Merry Gangemi is a writer, poet, editor, copy editor, and activist.
Her short fiction and poetry can be found in Wisconsin Review, Paterson Literary Review, Journal of New Jersey Poets, Sinister Wisdom, Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly, Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly, Off Our Backs, and Street Spirit. Her poem, "Beltane: Advancing to Zero" is forthcoming in
July 30, 2008
Two views of American Life: The Garden of Last Days and the murder of Larry King
This Thursday, July 31st, at 4:15 p.m. (eastern), Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog, visits with Merry Gangemi and Woman-Stirred Radio for a conversation about his new book, The Garden of Last Days.
Dubus's The Garden of Last Days is "set in the unabashedly seamy underbelly of American life in early September 2001, the moment before the world changed, and is told from the point of view of characters whose worlds intersect, among them a stripper, her landlady, a jihadist, and a bouncer at the stripper's club" (Book News).
The Garden of Last Days, with its complex structure and point of view, is not a heroic narrative of 9/11; it is a novel that brings together everything we don't want to think about when we consider the fabric and rubrics of an America that moved, inexplicably, towards an event that shattered more than the idyll of American prosperity and domestic peace. Indeed, the country we know and love has garnered more animosity and frustration on a domestic and global level, than at any time since McCarthyism, and later, the Vietnam War.
Following our interview with Andre Dubus III, Nicki Hastie comes online to talk about the horrific murder of 15-year-old Larry King, an openly gay adolescent who was a student at Oxnard California's E. O. Green Junior High School. Larry was murdered in his classroom, shot in the head by a classmate, Brandon McInerney, on the morning of February 12, 2008.
In an America irrevocably reinvented by the the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the burgeoning Gay Rights Movement, these two polarizing events expose more than murder and mayhem. They lay open only two of the complex and problematical issues that continue to drive America along a road of intolerance and hatred for everything and anyone who is different and threatening to the idyllic myths of what America is, and what America means to the rest of the world.
So please, join us, Thursday, July 31st, from 4 to 6p.m. Woman-Stirred Radio: the best in Queer culture.
Our phone lines are always open. Call 802 454-7762 to join the discourse on Woman-Stirred Radio!!
Woman-Stirred Radio is a queer cultural journal that celebrates and preserves the lives and work of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered artists, musicians, writers, academics and policy makers.
We broadcast live on WGDR every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 p.m. (eastern), with interviews and music; plus weekly commentaries from British writer Nicki Hastie and guest commentaries from Julie R. Enszer, and Jan Steckel. Our intern is Mikhael Yowe, an IBA student at Goddard College.
Woman-Stirred Radio is funded in part by the Samara Foundation of Vermont, a non-profit, Burlington-based foundation that seeks to improve the quality of life for Vermont's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered citizens. Click on the link to find out more about Samara Foundation and its programs.
July 23, 2008
Nona Caspers visits Woman-Stirred Radio
Nona Caspers : author of Heavier Than Air, @ 4:30 pm.
"'I love this,'" I shouted into Cynthia's ear and she laughed….I remember bumping into people. I remember bumping into Auntie Katie dancing with Alquin Schultz, and my mother and father. I remember whirling off, whirling and whirling with the pressure of Cynthia's hand in the middle of my back and Cynthia's breath against my temple. I could feel the squirrel-bone ring against my thigh in my pocket—I had my plans…. I slipped my hand up Cynthia's back between her shoulder blades and she looked into my eyes and I saw our future; Cynthia and I living together like man and wife. I didn’t know what that meant exactly, but I married Cynthia with every feeling in me, with every sound I heard in my fourteen years, with every breath and eyelash, with everything I knew. I married Cynthia Hinnencamp under that darkening sky, with the Melrose band thumping, the smell of sweat and corncobs and mowed church grass in the air. I married her I married her I married her. I must have dropped to my knees, I must have dropped and folded my hands, like a declaration. I got the ring out of my pocket and took Cynthia's hand. And at first, they must have thought something was wrong, that I was ill or had hurt my ankle. The people around us stopped dancing, and then people around them stopped and on and on until a hush formed and the band stopped playing and I was on my knees looking up at Cynthia and I couldn’t get up. Someone shifted on the wood. Someone coughed. A crow cawed."
So. tune in to Woman-Stirred Radio, tomorrow, Thursday, July 24th, for an conversation with Nona Caspers, at 4:30 (eastern). Woman-Stirred Radio on WGDR 91.1 fm or streamed live online at wgdr.org. Queer culture at its best!
Nona Caspers moved to San Francisco from rural Minnesota. She is an Associate Professor at San Francisco State University. Her recent book of stories, HEAVIER THAN AIR (University of Massachusetts Press) won the Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction and was an Editor’s Choice in the New York Times Book Review. Nona’s stories have been widely published in literary journals and anthologies; she has received an Iowa Fiction Award from the Iowa Review, a Cooper Prize from the Ontario Review, a Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award, and a Barbara Demming Memorial Award. http://online.sfsu.edu/~ncaspers/Welcome.htm
Woman-Stirred Radio is a queer cultural journal that celebrates and preserves the lives and work of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered artists, musicians, writers, academics and policy makers. We broadcast live on WGDR every Thursday afternoon from 4pm to 6pm (Eastern), with interviews and music; plus weekly commentaries from British writer Nicki Hastie and guest commentary from Julie R. Enszer. Our intern is Mikhael Yowe, an IBA student at Goddard College. Want to join the conversation? Call the air studio at 802 454-7762
June 11, 2008
Antara on Woman-Stirred Radio!
Please join Woman-Stirred Radio for a live, in-studio interview with Antara, a Burlington-based independent singer-songstress. Antara will bring her guitar along to radio station and will play new songs, some not so new songs, and well, whatever, actually!
Whether busy conjuring variations of rhythm folk poetry in song lyrics or exploring the percussive-like dynamics of her trademark guitar riffs, independent folk songstress Antara continues to establish herself as a 'new' folk artist that is expanding the forefront of women’s music and the independent folk movement. Antara has been performing, professionally, for a dozen years in more than five hundred venues throughout New England, The Midwest, The South, and Canada.
Antara's unique fusion of rhythmic folk music and interactive coffee house performance capitalizes on a consistent sharing of the sociological perspective that shapes her life, love and work. Perhaps the artist clarifies herself and her work best when she says, "Songs just come to me all the time, and I never really thought I'd be a singer/songwriter. But, it's the most rewarding experience in the world to hear audience members singing your lyrics back to you. It makes me want to cry, it's so moving,n like an out of body experience for me as a woman, a musician and especially, as a human being."
Woman-Stirred Radio is a queer cultural journal that celebrates and preserves the lives and work of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered artists, musicians, writers, academics and policy makers.
We broadcast live on WGDR every Thursday afternoon from 4pm to 6pm (Eastern), with interviews and music; plus weekly commentaries from British writer Nicki Hastie and guest commentary from Julie R. Enszer. Our intern is Mikhael Yowe, an IBA student at Goddard College.
June 04, 2008
JD Glass Returns to Woman-Stirred
JD Glass, 2008 Lambda Literary Award nominee novelist and musician
JD started writing as a child. Her first story was a kindergarten writing assignment called "A Mouse in the House." It was a combination of truth and fiction, and her mother was not pleased that she shared it with the class!
She started writing stories and reading them to a trapped audience, her younger siblings. She joined the Society for Creative Anachronism as a teenager and became the Household bard, which required the creation of epic ballads, usually based on historical romances, to be performed at Household events. This, of course, was in addition to the typical angst-ridden poetry that seems to be required at a certain age.
From http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com/Reviews/BSBNews-Glass.htm
"Punk Like Me....is different. It is engaging. It is life-affirming. Frankly, it is genius....This is our future standing tall and, most of the time, alone, and this is the impact of the story. At a minimum it compels us to listen and to remember....This is a rare book in that it has a soul; one that is laid bare for all to see" (Just Abut Write). More about JD glass can be found on her web site http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=133823279
We broadcast live on WGDR every Thursday afternoon from 4pm to 6pm (Eastern), with interviews and music; plus weekly commentaries from British writer Nicki Hastie and guest commentaries from Julie R. Enszer. Our intern is Mikhael Yowe, an IBA student at Goddard College.
