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Madison BookBeat

Madison BookBeat

By: Stu Levitan Andrew Thomas Sara Batkie David Ahrens Lisa Malawski
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Madison BookBeat highlights local Wisconsin authors and authors coming to Madison for book events. It airs every Monday afternoon at 1pm on WORT FM.

Copyright 2025 Madison BookBeat Art Literary History & Criticism
Episodes
  • Dean Robbins, Books For Kids

    Dean Robbins, Books For Kids
    Apr 27 2026
    Stu Levitan welcomes author and editor Dean Robbins, for a discussion about his career writing illustrated books for children – 13 of them at last count, inspirational stories about such role models as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., polio-eradicator Dr. Jonas Salk, NASA computer scientist Margaret Hamilton, the young Pakistani Noble Laureate Malala Yousafzai, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, suffrage leader Alice Paul, human rights activists Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, astronaut Alan Beam , and more. Dean’s books have been favorably reviewed in the New York Times and Daily News, USA Today, the Smithsonian Air & Space magazine, Publisher’s Weekly, Forbes magazine, along with the Madison, Milwaukee and Wisconsin statewide media. Steady BookBeat listeners will recall Dean’s appearance last July for a conversation about his first book for adult readers, Wisconsin Idols: 100 Heroes Who Changed the State, the World, And Me, from the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. Longtime Madisonians may remember Dean as the arts editor for Isthmus from 1991 to 2008, when he succeeded Marc Eisen as editor. Dean moved to the UW in 2014 as Communications Director for the Division of Continuing Studies and since 2019 has been editor of the alumni magazine On Wisconsin. It was a pleasure to welcome him back to Madison BookBeat.
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    55 mins
  • Choosing to Die with author Theresa Evans

    Choosing to Die with author Theresa Evans
    Apr 20 2026
    Author Theresa Evans of Sturgeon Bay discusses important end of life issues around her support of her mother in experiencing Assisted Death. "Choosing to Die: A Daughter's Story Of Supporting Her Mother's End Of Life Through Assisted Death," is about the journey her family took once her mother decided to define the date and terms of her death in the context of a small southwestern Ontario town. Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAID, has been legal in Canada since 2016. By 2023, over 60,000 Canadians had chosen to die this way. By contrast, the United States has some of the most restrictive laws in the world around MAID. Canada allows a physician to administer the medications that will end a human life, often intravenously. However, in the US, one must be able to ingest the medication on their own, which can add additional stress and danger. For example, what if a person can't swallow, or if they vomit back the medication? What if because of the difficulties they face in attempting to die on their own, they lapse into a coma and don't die? Evans maps out what a more compassionate, patient-empowering approach in the US could mean. Presented like a journal, Evans uses the metaphor of her mother's garden to powerful effect. Choosing to Die describes the author's vivid first hand experience, and is useful for caregivers, death doulas, and other professionals and volunteers involved in hospice care and palliative care. Mos of all, Choosing to Die is a gift for anyone seeking clarity and compassion in the midst of one of life's most confounding decisions.
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    55 mins
  • Lisa Low on poetry's capacity to unlock identity

    Lisa Low on poetry's capacity to unlock identity
    Apr 13 2026
    On this episode of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie is joined by author Lisa Low to talk about her new poetry collection, Replica. Stand-up comedy, a celebrity non-apology, observations of racism, and the slipperiness of nostalgia underpin Replica. In poignant, witty poems, Lisa Low navigates the tensions of solidarity and hostility in white spaces as she sets out to write differently about race. “The problem of being with a white man is also a problem of writing,” Low says in a prose poem that turns writing about identity on its head. She peers in from outside the poem, as if through an open ceiling. The poem itself becomes a site of investigation—a counterpoint to constricting narratives about Asian American identity—reimagined as a dollhouse, a stage with props, an image the speaker wears like a bodysuit. Replica asks what it means to represent yourself and your experiences in a world where you are indistinguishable from others. Lisa Low is the author of Crown for the Girl Inside, winner of the Vinyl 45 Chapbook Contest from YesYes Books. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize, and her poems have appeared in Copper Nickel, Ecotone, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago. Cover design by adam bohannon, with art by Yuqing Zhu
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    48 mins
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