A Conspiracy of Lemurs

We welcome Roxanne Doty, author of Out Stealing Water, and Amy L. Bernstein, author of The Protero Complex, to our podcast to discuss Writers as Recording Artists: Power and Empathy in Fiction. Novelists writing of their contemporary world are historical commentators of their time. They offer sweeping and sometimes dystopian views of government and the people who run it, tapping into real fears and fundamental truths about the worl...

One of the most common themes in literature for young people is boundaries crossed—in friendship and family.  Young people are changing rapidly, and they often find it very hard to know their own boundaries, or when they've crossed the boundaries of others, until conflicts arise.  With our guests Ona Gritz, author of the middle grade novel, August or Forever, and Carol Dines, the author of the young adult novel, The Take-Over ...

M.B. McLatchey‘s memoir Beginner’s Mind and Kevin McIntosh‘s novel Class Dismissed address similar educational themes and explore some of the same tensions in and out of the classroom. M.B. McLatchey and Kevin McIntosh will be joining Jaynie Royal and Pam Van Dyk to explore the philosophical threads of these education-themed literary works. 

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 Jon Sealy, founder of Haywire Books and author of The Edge of America, The Whiskey Baron, So You Want to Be a Novelist, and The Merciful  and   Heather Bell Adams, author of Maranatha Road and The Good Luck Stone (published by Haywire Books), will be joining us to discuss the indie publishing scene, the editor-author relationship, as well as their recent releases.

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 In anticipation of the release of our 2019 Kraken Book Prize-winning title, Thomas Creeper and the Gloomsbury Secret, J.R. Potter will be joining us on A Conspiracy of Lemurs to chat about would-be heroes in crisis, heroes who have nothing to lose and everything to gain. We’ll explore the role of the underdog hero in middle grade fiction and the lessons we can learn from them at any stage in our lives. 

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Alicia Mosley and Ella deCastro Baron, contributors to the upcoming release (Her)oics: Women’s Lived Experiences During the Coronavirus Pandemic, and Joanell Serra, coeditor of (Her)oics, (Pact Press, March 2021) will discuss their contributed stories: “Mosley’s Mothering while Black during the Pandemic” and deCastro Baron’s “Bahala Na.”  In conversation with Pam and Jaynie, they will  consider the impact culture and race had on th...

Jaynie Royal and Pam Van Dyk spend an hour with two of our Southern Mash Literature Series authors: Rebecca Baum, author of Lifelike Creatures, and Karol Hoeffner, author of Knee Deep. Together we discuss the use of landscape, culture, and catastrophe as catalysts for character development; and how narrative point of view shapes the reader’s experience of that journey. 

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On this episode of A Conspiracy of Lemurs, Jaynie Royal and Pam Van Dyk are joined by  Jane Bernstein, author of The Face Tells the Secret, and Julie Wittes Schlack, author of This All-at-Onceness. We discuss the inspiration behind their respective literary works, the definition and intent of the memoir narrative, the challenges entailed in such a task, and the role of truth in the formulation of content. 

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Jaynie Royal and Pam Van Dyk welcome Regal House poets, Martha Kalin, the winning recipient of the 2019 Terry J. Cox Poetry Award for her collection How to Hold a Flying River, and Zack Rogow, author of The Irreverent Litanies and the judge of the 2019 Terry J. Cox Poetry Award, to A Conspiracy of Lemurs. Join us for a delightful conversation about the inspiration behind their collections, the role of poetic activism, and the influ...