May 15, 2008
Liza Cowan is Woman-Stirred!
Liza Cowan, artist and owner of Pine Street Art Works, in Burlington,Vt. Liza Cowan is a painter and photographer. One of her video shorts debuted on Vermont PBS.
Pine Street Art Works is located in the south end of Burlington on Pine Street, across from the Maltex Building next to Speeder and Earl's.
This gallery has hosted works from artist like Alison Bechdel, Cara Barer, David Klein, David Putman, Marie La Pre Grabon, Liza Cowan, SP Goddman and H. Keith Wagner.
From www.pinestreetartworks.com
We broadcast live on WGDR every Thursday afternoon from 4pm to 6pm (Eastern), with interviews and music; plus weekly commentaries from British writer Nicki Hastie and guest commentary from Julie R. Enszer. Our intern is Mikhael Yowe, an IBA student at Goddard College.
May 08, 2008
Amy Hoffman and Anais Mitchell on Woman-Stirred Radio
Amy Hoffman, editor-in-chief of The Woman's Review of Book,
is the author of An Army of Ex-lovers. 
She is a writer and community activist, she has been an editor at Gay Community News (GCN), South End Press, and the Unitarian Universalist World magazine. She has served on the boards of GCN, Sojourner, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), and the Boston Lesbian and Gay History Project and as a judge of the Lambda Literary Awards. Hoffman’s memoir, Hospital Time, about taking care of friends with AIDS, was published by Duke University Press in 1997. It was short-listed for the American Library Association Gay Book Award and the New York Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award, and was a New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age selection. Her memoir An Army of Ex-Lovers, about Boston's Gay Community News and the lesbian and gay movement of the late 1970s, was published by the University of Massachusetts Press. Hoffman lives in Boston with her spouse, Roberta Stone.
We broadcast live on WGDR every Thursday afternoon from 4pm to 6pm (Eastern), with interviews and music; plus weekly commentaries from British writer Nicki Hastie and guest commentary from Julie R. Enszer. Our intern is Mikhael Yowe, an IBA student at Goddard College.
April 29, 2008
Susan Werner, Rachel Jury, & Clare Summerskill!!
Rachel Jury, British writer & performance artist.
Rachel has been performing her poetry for the past seven years at a variety of locations across Britain and Europe from Brighton to Dundee to Dublin. Rachel studied acting, but is more into writing. She is in the process of writing her third collection of poetry Politics Post Postmodernism. Her second collection of poems, 'Laughin' Lesbians Vol 2' is due to be published early in 2008. She currently resides in Glasgow Scotland where she is developing her first musical “The Gates”. “Miss Smith”, her second musical is in the works . Rachel received the Jackie Forster Memorial Award for Culture, Pride Awards 2006, for outstanding contribution to culture in Scotland. From http://www.racheljury.co.uk/
Clare Summerskill is a stand-up, a writer, an actress and a singer-songwriter. 
As a Lesbian Comedienne, Clare performs an original cocktail of stand-up and comedy songs to mainly Gay and Lesbian audiences and has even been known to make straight people chuckle just a little bit!!! She brings "Dyke" humour to the forefront of alternative comedy! As a writer Clare has worked for many years in theatre and for radio. Clare has had two short stories published and she also runs comedy writing workshops.
Clare has her own professional theatre company, ARTEMIS Theatre Company. The company performs theatre to audiences who are often excluded by main stream commercial productions. Last year ARTEMIS performed a sell out National Tour of the play "GATEWAY TO HEAVEN", based entirely on the memories of older lesbians and gay men,by Clare Summerskill. From http://www.claresummerskill.co.uk/Susan Werner, songwriter and singer. 
Susan Werner was raised on a farm in rural Iowa. She studied classical voice at Temple University. Werner left behind her opera training and began performing as a singer-songwriter at coffeehouses throughout the northeast. She self-released her first album "Midwestern Saturday Night" in 1992 and then went on to put out "Live at Tin Angel" the following year. In 1995 came her breakout album, BMG/Private Music's "Last of the Good Straight Girls."
Werner went on, recording two albums even better than her previous work, adding some country and soul sounds to her signature vocal stylings with the help of Nashville multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Darrell Scott, who produced "Time Between Trains" and Colin Linden (Blackie & The Rodeo Kings), who produced her 2001 "New Non-Fiction." Werner's latest endeavor, "The Gospel Truth," a collection of originals she describes as "hymns for the spiritually ambivalent."
Susan will be playing at Ragle Hall/ Marboro College in Marboro, Vermont on May 1st.
from http://www.susanwerner.com/imagen/index.html Woman-Stirred Radio is a queer cultural journal that celebrates and preserves the lives and work of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered artists, musicians, writers, academics and policy makers.We broadcast live on WGDR every Thursday afternoon from 4pm to 6pm, with interviews and music; with weekly commentaries from British writer Nicki Hastie and guest commentary from Julie R. Enszer. Our intern is Mikhael Yowe, an IBA student at Goddard College.
Want to join the conversation? Call the air studio at 802 454-7762.
April 24, 2008
Margarethe Cammermeyer & Sharron Proulx-Turner on Woman-Stirred Radio
Today on Woman-Stirred Radio, join Merry Gangemi for a double-header with Margrethe (Grethe) Cammermeyer and Sharron Proulx-Turner. Up first is Proulx-Turner at 4:15 p.m., followed by Cammermeyer at 5p.m. (Eastern).
Sharron Proulx-Turner is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta. She’s from Mohawk, Algonquin, Wyandot, Ojibwe, Mi'kmaw, French, Scottish and Irish ancestry. She is a two-spirit mom of three adult children, Graham, Barb and Adrian, mother-in-law to Harold, and nokomis to Willow, Jessinia and Mazie. Her previously published memoir, Where the Rivers Join (1995), written under the pseudonym Beckylane, was short-listed for the Edna Staebler award for creative non-fiction, and her second book, what the auntys say (2002), was shortlisted for the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Prize for best first book of poetry. Sharron's work appears in several anthologies and journals. Proulx-Turner has two upcoming books, she is reading her blanket with her hands, (Frontenac Books, April, 2008) and she walks for days/ inside a thousand eyes/ a two-spirit story (Turnstone Press, Fall, 2008).
Grethe Cammermeyer was born in Oslo, Norway in 1942 during the Nazi occupation. Her family immigrated to the US in 1951, when Grethe was nine-years-old. She joined the army in 1961 and entered the Army Student Nurse Program. Cammermeyer served fourteen months in Vietnam.
In 1988, Colonel Cammermeyer accepted the position of Chief Nurse of the Washington State National Guard. In 1989, during an interview for top-secret clearance, to apply for the War College, she told the military "I am a lesbian". She was separated from the military despite an exemplary military and civilian professional record. On that same day, 11 June 1992, her attorneys filed suit in Federal District Court in Seattle challenging the existing ban on homosexuals in the military and requesting her reinstatement. After twenty-five months, Judge Zilly ruled that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", a policy implemented by the Clinton administration, is unconstitutional and based on prejudice. She was reinstated in the National Guard in June,1994 and resumed her previous position as Chief Nurse. Cammermeyer retired in March 1997, after 31 years, with full military privileges.
In 1994, the feature film, Serving in Silence, based on Grethe's book of the same title, was released, starring Glenn Close as Margarethe Cammermeyer, and Judy Davis as Cammermeyer's life partner, Diane Divelbess.
Cammermeyer's story is profoundly significant to the Gay Rights movement. She successfully fought a brutal system of repressive discrimination within the U.S. military that had destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives, careers, and families. Her courage contributes mightily to our collective determination to attain both equal rights and protections under U.S. military and civil law.
