Between the Lines: New Issues Press

by Zinta Aistars
for WMUK 102.1 FM
Southwest Michigan's NPR affiliate



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: William Olsen and Kimberly Kolbe 

Photo courtesy of New Issues Press

When William Olsen got a message from Herbert Scott while vacationing with his wife, Nancy Eimers, in Cornwall, England, he thought his friend and colleague had gone “daft.” It was 1995 and the three poets shared a love of the word. But Olsen thought Herb Scott was overreaching.

“We received a letter from Herb floating an idea that he wanted to start a small press,” Olsen recalls. “It takes so much to get something like that off the ground. But the press became Herb’s calling.”

Scott was undaunted and he charmed Olsen and Eimers, who helped him launch his dream, lining up donations and putting out calls for submissions. New Issues Press was born.

Scott, who was the Gwen Frostic Professor of Creative Writing at Western Michigan University, died in 2006. But he lived to see his dream come true with many new voices in poetry and prose going to press. On Sunday, August 30, New Issues Press celebrates its 20th anniversary at Bell’s Eccentric Café in Kalamazoo from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

“Twenty years for a small press, that’s something of an achievement,” Olsen says. “We always have an annual event, but we want this one to be extra special.” It will feature a 45-minute reading by several New Issues Press authors as well as music and an art sale. New Issues Press books will also be available. Suggested donations at the door are $10 ($5 for students).

“The reading will be introduced by (Kalamazoo) Mayor Bobby Hopewell, who will say a few words about our community and the arts,” Olsen says. “And there will be ..."

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Listen to WMUK's Between the Lines every Tuesday at 7:50 a.m., 11:55 a.m., and 4:20 p.m. 

Between the Lines: The Forgotten War

by Zinta Aistars
for WMUK 102.1 FM
Southwest Michigan's NPR affiliate



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: Steven Spruill

Steve Spruill (Photo by Nancy Spruill)

Steven Spruill wanted to write a story about war ever since he found his father’s military uniform hanging in their Battle Creek basement. “He was in the US Army Air Corps,” Spruill recalls. He was a young boy when he came across his father’s uniform. Spruill is a father now himself and the author of 16 books.

Spruill calls his most recent book, Ice Men: A Novel of the Korean War, his "magnum opus." While most of his earlier books were science fiction novels, Spruill says he decided to write about the Korean War after browsing a book store. 

“I was four years old when the Korean War started,” he says. “I thought nothing of it at the time because I heard nothing about it. The war went on until I was seven.” He would wonder later about that silence, “Why don’t I know more about this? I went into a book store and there were these walls of books on World War Two, and walls of books about the Vietnam War. And there were two bookshelves, less than the length of my arm span, about the Korean War.”

Spruill felt driven to make those shelves wider. He interviewed Korean War veterans, spent countless hours on research, and wrote Ice Men — only to find that his usual publishers, St. Martin’s Press and Doubleday, weren’t interested. Other ...

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Between the Lines: Memory and Memoir

by Zinta Aistars
for WMUK 102.1 FM
Southwest Michigan's NPR affiliate



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: Gail Griffin

Gail Griffin (Photo by Russell Cooper)

Gail Griffin says writing a memoir may be the most challenging, even painful, kind of work for writers. Griffin is the Parfet Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at Kalamazoo College, where she taught from 1977 to 2013. She is also the author of several books. The most recent is The Events of October: Murder-Suicide on a Small Campus, about a tragedy on the Kalamazoo College campus in October 1999.

“People think it’s going to be easy,” Griffin says about writing memoirs. “Because it’s what you know, it’s your own life. Just write it down. But in fact, to make a memoir meaningful takes a great deal more than just writing it down. Memory is a tricky thing.”

Griffin says memory is often colored by our perspective. And that perspective changes in countless subtle ways as we grow older and accumulate life experiences. Memories rise up from the deep not as coherent stories, she says, but can be a patchwork of passing images.

“It’s not the nature of what you remember,” Griffin says. “It’s how you treat what you remember.”

Writing down personal truths can mean stepping on the toes of others in our lives, she admits. Griffin says she's stepped on ...

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Between the Lines: Michigan's Great Girls

by Zinta Aistars
for WMUK 102.1 FM
Southwest Michigan's NPR affiliate



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: Patricia Majher

You don’t have to have lived a long life to have lived a great one. In Patricia Majher’s new book Great Girls in Michigan History (Wayne State University Press, March 2015), the Michigan historian writes about 20 girls younger than 20 who have made a mark on history.

These short biographies written for readers aged eight and older tell the stories of famous and little-known girls. They include female aviator Nancy Harkness (Love); pioneer Anna Howard Shaw; escaped slave Dorothy Butler; professional baseball player Marilyn Jenkins; union leader Myra Komaroff (Wolfgang); Native-American writer Jane Johnston (Schoolcraft); First Lady Betty Bloomer (Ford); jockey Julie Krone; Motown star Diana Ross; tennis champion Serena Williams; and many others.

Majher says she made an effort to find girls with achievements in many different areas from from different areas of the state.

“There are a lot of girls who have achieved greatness before the age of 20 in athletics and in the arts,” Majher says. “But what else? What other areas? So then I started...

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