Literary Ashland with Bobby Arellano

It’s with a little bit of bitter sweetness that I post this episode of Literary Ashland Radio. The December 2020 show was our last show. Ed and I started Literary Ashland Radio in July 2014 as the audio spin-off to his long-running blog Literary Ashland.

In the six-and-a-half years since, we’ve interviewed a host of local authors, poets, publishers and bookstore owners. All told, we produced seventy-three shows. The vast majority were live shows broadcast from the KSKQ studio on East Hersey Street.

When the pandemic hit, we weren’t entirely unprepared. Since our show always ran on the 4th Friday of the month, the November and December shows invariable fell on the Thanksgiving weekend and into the Christmas days. We prerecorded those. COVID added the Zoom recorded shows to the mix. Audio quality wasn’t the best, but we made do.

This last show is, as I mention at the beginning of the recording, a recreation of the very first show back in 2014 when we had Bobby as our inaugural guest. Much water has flown down Ashland Creek in the meantime, but we thought it a fitting ending to a wonderful experience. I’m sure Bobby didn’t mind serving as the bookends for our show.

Literary Ashland with Dr. Michael Rousell

Our November guest was Dr. Michael A. Rousell. He is a licensed psychologist and emeritus faculty member at  Southern Oregon University. Rousell has a PhD in counseling from the University of Oregon and his teaching experience spans university graduate school to elementary education, and every level in between. His counseling background includes experience in sexual assault, substance abuse, schools, and the family.

Rousell wrote  a widely accessible and successful book on a related topic: Sudden Influence: How Spontaneous Events Shape Our Lives, Praeger-ABC Clio, 2007.  And his soon to be published book is: The Power of Surprise: How Your Brain Secretly Changes Your Beliefs, which will be released by Rowman & Littlefield in 2021.

Literary Ashland with Joe Peterson

Joe Peterson is a retired educator who has lived in Ashland, Oregon, for twenty-three years. He has taught history, political science and education courses at Southern Oregon University and has managed Teaching American History federal grants for Southern Oregon Education Service District. He has presented lectures for the Southern Oregon Historical Society’s “Windows in Time” series and is the author of three books, including Ashland for Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series. His most recent publication is Hidden History of Ashland, Oregon.

Literary Ashland with Jennifer Sherman Roberts

Our July 2020 guest was Jennifer Sherman Roberts, a writer, a writing teacher and the former president of the Josephine County Public Library Board.  She holds a PhD in Early Modern Literature, from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities as well as degrees from Villanova University and the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently at work on a historical novel loosely based on the life of Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, a 17th-century writer, natural philosopher, and poet.

Literary Ashland with Zeke Hudson

Our June 2020 guest on Literary Ashland was poet Zeke Hudson. Zeke started his academic career as an electrical engineer, but graduated from SOU in 2011 with a degree in creative writing and completed an MFA in poetry at Boise State University. He divides his time, unevenly, between technical writing for CU2.0 where he develops marketing strategies and oversees content production.

His poetry has appeared in Wend Poetry, Nightblock, Bad Pony, and Banango Street, and he published a chapbook with Thrush Press called Blue Lake. When Zeke isn’t writing, he’s usually doing something “fun,” like  mountain biking. Or Dungeons & Dragons. Or snowboarding.