Cammermeyer's interview begins at 5 p.m. (eastern).
Woman-Stirred Radio is a queer cultural journal that celebrates and preserves the lives and work of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered artists, musicians, writers, academics and policy makers.
We broadcast live on WGDR every Thursday afternoon from 4pm to 6pm, with interviews and music; with weekly commentaries from British writer Nicki Hastie and guest commentary from Julie R. Enszer. Our intern is Mikhael Yowe, an IBA student at Goddard College.
Want to join the conversation? Call the air studio at 802 454-7762.
April 17, 2008
The Curious Coupling of Science & Sex: Mary Roach is Woman-Stirred!
"Here is something eerie about spinal reflexes: You don't need a brain...you don't even need to be alive. The spinal reflex known the Lazarus sign has been spooking doctors for centuries. If you trigger the right spot on the spinal cord of a freshly dead body or a beating-heart cadaver... it will stretch out its arms and then raise them and cross them over its chest" (233).
Curious? Want to know why Masters had a penis with a camera inside built? Or why that Egyptian doctor dressed seventy-five rats in polyester underpants for a year?
Tune in, then, and have some laughs while you learn some odd facts and lesser-known truths about sexual physiology and why it is still shrouded in shame and secrecy.
Obsessed as we are with sex, we still know little about the world of sex research, and so Mary Roach takes us there, from laboratories, MRI centers, bedrooms, and even a Danish pig farm. Roach brings Masters and Johnson, Alfred Kinsey, Dr. Ahmed Shafik, and others to the discussion of what is, ultimately, what brings us all here.
So. Tune in to Woman-Stirred Radio, today, Thursday, April 17th at 5:00 p.m., for an interview with Mary Roach, author of Bonk, Stiff, and Spook.
Woman-Stirred Radio is a queer cultural journal that celebrates and preserves the lives and work of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered artists, musicians, writers, academics and policy makers.
We broadcast live on WGDR every Thursday afternoon from 4pm to 6pm, with interviews and music; with weekly commentaries from British writer Nicki Hastie and guest commentary from Julie R. Enszer. Our intern is Mikhael Yowe, an IBA student at Goddard College.
Want to join the conversation? Call the air studio at 802 454-7762.
April 09, 2008
Jill Raney is Woman-Stirred!!
Jill Raney has been a staff member for Servicemembers Legal Defense Network since 2006. She is a grassroots organizer who works with activists nationwide to raise visibility for repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and call on Congress to lift the ban. Jill’s background brings in technology and grassroots organizing on issues related to gender and sexuality.
As an undergraduate student at University of Virginia, she was involved in intimate violence services, LGBT rights, reproductive rights, and Democratic politics. Jill is an active member of the Women's Information Network Washington's premiere professional, political, and social network dedicated to empowering young, Democratic, pro-choice women. She is a co-chair of WIN's Technology Network.
Join us on April 10th, at 4:30 pm for an interview with Jill Raney. Want to join the conversation? Give us a call at 802.454.7762.
Woman-Stirred Radio is a queer cultural journal that celebrates and preserves the lives and work of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered artists, musicians, writers, academics and policy makers.
We broadcast live on WGDR every Thursday afternoon from 4pm to 6pm, with interviews and music; with weekly commentaries from British writer Nicki Hastie and guest commentary from Julie R. Enszer.
From: Service Members Legal Defense Network
April 03, 2008
Nancy Polikoff is Woman-Stirred!
Please join Merry Gangemi, today, on Woman-Stirred Radio, for an interview with Nancy D.Polikoff, author of Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: valuing all families under the law. Polikoff is a professor of law at American University Washington College of Law. With this salient, clear-written treatise on the uniquely American legal construct of marriage, that grants special rights to heterosexual couples who marry, Polikoff argues for a legal system that values the myriad variations of families, bringing into the definition extended family units, single-parent households, lesbian and gay families and "many other familial configurations [that] need recognition and protection to meet the concerns they all share:building and sustaining economic and emotional interdependence and nurturing the next generation."
In Beyond Straight and Gay Marriage,published by Beacon Press, Polikoff defines and contextualizes marriage, contending that "no one should have to marry in order to reap specific and uniques legal legal results." She carefully, and with compassion underscores several cases that illustrate key issues and problems in current U.S. law regarding marriage.
Are you catching this, Bill Reilly?"
Perhaps, with the recent sensationalism of the Thomas Beatie-the-first-man-to-get-pregnant man-story, minds and sensibilities will be thrust into hyper drive. Can we understand this? Do we even want to understand this? Regardless, any progressive legislative must be sown in the context of social justice.Does our legal system have a mandate to change the current definition into one that is egalitarian? Is the American definition of marriage just?
We'll talk about it, because Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage, is important. If anyone doubts this, consider that 90% of the 7000 frequency applications submitted to the FCC in the window opened briefly in 2007,were submitted by religious media organizations and their affiliates.
The work of feminists and scholars, all direct us to a path that requires thought, honesty, and pragmatic federal policy.
Read Nancy Policoff's book, Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage.It tells us something important. "For 30 years, [Policoff] has [written]about...cases involving lesbian and gay families. Her articles have appeared in numerous law reviews, and her history of the development of the law affecting lesbian and gay parenting appears as a chapter in J. D’Emilio, W. Turner, and U. Vaid, eds., Creating Change: Sexuality, Public Policy, and Civil Rights (2000).
Polikoff has helped develop legal theories in support of second-parent adoption and visitation rights for legally unrecognized parents. Policoff was successful counsel in a case that "established joint adoption for lesbian and gay couples in the District of Columbia. She was also involved in Boswell v. Boswell, the 1998 Maryland case overturning restrictions on a gay noncustodial father’s visitation rights."
So join us today, April 3rd, at 4:30 pm for an interview with Nancy Polikoff. Want to join the conversation? Give us a call at 802.454.7762. Woman-Stirred Radio is a queer cultural journal that celebrates and preserves the lives and work of Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and Transgendered artists, musicians, writers, academics and policy makers.
We broadcast live every Thursday afternoon from 4pm to 6pm, with interviews and music; with weekly commentaries from British writer Nicki Hastie and guest commentary from Julie R. Enszer.
March 26, 2008
Straight Spouse Network Visits Woman-Stirred Radio
Amity Pierce Buxton, Ph.D. is the founder of Straight Spouse Network. She provides informal counseling to straight spouses or partners, couples, family members and friends.
She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Bisexuality and the Journal of GLBT Family Studies. Amity served on the board of Family Pride Coalition (FPC), and currently collaborates with them as well as with Parents Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) (GLAAD), and Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere (COLAGE).
It is estimated that up to two million gay, lesbian, or bisexual individuals have married or will marry. Some come out after a long struggle of trying to make a go of the heterosexual marriage that society prefers. Others have yet to disclose. Still others may stay closeted. When they come out, attention focuses on them. Their heterosexual spouses are largely forgotten. Family members and friends minimize the straight spouses' concerns. Few therapists understand their unique issues of sexual rejection, betrayal, and identity crisis. So, spouses cope alone, their anger and pain escalating. Once they find peer support in SSN, they resolve their profound issues constructively.
Professionals and the wider community need to become more aware of the impact on spouses and family members when a partner comes out. Addressing their unique needs will lessen isolation, aid healing, and increase understanding of everyone involved.
The Straight Spouse Network (SSN) is an international organization that provides personal, confidential support and information to heterosexual spouses/partners, current or former, of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender mates and mixed-orientation couples for constructively resolving coming-out problems. SSN also offers research-based information about spouse, couple, and family issues and resources to other family members, professionals, community organizations, and the public. SSN is the only support network of its kind in the world. Source: Straight Spouse Network
Please join Merry Gangemi and Woman-Stirred Radio on Thursday March 27, 2008 at 4:30pm for an interview with Amity Pierce Buxton. Woman-Stirred Radio is a queer cultural journal that celebrates and preserves the lives and work of Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and Transgendered artists, musicians, writers, academics and policy makers.
