped introduce America to the delights of the Chocolate Truffle.
That's today at noon on WRIR.
6/22/12 Wordy Birds: Silver Sparrow
Tayari Jones is a storyteller first and a writer second. She pens her novels (Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, and Silver Sparrow) longhand on paper so the story flows organically from the mind to the page. This week Liz talks to Ms. Jones about growing up in Atlanta, seeing the world through a child's eyes, and how a lady exits a limousine. Tune in today at noon.
