Writer's Voice with Francesca Rheannon

Writer's Voice with Francesca Rheannon

Francesca Rheannon talks to writers of all genres about matters that move us and make us think.

Episodes

Patriotism Redefined: The Moral Legacy of Bates and Adams

July 2, 2026 • 65 mins
What if patriotism isn’t about claiming America is perfect, but helping it become better? This Independence Day on Writer’s Voice: John de Graaf on the true story behind America the Beautiful Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie on Abigail Adams in A Founding Mother
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U.S. Media’s Gaza Failure with Robin Andersen | Plus: Trans Youth and Anti-Trans Laws with Nico Lang

June 27, 2026 • 58 mins
Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform. Who gets to tell the story, and who gets erased? This week on Writer’s Voice, we talk with media scholar Robin Andersen about her book The Complicit Lens: U.S. Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza. Andersen’s argument is blunt: the American press didn’t … Continue reading .css-1t8gq41{border:none;background-image:none;background-color:transparent;box-shadow:none;color:#2F3133;cursor:pointer;font-size:inherit;padding:0;-webkit-text-decoration:inherit;text-decoration:inherit;width:-webkit-max-content;width:-moz-max-content;width:max-content;}.css-1t8gq41:hover,.css-1t8gq41:focus{-webkit-text-decoration:inherit;text-decoration:inherit;}
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Ordinary Soil: A Journey Through Land and Legacy + Carey Gillam on Monsanto

June 18, 2026 • 64 mins
For SEO, I’d make it shorter and keyword-rich: Alex Woodard discusses Ordinary Soil, a sweeping multigenerational novel about a Choctaw farming family in the Oklahoma Panhandle, exploring the deep connections between land, food, health, and identity. Then, in an encore interview, environmental journalist Carey Gillam talks about The Monsanto Papers and the landmark lawsuit in which groundskeeper Lee Johnson took on Monsanto ...
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Syria’s Lost Democratic Revolution with Anand Gopal

June 12, 2026 • 59 mins
Writer’s Voice talks with journalist Anand Gopal about his remarkable book Days of Love and Rage. It’s a deeply human story of the Syrian revolution, the democratic experiment in Manbij, the forces that undermined it, and what it can teach us about hope today.
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Lost Worlds: The Untold Story of Human Adaptation

June 6, 2026 • 59 mins
Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform. Episode Summary What if the story we tell about civilization is wrong? What if human history isn’t a steady march from “primitive” hunter-gatherers to ever more advanced societies, but something far messier, more inventive, and more fragile — a long experiment of adaptation, collapse, … Continue reading
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Omar Zahzah: How Silicon Valley Suppresses Palestinian Voices | Terms of Servitude

May 28, 2026 • 60 mins
In this episode of Writer's Voice, Francesca speaks with Omar Zahzah, Palestinian-American scholar, activist, journalist, and author of Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle. Zahzah offers the first book-length analysis of how major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok, systematically suppress Palestinian content, and how t...
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America’s Death Penalty Crisis + Abdul El-Sayed on Healing Politics

May 21, 2026 • 57 mins
This week on Writer’s Voice: Elizabeth Vartkessian discusses The Undeserving and the human realities behind America’s death penalty system. Plus an excerpt from my 2020 interview with Abdul El-Sayed on “the epidemic of insecurity” shaping American life.
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Tim Weed’s The Gatepost + Farah Naz Rishi’s The Flightless Birds of New Hope

May 14, 2026 • 59 mins
This week on Writer's Voice: Tim Weed explores psychedelics, Mesoamerican mythology, and consciousness in The Gatepost. Farah Naz Rishi talks grief, siblings, humor, and a runaway cockatoo in The Flightless Birds of New Hope.
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Caroline Bicks on Stephen King, Maria Adelmann on Adjunct Labor

May 7, 2026 • 59 mins
Caroline Bicks joins Writer’s Voice to talk about Monsters in the Archives, her fascinating exploration of Stephen King’s private papers, creative process, and the deep emotional fears beneath his horror fiction. Then Marie Adelmann discusses Adjunct, her darkly funny and painfully real novel about precarious academic labor, student debt, and the exploitation built into today’s university system. Two compelling ...
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Women Who Changed Journalism + Nature’s Hidden Relationships