We broadcast live every Thursday afternoon from 4pm to 6pm, with interviews and music; with weekly commentaries from British writer Nicki Hastie and guest commentary from Julie R.Enszer.
March 20, 2008
Betsy Warland is Woman-Stirred!
Please Join Merry Gangemi in welcoming Betsy Warland to Woman-Stirred Radio, Thursday, March 20th, at 5pm (eastern).
Warland was born in 1946 and currently lives in British Columbia. A long-time feminist, Warland is a queer and linguistic theorist. She has edited several compilations, including Inversions, Telling it, and In the Feminine. Warland is also well-known for her collaborative work with Daphne Marlatt, specifically Two Women in A Birth.
Her most recent book, Only This Blue: A Long Poem with an Essay, Mercury Press (2005).
Warland's ground-breaking work is "language-focused writing and ways of working with silence, her scoring of blank space on the page evokes as much meaning as her inscribing of written language. The unsayable, the secreted, the unknowable: these are her obsessions — how one encounters them in lover relationships, family, a homophobic society, a mono-truth society, or the inner work of spiritual practice."
Warland is dedicated to emerging writers; she is the Director of Poetry, Lyric Prose, Nonfiction — in The Writer's Studio at Simon Fraser University's Writing and Publishing Program in Vancouver.
So join Merry Gangemi, Nicki Hastie, and Mikhael Yowe, Thursday, March 20th (Happy Equinox!!) at 5pm for an interview with Betsy Warland.Stream the interview live on WGDR.
March 13, 2008
Näkki Goranin's American Photobooth
Today on Woman-Stirred Radio, Näkki Goranin talks with Merry Gangemi about her groundbreaking new book, American Photobooth, released February 18, 2008, by W.W. Norton & Company.
American Photobooth has generated an enormous amount of energy and attention, including interviews, articles, speaking invitations, and serious cultural and social analysis. The New York Times, BBC, and London Telegraph, have all published and carried major stories about Näkki Goranin and her work. John Updike's article in The New Yorker (Dec 2007), "Visual Trophies" mentions Goranin and borrows many of her images, including a newlywed photo of Jacqueline and John Kennedy.
Näkki Goranin is a Burlington-based photographer whose work is underscored by her graduate work in fine art, anthropology, and education launches American Photobooth as the first of its kind—a mesmerizing compilation of the personal portrait of America.
In the foreword to American Photobooth, David Haberstich, head of photographic collections at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, writes that American Photobooth "virtually defines the art or the aesthetic of the photobooth.... [Goranin] has rescued from oblivion... many amazing self-portraits created by amateurs confronting themselves in the fleeting privacy of a humble, sometimes tacky photobooth...."
Reading and engaging these photographs provides an astounding spectrum of nondiscursive rhetoric. Each photo captures the intimacy, humor, self-consciousness, happiness and pride of its subject every moment the shutter clicked.
Originally from Chicago, Näkki Goranin came to Vermont more than twenty years ago. Thank heavens Goranin got off that bus in Burlington, she is yet another reliably brilliant artist—another reason why Vermont is one of the most culturally-rich states in America.
An exhibit of American Photobooth is showing at Pine Street Art Works, Liza Cowan's gallery in Burlington,. Originally scheduled through the month of March, Goranin's show has been extended through April.
So tune in or log on to Woman-Stirred Radio on WGDR 91.1fm. Woman-Stirred Radio is a queer cultural journal that explores, articulates, and preserves the cultural heritage of glbtq artists, writers, musicians, academics, political figures, and policy-makers. We also feature cultural commentary with British writer Nicki Hastie and broadcast every Thursday, 4 to 6pm, on Vermont's only community radio station, WGDR 91.1fm.
Want to join the conversation? call the air-studio at 802.454.7762 or go to the Woman-Stirred blog and post away!
February 28, 2008
Liz Bradfield on Woman-Stirred Radio
Please join Merry Gangemi and welcome Liz Bradfield to Woman-Stirred Radio for a discussion of her new book, Interpretive Work.
Interpretive Work (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press, 2008) explores the collision of natural history, work, queerness, and family, reaching toward a moment where one finds "this unsettlement, / this beauty applauded at last."
Elizabeth Bradfield grew up in Tacoma, Washington and has lived on Cape Cod and in Alaska. She holds an MFA from the University of Alaska, Anchorage and is currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. When not writing, she works as a naturalist and web designer.
This week's program is especially important because Nicki Hastie, our British link to Woman-Stirred Radio is visiting in Vermont and will join Merry in the air studio for a lively discussion of the latest issue of Diva, to chat on lesbian destinations, why gay guys and gals can't get along, and Erin Daniels, aka Dana from the LWord, who does NOT look like a lesbian anymore.
This week Merry and Nicki welcome Woman-Stirred intern Mikhael Yowe (pronounced "you"), who brings the important trans perspective to the program. Mikhael is a junior at Goddard College and a long-time Vermont resident who transitioned more than twenty years ago. Mikhael won the prestigious Mr. Empire State Leather in 2006.
So join us today on Woman-Stirred Radio for serious poetry and intelligent conversation about lesbians, and queer culture.
February 13, 2008
Live from San Francisco, Valentine's Day with Marvin R. Hiemstra
This Valentine's Day Thursday, February 14th, at 5:00pm (eastern) I'm delighted to welcome Marvin R. Hiemstra, one of my favorite Bay Area poets, back to Woman-Stirred Radio.
Jean King describes Hiemstra as "zany, agile, funny...Marvin talks as though the Mad Hatter's tea party is his natural habitat." I concur. he is mightily articulate, lots of fun, and very, very sharp.
So join me and the Woman-Stirred community this Thursday, February 14, at 5pm for poetry, philosophy and Marv Hiemstra.
Marv will read his poems and we'll talk about his newest book and DVD, French Kiss Destiny. Released in September, 2007, French Kiss Destiny has already become a sleeper success across the United States and Europe. The work suggests the wild and woolly kick of poetry before the Victorians so relentlessly glued poetry to the printed page and sat on it. Don't miss the two poem toss race that appears near the end of the dvd's third segment: it's inspired by the simultaneous poetry read out races, an English parlor game dating back to Elizabeth I.
Following Marvin Hiemstra, cultural commentator Nicki Hastie, of Nottingham, England comes on board and we'll talk about lesbians and Valentine's Day.
So tune in and listen up! Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live from the campus of Goddard College, and streams online at WGDR.org.
January 22, 2008
A Quiet January
January has been a month of down time for Merry Gangemi and Woman-Stirred Radio. Some winter ills, much-needed rest , and travel was in order, but February will bring new energy and great guests, including poets Liz Bradfield and Marvin Hiemstra. And my favorite British cultural commentator and poet, Nicki Hastie, will be visiting the US in February and will join me in the studio.
So stay tuned, so to speak, because 2008 will be another wonderful year of poetry, music, art, film, media, and politics, off-the-wall and spot-on radio with Merry Gangemi on Woman-Stirred Radio, broadcasting live every Thursday 4 to 6 pm on WGDR 91.1fm
January 02, 2008
Jeanne Lupton is Woman-Stirred
Poet Jeanne Lupton comes to Woman-Stirred Radio to ring in the New Year with Merry Gangemi this Thursday, January 3.
Jeanne Lupton is a fine performer of her poetry as well as a mistress of the tanka form and of free verse. She leads writing groups in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. She hosts Frank Bette Center for the Arts Second Saturdays Poetry and Prose reading series on the island of Alameda.
Her collection of tanka but then you danced is available through Jeanne's website and from that of her publisher, RAW ArT PRESS. She's working on a collection of "skinny narrative memory free verse" poems with the working title "Sacramento Street." She currently has work in languageandculture.net and Haight Ashbury Literary Journal.
