Between the Lines: Mysteries in the Wild

by Zinta Aistars
for WMUK 102.1 FM

Between the Lines is my weekly radio show about books and writers with a Michigan connection. It airs every Tuesday at 7:50 a.m., 11:55 a.m., and 4:20 p.m. (or listen anytime online), on WMUK 102.1 FM, Southwest Michigan's NPR affiliate. I am the host of Between the Lines.

This week's guest: Joseph Heywood.

Joe Heywood and friend in northern Michigan

Few authors are as prolific as Joseph Heywood, who will soon have 20 books on the shelf with his name on the spine. The tenth volume of his popular "Woods Cop" mystery series is coming soon, but his newest work, a collection of short stories called Harder Ground, was published by Lyons Press in March 2015.

Heywood takes the writer’s mantra of “write what you know” to heart. He's is a Portage, Michigan, resident, but six months of each year he heads north to spend time in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula riding along with conservation officers, seeking adventure. His "Woods Cop" series is based on these experiences. The main character of the series is a male officer named Grady Service, but his new story has only female protagonists, all game wardens, in each story. Poachers, drug smugglers, and violent criminals inhabit most of these mini-adventures; others showcase Heywood’s tongue-in- cheek sense of humor; and still others, a heart-tugging look at the truth behind what some call "monsters."

“It takes a special woman, a special person, to be a cop, but even more so for ...

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Between the Lines: Time of the Locust

by Zinta Aistars
for WMUK 102.1 FM


Between the Lines is my weekly radio show about books and writers with a Michigan connection. It airs every Tuesday at 7:50 a.m., 11:55 a.m., and 4:20 p.m. (or listen anytime online), on WMUK 102.1 FM, Southwest Michigan's NPR affiliate. I am the host of Between the Lines.

This week's guest: Morowa Yejidé.

Morowa Yejidé at a book signing.

As is often true of “overnight successes,” Morowa Yejidé’s (pronounced: Moe-roe-wah Yay-gee-day) debut novel quickly gained critical and popular acclaim but took about ten years to write. Time of the Locust (Atria Books/Simon & Schuster, 2014) is a finalist for the national PEN/Bellwether Prize , received First Honorable Mention in the national 2011 Dana Awards, and is a 2015 NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literary Work.

Yejidé, who is married with three sons, wrote the book in the spare time she didn’t have, taking advantage of occasional bouts of insomnia, hours between work in academia, and even time in the bathtub when the door was locked to all distraction for three-hour baths. Submitting the manuscript to publishers more than 100 times, she filed away the rejections and kept sending it off, undaunted.

“Time of the Locust is a magical realism, literary fiction type of novel,” Yejidé says. “It tells the story of a seven-year-old autistic boy named Sephiri and a supernatural relationship he has with his incarcerated father.”

CREDIT SIMON & SCHUSTER

Autism and incarceration are just two of the heavy topics Yejidé takes on in the novel. The boy's mother Brenda copes with single parenthood while her son’s father Horus serves time for killing a racist police officer who shot his father but went unpunished. Horus is in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison, increasingly escaping his isolation and despair by escaping in his mind. Brenda buries her stress in food, leading to obesity and diabetes. Yejidé manages to juggle all of these issues, dropping nothing, each character and issue fully developed.

“Writing for me is ...

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Between the Lines: Fighting for Literacy

by Zinta Aistars
for WMUK 102.1 FM






Between the Lines is my weekly radio show about books and writers with a Michigan connection. It airs every Tuesday at 7:50 a.m., 11:55 a.m., and 4:20 p.m. (or listen at anytime online), on WMUK 102.1 FM, Southwest Michigan's NPR affiliate. I am the host of Between the Lines.

This week's guest: Kathy Jennings and Michael Evans.

Kathy Jennings and Michael Evans in the WMUK studio

Reading isn’t just about picking up a great novel. It’s about being able to fill out a job application or a medical form. It’s about helping your children with a homework assignment or enjoying a bedtime story together. It’s about creating a grocery list and following a recipe—or just enjoying a game of Scrabble with friends.

Established in 1974, the Kalamazoo Literacy Council is committed to reducing illiteracy in Kalamazoo County, where statistics show more than 25,000 people struggle to read. Executive Director Michael Evans was brought on board in 2010 as the nonprofit’s first paid position for an otherwise all-volunteer organization. Free one-on-one tutoring programs offer help in improving reading, writing, and spelling skills. Lessons in basic computer skills are also available.

When Evans came to the Council, 49 tutors were working with 55 learners. By 2013 he had increased that to 170 tutors working with 240 learners.