April 30, 2026 • 75 mins
This week’s Writer’s Voice: Julia Cooke discusses Starry and Restless, her portrait of Rebecca West, Martha Gellhorn, and Emily Hahn, women whose adventurous lives helped transform modern journalism. And Sophie Pavelle talks about To Have or To Hold, a deeply engaging exploration of symbiosis and the astonishing partnerships that make life possible.
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Bill McKibben on Solar’s Breakthrough, Anne Fadiman on the Hidden Life of Ordinary Things

April 23, 2026 • 58 mins
For Earth Day on Writer’s Voice, Bill McKibben on why solar may be arriving faster than we realize. Then, Anne Fadiman on frogs, pronouns, and the hidden meanings inside ordinary things.
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Free Press 2026, Media Censorship & Daniel Ellsberg’s Moral Legacy

April 17, 2026 • 67 mins
Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform. In this episode of Writer’s Voice, Francesca Rheannon speaks with Andy Lee Roth of Project Censored about the State of the Free Press 2026, marking 50 years of tracking underreported stories. Then, Michael Ellsberg discusses Truth and Consequence, a powerful collection of writings by … Continue reading Read more
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Climate Fiction & Plastic Pollution: Stories of Survival and Solutions for a Warming World

April 9, 2026 • 59 mins
What does climate survival look like—and what’s stopping us from getting there? This week on Writer’s Voice: Ellen Meeropol imagines communities rebuilding in a warming world. Then, Judith Enck reveals how the plastic crisis was engineered—and how we can fight back From empathy to action, this episode connects the dots between storytelling and systemic change.
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Philip Schultz’s ENORMOUS MORNING: Life, Poetry & Freedom

April 3, 2026 • 58 mins
Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Philip Schultz joins Writer’s Voice to talk about his new collection Enormous Morning—a moving exploration of aging, memory, regret, and the possibility of beginning again. We also talk about poetry as a way of confronting suffering—and even finding joy.
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The Women Who Changed Journalism & A Novel of Extinction

March 26, 2026 • 66 mins
This week on Writer’s Voice: Julia Cooke on the women who helped invent modern journalism—and why history forgot them. And Ida Turpeinen on extinction, memory, and the stories we fail to tell.
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Better Than AI? Expanding the Boundaries of the Human Mind: Justin C. Key + Nelson Delles

March 19, 2026 • 58 mins
What happens when AI takes over medicine—and what can we do to strengthen our own minds? In this episode of _Writer’s Voice,_ Justin C. Key explores the human cost of AI-driven healthcare, while memory champion Nelson Dellis shares techniques to boost memory, focus, and creativity.
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Victoria Woodhull’s Radical Life + The Booksellers  Who Defied America’s Most Powerful Censor

March 14, 2026 • 59 mins
This week on Writer’s Voice: Two fascinating stories from women’s history. Eden Collinsworth tells the story of Victoria Woodhull—the first woman to run for President of the United States. Then novelist Shelley Noble takes us to New York’s legendary Book Row during a fierce battle over censorship.
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Jung Chang on Fly, Wild Swans: China, Freedom + the Fight for Truth

March 7, 2026 • 35 mins
In this episode of Writer’s Voice, Francesca Rheannon speaks with bestselling author Jung Chang about her memoir Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself, and China, the long-awaited sequel to her landmark book Wild Swans.
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Dignity or Survival? Two Writers Confront Freedom Under Pressure

February 27, 2026 • 63 mins
Political philosopher Lea Ypi reflects on dignity, archives, and the manipulation of history in Indignity. Then Eleanor Shearer brings us into the world of the Jamaican Maroons exiled to Nova Scotia in Fireflies in Winter — a novel about freedom, queer love, and the moral cost of survival.
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Daring To Be Free: Sudhir Hazareesingh on Slave Rebellion & Resistance

February 20, 2026 • 58 mins
Slavery was never passively endured. Sudhir Hazareesingh on the vast, global resistance of the enslaved — from Africa to Haiti. Plus: Jacqueline Sheehan on Sojourner Truth’s extraordinary moral courage.
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