Tune in this Thursday, January 3, for some beautiful poetry and conversation. Interview begins at 5 p.m. (EST), 2 p.m. (PST on WGDR 91.1fm from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. Stream it live at WGDR.
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January 01, 2008
Special Christmas Program
Join Merry Gangemi today for a holiday-themed edition of Woman-Stirred Radio. The queer cultural journal broadcasts every Thursday, 4pm to 6pm EST, on WGDR 91.1fm from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. Wherever in the world you may be for the holidays, listen in to the live stream from the WGDR website.
Expect seasonal music, new musical treats, and observations on life from an LGBT perspective as the year end draws near. At 4.30pm Nicki Hastie joins Merry for a discussion of all things Christmassy - the good and the not-so-good.
Do we develop our own traditions, and what new meanings can we bring? How do we maintain ourselves at this peculiarly family-oriented time, when definitions of family often seek to exclude LGBT individuals? Is the holiday season really worse for lesbians, as a recent survey suggests? What have been the highlights of the year, and what political and cultural events have made our personal, or collective, blood boil?
Then there's 2008 to anticipate, as Woman-Stirred Radio looks ahead to a third year on air. Don't forget you can add to the debate and express your opinion by phoning in to the studio: 802 454 7762. What makes or breaks your holiday?
December 13, 2007
Jianda Visits Woman-Stirred Radio
Please join me in welcoming Jianda to Woman-Stirred Radio.
Jianda is a Berkley-based singer-songwriter whose music and film work brings lesbian creativity to a new level. You can listen to her music at MySpace, or her Jianda.net.
A health-conscious artist, musician, vocalist and widely-published writer, Jianda's also a poet, guitarist, actress and singer-songwriter with singles/albums that are both self-released and available on several international independent labels including: Om Records, Merck, Ghostly, Kinkysweet Records, Jam Music Australia and Gammaphone.
A regular Pride, Open Mic and Feature performer, Jianda's many genres include electronica, conscious soul, jazz and acoustic folk. In various venues, she primarily performs as a solo acoustic act. Jianda also improvs and jams with DJs, rap artists and other artists, performs her poetry or that of others and collaborates in staged readings live and in-studio.
She spent many years creating content and artist promotions for the then San Diego-based MP3.com, and also facilitates and teaches workshops.
She has written, recorded and videotaped interviews, prose, features, reviews and interviews for websites like MP3.com, ChickClick (defunct), SonicNet, B-gyrl.com, BlogCritics, Saucyvox.com, Doorknobs and Bodypaint, UC Irvine's "Faultine," ScarletLetters, CleanSheets, About.com, RollingStone.com, Emusic.com, Africana.com and GoGirlsmusic.com. She sings. Plays guitar and piano, and writes screenplays and songs…. Mouthsful.
Look for "Faster Pussycats" (Alyson ) and "Zaftig: Well-Rounded Erotica" (Cleis Press ) in progressive bookstores near you–she's in them.
Previously, she was an editor and contributor at RollingStone.com, EMusic.com and MP3.com, doing promo and A&R for artists of all stripes. Passion Flower is her drug of choice. Sample her wares at SugarmamaPR.com & Jianda.net.
Currently, she works in label promotion, and is a featured supporting actress in Griot Soul Films' "She Wasn’t Last Night." She’s also been a regular contibutor to The Lavender Lens (www.thelavenderlens.com) and the Promotions Director for Griot Soul Films (www.griotsoulfilms.org).
Jianda has a sincere love for harmony, cultural enrichment and communicating love through entertainment, art, sharing and song. Jianda's flexible and able to perform as a solo feature or as part of an ensemble or a multiple bill event.
And as usual, Nicki Hastie will share her thoughts and perspectives about the lesbian world across the Pond.
Woman-Stirred Radio, every Thursday 4 to 6 (EST). Want to join the conversation? the air studio phone is 802.454.7762. So tune in or stream it live at WGDR. Interviews begin at 5:00
December 05, 2007
Dickinson Scholar Martha Nell Smith Visits Woman-Stirred Radio!
Well-known Dickinson scholar Martha Nell Smith comes to Woman-Stirred Radio this Thursday, December 6, at 5:00 p.m. (EST), to talk about Open Me Carefully, a work that illuminates the correspondence between Emily Dickinson and her friend, confidant, and sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Dickinson.
For more than thirty-five years, Emily and Susan wrote to each other almost daily. The uncensored letters and poems in Open Me Carefully "invite[s] a dramatic new understanding of Emily Dickinson's life and work.... Here is Dickinson in her own words--humorous, playful, passionate, and fully alive."
Emily Dickinson has been variously described as a weird recluse and a brilliant poet, whose body of work still mesmerizes and influences millions of readers.
Through the research and scholarship of Martha Nell Smith and Ellen Louise Hart, Open Me Carefully reveals the truth about the poet and her relationship with Susan, a passionate friendship that has been hidden, erased, and reconstructed to fit a heterosexual paradigm.
So join Merry Gangemi and Martha Nell Smith for an exploration into the life and love of Emily Dickinson. Interview begins at 5:00 p.m.
Woman-Stirred Radio, the premier queer cultural journal, can be streamed live at WGDR.
Nicki Hastie joins me afterwards to continue our discussion of what lesbians read.
November 07, 2007
Morgan Hunt's Tess Camillo Comes to Woman-Stirred
Morgan HuntMystery writer Morgan Hunt brings Tess Camillo to Woman-Stirred Radio for a visit with Merry Gangemi.
"Tess Camillo never meant to be a sleuth. Then again, this wry lesbian never imagined someone would try to kill her...especially not with a snake. The police are convinced the incident at Tess's home was an accident. But when another woman is found murdered a few weeks later--with a snake as the culprit--Tess and her loopy hetero housemate try to unravel the mystery."
Curious? Tune in this Thursday for a talk about mysteries, writing, lesbians, and breast cancer. Interview begins at 5 p.m. (EST), 2 p.m. (PST). Stream it live at WGDR.
Born in raised on the Jersey Shore, Morgan Hunt did a stint in the Navy and lived in San Diego for more than 25 years. A breast cancer survivor, Morgan now lives in Ashland Oregon and is working on the next Tess Camillo mystery.
Nicki Hastie joins me at 5:30 (EST) to talk about lesbians beyond the LWord.
Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live every Thursday on 91.1 fm and on WGDR.org. Air studio phone: 802 454-7762. Join the conversation!
October 30, 2007
Laura Flanders and Gregory Kompes Visit Woman-Stirred Radio
Please join Merry Gangemi in welcoming Laura Flanders and Gregory Kompes for some politics and geography!
Gregory joins me in the first hour for an interesting look at some of the best cities and towns to live in if you're queer. His bestseller, 50 Fabulous Gay-Friendly Places to Live covers the East, West, South, Mid-West, and Burlington, Vermont! A veteran author, teacher, and editor, Kompes's Queer Collection offers some of the best in lesbian and gay prose and poetry.
Laura is up at 5p.m. to talk about the latest "provocative and unflinching look" at the Democratic contenders for the 2008 presidential run. With five fellow commentators, Flanders and Company offer insight and perspectives on Clinton, Edwards, Gore, Kucinich, and Obama. The The Contenders includes Laura Flanders on Hillary Clinton, Richard Goldstein on Barack Obama, Dean Kuipers on Al Gore, James Ridgeway on John Edwards, and Dan Savage, with Eli Sanders, on Dennis Kucinich.
And at 5:40, the incomparable Nicki Hastie, from across the Pond, joins me for her most excellent commentary on lesbian culture.
Air-studio lines are always open, so don't hesitate to call 802.454.7762 or email Merry your question or comment.
Woman-Stirred Radio is a collective, queer cultural journal that broadcasts every Thursday on WGDR 91.1fm from the Eliot Pratt Center on the campus of Goddard College, in Plainfield Vermont.
Get interested. Get involved. Tell your friends about Woman-Stirred Radio.