“Three hundred tutors is our goal for now,” Evans says. “That’s what we believe we help us to really engage the numbers necessary for us to make a statistical change. We’re not here just to manage those who found us; we’re here to start to drive those illiteracy rates downward to the point of termination.”

Kalamazoo Literacy Council event

CREDIT KALAMAZOO LITERACY COUNCIL

Kathy Jennings, a volunteer coordinator for the Community Literacy Center, located at Pine Island Presbyterian Church in Texas Township (the newest of a number of literacy centers around Kalamazoo County) , offers insights into what it takes to become a tutor ...

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Fifty sweet years of maple sugaring at Kalamazoo Nature Center

by Zinta Aistars
Published in Southwest Michigan's Second Wave Media
March 12, 2015

Boiling sap (Photo by Kalamazoo Nature Center)

The Kalamazoo Nature Center with its 1,100 acres of wooded rolling land and varied educational offerings is recognized as one of the top nature centers in the nation. And for 50 years it’s been celebrating the coming of spring with the Maple Sugar Festival. 

Before the first crocus has yet pushed its green spikes above the snow, before the icicles have yet fallen from rooflines, and long before the first robin has braved Michigan cold, rows of metal buckets hang from maple trees. Taps piercing the bark drip with a sweet sap and collect in the buckets. The maple trees know, and spring is stirring deep inside their trunks.

“Maple sap begins to flow once the temperatures begin to rise above freezing,” says Jason Byler, public programs director, Kalamazoo Nature Center.

At the Nature Center, preparations are underway for their annual Maple Sugaring Festival. This year’s festival will be sweeter than most, because the Nature Center is celebrating its 50 years of maple sugaring.

The two-day festival runs March 14 and 15, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and is free to members, $7 for non-member adults, $6 for seniors, and $4 for children who are 4- to 17-years old, free to younger children. 

“The Maple Sugaring Festival is our biggest fundraiser of the year,” says Byler. “We normally see between 1,500 and 2,000 people during the two days of the festival and about 120 people become members. This includes both membership renewals and new memberships. When people sign up for a membership, we deduct the price of admission.”

According to the Michigan Maple Syrup Association, Michigan ranks fifth in the United States for maple syrup production. The history of maple syrup production dates back centuries ago, when Native Americans tapped maples for sap.

“At the Nature Center, we still have the Sugar Shack, which has been here for 50 years,” says Byler. The original structure, he says, has posts and a roof that are rotting with age. “We are hoping to build a new one, and the Maple Sugaring Festival will help fund that.”

Pioneer sugaring demonstrations will be held at the DeLano Homestead, the historic section of the Nature Center, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

“We will demonstrate how the sap was collected, boiled, until it evaporates into the syrup we know,” says Byler. Collecting and producing syrup has changed over the years, he says, using metal spiles rather than the wooden spiles of yesteryear. While sap was once ...

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Between the Lines: Poetry Connections

by Zinta Aistars
for WMUK 102.1 FM




Between the Lines is my weekly radio show about books and writers with a Michigan connection. It airs every Tuesday at 7:50 a.m., 11:55 a.m., and 4:20 p.m., on WMUK 102.1 FM, Southwest Michigan's NPR affiliate. I am the host of Between the Lines.

This week's guest: Kathleen McGookey.

Kathi McGookey

To Kathleen McGookey, poetry is “a way to pay attention. Very close attention. To the smallest detail, the smallest moment.”

Primarily a writer of prose poetry (poetry without line breaks), McGookey has been writing poems since her days in a study abroad program in Paris, France, as a college student. An ocean away from her home and native culture, McGookey felt keenly connected to her own language while immersed in learning French.

“Even though I was pretty fluent in French, I couldn’t say everything I wanted to say,” says McGookey. “I found myself, while writing in my journal in English, really loving that ability to be articulate and expressing myself fully. I remember the experience of standing in a bookstore—I think it was Shakespeare & Co.—and reading a book in English and feeling so connected to the writer.”

That joy in connection has been McGookey’s driving motivation ever since. Her fondest moments now are readers contacting her or coming up to her after a reading to let her know that they have also felt that special connection while reading her poetry.

McGookey’s newest published work is a chapbook called Mended, published by Kattywompus Press (2014). Other publications include Whatever Shines; October Again; and At the Zoo. McGookey has also translated French poet Georges Godeau’s book We’ll See.

CREDIT KATTYWOMPUS PRESS

In Mended, McGookey says she worked through the grief and sorrow she experienced after ...

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