October 16, 2007
Holly Near and Laura Flanders on Woman-Stirred Radio
This week, Woman-Stirred Radio has a full slate of interesting women. Holly Near at 4:30; Laura Flanders at 5:00; and of course Nicki Hastie, Woman-Stirred Radio's weekly guest commentator, who chats with Merry Gangemi about the latest rages and outrages in British and American lesbian culture.
Holly Near & Amy GoodmanNear is a unique combination of entertainer, teacher and activist. Her career as a singer has been profoundly defined by an unwillingness to separate her passion for music from her passion for human dignity. She is a skilled performer and an outspoken ambassador for peace who brings to the stage an integration of world consciousness, spiritual discovery, and theatricality.
Fiercely independent, Near was one of the first women in the U.S. to go it alone when she founded Redwood Records in 1972. Her vision for Redwood was to promote and produce music by politically conscious artists from around the world, a mission it fulfilled for nearly 20 years. Finding herself at the forefront of a movement, Near worked for world peace, multi-cultural consciousness, and feminism. The world was her university and social change movements informed her songs. She sang the secrets long before such ideas found space in the major media.
Near has received numerous accolades for her work for social change. Most notably, she is part of the nomination for “1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005.” She has also received honors from the A.C.L.U., the National Lawyers Guild, the National Organization for Women, N.A.R.A.S., Ms. Magazine (Woman of the Year), and the Legends of Women’s Music Award.
Laura FlandersTrue Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians!
The subtitle of Laura Flanders' new book Blue Grit speaks volumes to the cynical and discontented, specifically that the 2004 election was NOT the total defeat Republican's bleated about. Flanders is a self-defined "optiholic" and has plenty to tell:
- More voters cast ballots... and participated in election-related activities than in any election in years.
So. Cheer Up and tune in to Woman-Stirred Radio for a talk with Laura Flanders, author of Blue Grit.
October 11, 2007
Sharon Bridgforth on Woman-Stirred Radio
Please join Merry Gangemi as she welcomes Sharon Bridgforth to Woman-Stirred Radio, today at 5pm (Eastern). Merry and Sharon will discuss Bridgforth's work and her creative process, her roots in African-American culture and how her work is vital to lesbian culture.
Sharon Bridgforth is the Lambda Award winning author of the bull-jean stories (RedBone Press), and love conjure/blues a performance/novel published by RedBone Press. Bridgforth has broken ground in the creation and presentation of the performance/novel and in doing so has advanced the articulation of the Jazz aesthetic as it lives in theater.
Bridgforth has fostered the study of Black lesbian performance literature in academic settings. Some of the professors who have taught her work are: Lisa Anderson at Arizona State, Phoenix; Elmo Terry-Morgan at Brown University; Laura Harris at Pitzer College; Daniel Banks at New York University, Tisch School For The Arts; Lisa Hernandez at St. Edward's University; Mattie Richardson at University of California, Berkeley; Lisa Arnold at University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; Kirsten Gardner at University of Texas, San Antonio; Carol Guess at Western Washington University; Lisa L. Moore, Daniel Alexander Jones, Jafari Allen, Mattie Richardson, Dr. Joni Jones at University of Texas, Austin.Bridgforth has developed a method of facilitating creative writing that she calls, Finding Voice. With the Finding Voice method Bridgforth mentors/and or facilitates writers through a creative process, encouraging them to use the page as a canvas; to use identity-culture-memory-family histories-dreams to articulate and examine the socio-political realities of their lives in a form that is part poetry, part oral history, part performance art; to examine their creative process; to work in community as they use art as a vehicle for social justice.
Bridgforth uses the Finding Voice method in her work as Anchor Artist for The Austin Project (sponsored by The Center for African and African-American Studies, U. T. Austin) for past five years. Bridgforth's Finding Voice Facilitation Manuel will be published in 2007 by University of Texas Press in a book, The Austin Project Archive: Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic, edited by Dr. Joni Jones, Acting Director, Center for African and African-American Studies, Associate Professor, Department of Theater and Dance U.T. Austin; Dr. Lisa L. Moore, Associate Professor, English and Women’s and Gender Studies, U.T. Austin; and Bridgforth. Bridgforth is an Affiliate Faculty member at The Center for African and African-American Studies, University of Texas, Austin, where she teaches an undergraduate course that focuses on art as a vehicle for community organizing.
Widely anthologized, Bridgforth has received support from the National Endowment For The Arts Commissioning Program; The National Endowment For The Arts/Theater Communications Group Playwright in Residence Program; National Performance Network; and the Rockefeller Foundation Multi-Arts Production Fund Award.Widely anthologized, Her work has presented nationally at venues including:the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, MN., The Theater Offensive Out on The Edge Festival in Boston, MA., LaPena in Berkeley, CA., The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, Penumbra Theater Company in St. Paul, MN.
So. 5pm eastern. Sharon Bridgforth. Air studio phone = 802.454.7762.
And of course my weekly chat with Nicki Hastie. This week: the LWord.
September 20, 2007
Gwyn Kirk on Woman-Stirred Radio
Please join Merry Gangemi and her guest, Gwyn Kirk, this Thursday, September 20 at 5pm (EDT), on Woman-Stirred Radio.
Kirk holds a PhD in political sociology from the London School of Economics. She is a scholar-activist concerned with gender and racial and environmental justice. Kirk has taught courses in women's studies, environmental studies, political science, and sociology at U.S. universities and colleges, and publishes a textbook/anthology, Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives (McGraw-Hill), co-edited with Dr. Margo Okazawa-Rey.
Kirk writes extensively on ecofeminism, militarism, and peace organizing. A current project is Women for Genuine Security. She is a founding member of the East Asia-US-Puerto Rico Women's Network Against Militarism, which links scholars and activists who deal with the effects of U.S. military bases, budgets, and operations on local communities.
Her current research and writing focuses on organizing efforts to promote cleanup and healing from contamination caused by military operations and war.
New on Woman-Stirred Radio! Commentaries with British writer Nicki Hastie, lesbian pundit and writer Julie R. Enszer, and bi-writer Jan Steckel.
September 12, 2007
Diana Souhami is Woman-Stirred
Please join Merry Gangemi this Thursday, September 13th, at 5pm (EDT), for an interview with British author, Diana Souhami. Souhami is the author of Coconut Chaos (London: Orion, 2007), Selkirk's Island (the 2001 U.K. Whitbread Biography Award), The Trials of Radclyffe Hall (short listed for the James Tait Black Prize for Biography and the U.S. Lamda Literary Award), Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter (Lamda Literary Award and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), Wild Girls, and Alice, Greta and Cecil, and Gluck: Her Biography.
Coconut Chaos "connects the famous mutiny on the Bounty in the Pacific Ocean in 1789 to the plight of the islanders of Pitcairn now.
Its conceptual core is how a small chance thing, the taking of a coconut by Fletcher Christian from William Bligh's stores on the ship, had dramatic ramifications that continue today. The analogy is with chaos theory in science: how a small variation in conditions can result in dynamic transformations elsewhere. This story moves from a simple, random event to its complex connections. The vivid narrative includes mutiny, travel, biography, incest, homosexuality, murder and rape, science and technology, fantasy and selective history.
Sea voyages, most of them extraordinary, drive the narrative forward, the author's own journey to Pitcairn where Fletcher Christian hid to escape punishment; Bligh's navigation to Timor in violent weather, without maps, in a small boat, with scant supplies and starving men; the voyage to England with mutineers in chains and their shipwreck...
This is not be a "one thing after another" book, it is a continuum where things interrelate a metaphorical voyage that leads to the chaos of Pitcairn's unlawfulness today."
August 24, 2007
Interview with Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls
Some things always work out no matter what the planning or the expectations. And today things converge to bring Woman-Stirred Radio's Merry Gangemi and Nicki Hastie together with the Indigo Girl's Amy Ray at 1:05 pm for a live interview in the studio of Provincetown's own WOMR 92.1 fm.
Even though this interview was arranged this morning because of a change in Amy Ray's schedule and we're on vacation on the Cape hundred's of miles from home, the incredible energy and hospitality of WOMR makes this interview possible.
So tune in or stream it LIVE at www.womr.org. And when I get home to Vermont, I'll replay the interview on Woman-Stirred Radio for all of my listeners at WGDR 91.1 fm.
August 14, 2007
Queer Reading at Black Sheep Books
BLACK SHEEP BOOKS presents:
Three Queer Poets: Readings by Julie R. Enszer, Merry Gangemi, and Nicki Hastie
Tuesday, August 14 at 7:00 p.m. at 4 Langdon Street, Montpelier, VT
Julie R. Enszer, a Maryland-based writer and lesbianactivist, is published in Iris: A Journal about Women, Room of One's Own, Long Shot, the Jewish Women's Literary Annual, and the Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly. Her book, Homesteading: Essays on Life, Death, Sex, and Liberation, is forthcoming in winter 2008. For more on Julie, see http://www.JulieREnszer.com.
Merry Gangemi lives in Woodbury, VT, and is the host of Woman-Stirred Radio, a weekly queer cultural journal on WGDR 91.1 fm. Her work is published in the Paterson Literary Review, Journal of NJ Poets, Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly, the Harrington Lesbian Literary Review, Vermont Woman, and the Hardwick Gazette. She produces the annual Tea & Poetry series, a Vermont literary festival now in its sixth year. For more on Merry, see http://www.merrygangemi.org.
Nicki Hastie lives in Nottingham, England. She is a founding member of the Woman-Stirred blog. Her work is published in Chroma, Diva, Trouble & Strife, and also in critical anthologies relating to women's health, coming out stories, lesbian fiction, and representations of lesbians in popular culture. For more on Nicki, see http://www.nickihastie.demon.co.uk.
Black Sheep Books, a community space and bookstore in Montpelier, Vermont, offers affordable radical and scholarly books, and hosts educational events on cultural and political topics. As an all-volunteer project, we are operated by a five-member collective hand in hand with a group of dedicated volunteers. Our principle focus is to provide access to anti-authoritarian Left ideas in a way that promotes intellectual debate and challenges today’s hegemonic culture. Together with horizontalist social movements and political projects, bookstores, infoshops, and publishers, Black Sheep Books works toward an egalitarian, ecological, and nonhierarchical society.
Black Sheep Books 4 Langdon Street, Montpelier, Vermont www.blacksheepbooks.org / 802-225-8906 Hours: Tues-Sat 11-6, Sun 11-5, Mon closed
July 18, 2007
Julia Vinograd on Woman-Stirred
Don't miss Julia Vinograd on Woman-Stirred Radio!
Berkeley street poet and award-winning author
Julia Vinograd will be interviewed this Thursday, July 19, by Merry Gangemi on Woman-Stirred Radio at 5 pm (EDT); 2 pm on the West Coast. Listen to Woman-Stirred Radio on WGDR Goddard College community radio (91.1 fm in Vermont) by streaming it live at www.wgdr.org. Click on the "Listen Live" link between 4:30 pm and 5:50 pm EDT. The first hour of the show is music, followed by the interview with Julia Vinograd.Have a question for Julia? Call the air studio phone at (802) 454-7762, or e-mail host Merry Gangemi at mgangemi@vtlink.net, during the show.
Julia Vinograd, also known as "The Bubble Lady," is a Berkeley street poet who has published fifty books. Her collection of Jerusalem poems, THE BOOK OF JERSUSALEM, won the Before Columbus Foundation Book Award. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and the Iowa Writers Workshop, the winner of a Pushcart Prize, and the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award for poetry from the city of Berkeley.Woman-Stirred is a writer's collective and cultural blog dedicated to bringing the amazing talent and creative spirit of Queer Culture to the world, and to preserve our culture for future generations. So please join Julie R. Enzer, Nicki Hastie, and Jan Steckel this Thursday, July 18th at 5pm (EDT). Woman-Stirred Radio airs every Thursday from 4 to 6 pm (EDT). Great music from 4 to 5; interviews from 5 to 5:50 pm.
July 11, 2007
Dr Helen Caldicott on Woman-Stirred Radio
Join Merry Gangemi and Woman-Stirred Radio this Thursday, July 12th, at 5pm (EDT) for a conversation with Dr Helen Caldicott on Caldicott's life and work. One of her most recent books, Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer, analyzes the nuclear power industry in the United States, and the public policies that drive the assumptions about its capacity, efficiency, and safety, despite intense public opposition and anemic interest from Wall Street.
Helen Caldicott has received numerous awards for her work, including the Lannan Foundation's 2003 Prize for Cultural Freedom. She holds nineteen honorary doctoral degrees, and was personally nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Linus Pauling.
The Smithsonian Institute has named Dr Caldicott as one of the most influential women of the 20th Century. She has written for numerous publications and has authored seven books, Nuclear Madness, Missile Envy, If You Love This Planet: A Plan to Heal the Earth, A Desperate Passion: An Autobiography, (published in Australia as A Passionate Life in Australia, and The New Nuclear Danger: George Bush’s Military Industrial Complex. Caldicott’s most recent book is War In Heaven.
So join us on Woman-Stirred Radio tomorrow, Thursday, July 12th, at 5pm (15:00).Woman-Stirred Radio and the Woman-Stirred Blog is a writer's collective and cultural blog dedicated to bringing the amazing talent and creative spirit of queer culture to the world, and to preserving our culture for future generations. So please join Merry Gangemi, Julie R. Enszer, Nicki Hastie, and Jan Steckel.
| TrackBack (0)June 23, 2007
Janell Moon Visits Woman-Stirred Radio
Woman-Stirred Radio is thrilled to have Janell Moon join us on Thursday, June 28th, at 5:00pm (EDT) 2pm (PDT). Janell Moon is an interactive counselor who uses the Enneagram, a personality system, when appropriate in counseling.
Moon is the author of Stirring the Waters: Writing to Find the Spirit (Charles E. Tuttle) and The Wise Earth Speaks to Your Spirit (Red Wheel/Weiser). Both award-winning books are available in books stores and online. The Prayer Box: Create, Write, and Live Your Prayers, published by Red Wheel/Weiser, and How to Pray Without Being Religious, published by ThorsonsElement/Harper Collins, are two new books written by Moon and available at your local bookstores or on the internet. She is currently working on a book on midlife and aging.
She is a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist who graduated from Ohio University (Athens), and obtained her hypnotherapy training at the Humanistic School of Hypnotherapy in Berkeley, California. Janell Moon has taught counseling and writing classes at City College of San Francisco, the College of Marin, and The Learning Annex. Besides these community classes, she offers private workshops: Stirring the Waters: Writing to Find Your Spirit, Poetry as Prayer, Life as Story, The Spirit in Nature Writing, and Prayer Without Being Religious. Woman-Stirred Radio is a writer's collective and cultural blog dedicated to bringing the amazing talent and creative spirit of Queer Culture to the world at-large, and to preserving this culture for future generations. So please join Merry Gangemi, Julie R. Enszer, Nicki Hastie, and Jan Steckel this Thursday, June 28th at 5pm (EDT) or 2pm (PDT), for what is certain to be an interesting and informative interview with Janell Moon.Woman-Stirred Radio airs every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6pm (EDT) on WGDR 91.1fm (Goddard College). Stream us online at WGDR.org
| TrackBack (0)June 07, 2007
The Islands Project: Poemsfor Sappho
As Julie R. Enszer writes in her review of The Islands Project, "Eloise Klein Healy’s fifth book of poetry, The Islands Project: Poems for Sappho, (Arktoi Press)is the sort of book that lesbians pass to one another saying, urgently, 'Here, you must read this.' The poems of The Islands Project are important for the stories that they tell and for the history that they explore."
And so Woman-Stirred Radio, is thrilled to host Eloise Klein HealyThursday June 7th.
Eloise Klein Healy's work speaks volumes for the intensity and lucid images of one of Queer culture's most beloved source of inspiration and imagination. The interstices of lesbian present and imagined lesbian past fold into each other:
I'm after. Meaning. Snapshots from my life
need to be arrangedon pages
and linked in a timeline
like papyrus chips
put back in order.
Eloise Klein Healy was the founding chair of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles. She is the author of five books of poetry and three spoken word recordings. Her most recent collection, Passing (Red Hen Press), was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry and a finalist for the Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Lesbian Poetry Prize. Artemis In Echo Park (Firebrand Books) was also a finalist for the Lambda Book Award. Women’s Studies Chronicles, a chapbook from The Inevitable Press, appeared in 1998. Ordinary Wisdom, from Paradise Press, was reprinted by Red Hen Press in 2005. Healy was awarded the Horace Mann Award by Antioch University Los Angeles for her contributions to the arts and simultaneously was named Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing.
Ms. Healy’s work has been widely anthologized in collections such as Another City: Writing From Los Angeles; California Poetry: From The Gold Rush To The Present; Intimate Nature: The Bond Between Women and Animals; Grand Passion: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond; The Geography Of Home: California’s Poetry of Place; and The World In Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of the Next Wave. She has been awarded artist’s residencies at The MacDowell Colony and Dorland Mountain Colony and was Guest Writer at Ohio University in 2004. Healy was also the recipient of a COLA Fellowship from the Cultural Affairs Department of the City of Los Angeles and a California Arts Council Grant.
So please join Merry Gangemi and Eloise Klein-Healy for a conversation about her new book The Islands Project with . Tune in to WGDR 91.1fm or stream online at www.wgdr.org. | TrackBack (19)May 16, 2007
An Honest Look at Homelessness Among Queer Youth
Since the watershed of the 1969 Stonewall Riots, in NYC's Greenwich Village, two generations of gays and lesbians have grown-up and benefitted from the gains in visibility, econmic security, and cultural richness. But not all of our sisters and brothers and children have been fortunate. Throughout the United States, legions of exiled, poor, and vulnerable young men and women are living on the margins of our abundance. They have been discarded by their families, tormented by straight peers, and disappeared by many networks of social services and children's services. Through the process of producing this series, An Honest Look at Homelessness among Queer Youth, I have been told that some local Vermont social services are "sensitive" to the issues; rather than openly identify queer youth as part of their client population, queer clients are simply blended into mainsteam programs and counselors.
What are the costs of these practices? What can we do? How can we, collectively as a Community and a Nation, work for change? How can we reachout and provide the resources necessary for our queer children, youth, and young adults?
Please join Merry Gangemi and Lluvinia Stanard-Mulvaney of OutrightVT, tomorrow, on Woman-Stirred Radio, as we begin a dialogue on the the epidemic of homelessness among queer youth. The discussion begins at 5 p.m. (edt), 2 p.m. (pdt), and 3 p.m. (cdt).
Tune into Woman-Stirred Radio at 91.1fm in Central Vermont, or steam it online at WGDR. Woman-Stirred Radio airs every Thursday from 4 to 6 p.m. Music from 4 to 4:55, interview begins at 5:00.
| TrackBack (0)May 02, 2007
Ellen Bravo on Woman-Stirred Radio
Join Woman-Stirred Radio this Thursday, May 3rd for an interview with Ellen Bravo, a long-time activist for working women. She began working for 9to5, National Association of Working Women in 1982, when she helped found the Milwaukee chapter, and served until 2004 as its national director.
Ellen Bravo teaches Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, including masters level classes on Family-Friendly Workplaces and on Sexual Harassment, and serves as a consultant to 9to5.
She coordinates the Multi-State Working Families Consortium, a network of state coalitions working for family-flexible policies.
In addition to Taking on the Big Boys, Ellen co-authored (with Ellen Cassedy) The 9to5 Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment and wrote The Job/Family Challenge: A 9to5 Guide, and numerous articles.
So in Central Vermont, tune in to Merry Gangemi and Woman-Stirred Radio, on WGDR 91.1 fm, or stream it live at WGDR.
Woman-Stirred Radio airs every Thursday afternoon, from 4 to 6pm (EST). Music from 4 to 5. Interviews begin at 5.
WGDR, the best community radio in Vermont, and the rest of the world!
| TrackBack (19)April 25, 2007
Melissa Ferrick
Melissa Ferrick's twelfth album, In the Eyes of Strangers.was released this past October and as with all her past complilations, the music continues to mature and the emotion is deeper,enthusiastic, and honest.
Leave it to Melissa Ferrick to catch the listener straight out.
Join Merry Gangemi and the rest of Woman-Stirred for a conversation with Melissa Ferrick, this Thursday, April 26th. Music from 4 to 5; interview begins at 5. Listen live at 91.1 fm in Central Vermont or stream it live at WGDR
Woman-Stirred Radio,the best GLBTQ programming in Vermont...and the rest of the world!
| TrackBack (0)April 11, 2007
The Interviewer is Interviewed
Don't miss Woman-Stirred Radio this Thursday 12 April, when the spotlight is reversed and listeners will have the pleasure of finding Merry Gangemi sitting in the guest chair. Yes, Woman-Stirred Radio's very own host is to be interviewed on her own show.
Each week, Merry turns her well-researched and careful attention to her guests. She is an insightful interviewer, unafraid to ask those searching questions, and at the same time she never dictates the journey of the conversation, encouraging her guests to explore and share the best of themselves. An interview with Merry Gangemi is always an experience to be enjoyed.
Now, Merry's Woman-Stirred friends - Jan Steckel, Julie Enszer, and Nicki Hastie - have the opportunity to engage our favourite radio host and interviewer in conversation about her life. We invite you to share in Merry's journey as a writer, activist, poet, editor, and all round dilettante.
Join us to find out how Merry arrived as a winter pioneer in Vermont via San Francisco; learn about Woman-Stirred Radio and the plans for future programming, bringing you the best of GLBTQ culture for Vermont and the rest of the world; and, most importantly, tune in to hear Merry read from her poems as we investigate her inspiration, influences, cultural dreams, political activism, and motivation to speak out for truth.
Merry Gangemi holds a BA in English Literature from New York University, and an MA in Comparative Literature from San Francisco State University. Merry has studied at the University of Copenhagen and has traveled widely in the United States, Europe, Mexico, and South America. In 1999, she received the Audre Lorde Creative Writing Award in poetry (SFSU). Her poems and short fiction have been published in Paterson Literary Review, Sinister Wisdom, Street Spirit, Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly, and The Journal of NJ Poets.
Merry is a writer, freelance copy editor and editor, organizer of Vermont's annual Tea & Poetry festival, and she is a member of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Vermont program committee.
And, of course, Merry is programmer and host of Woman-Stirred Radio, the GLBTQ cultural journal that airs every Thursday afternoon, from 4 until 6 (ET) on WGDR 91.1 fm, Goddard College's community radio station, also streaming online at www.WGDR.org.
So - tune in this Thursday, 12 April, to hear Merry spin some great music from 4pm (ET). The not-to-be-missed interview is live from 5.
| TrackBack (0)April 04, 2007
The Reverand Jane Newall visits Woman-Stirred Radio !!
Please join Merry Gangemi and Woman-Stirred Radio for a visit with The Reverand Jane E. Newall, the founding pastor of Yakima’s Rainbow Cathedral Metropolitan Community Church. And as anyone of any religion or spiritual practice could, in these times of escalating violence and perfidy and the relentless attacks on GLBTQ Americans, a woman with her vision and insight shines.
So tune in to 91.1 fm, in Central Vermont, or stream it live on WGDR.
Woman-Stirred Radio airs every Thursday afternoon from 4 until 6 pm (ET). Tune in at 4 for great music, all interviews begin at 5.
Call in and join the dialogue: 802 454-7762.
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