Stu Levitan welcomes the biographer of modern Madison, award-winning columnist Doug Moe, for a conversation about his latest book, Saving Hearts and Killing Rats: Karl Paul Link and the Discovery of Warfarin. It’s the first detailed look at one of the most important and most honored biochemists of the 20th century — the brilliant, unconventional, and seemingly bipolar University of Wisconsin scientist whose discoveries led to two synthetic compounds: the rat-killing Warfarin and the heart-saving Coumadin. And all because at the depths of the Great Depression a St. Croix farmer turned to his state government to learn why his cows were dying of internal bleeding after eating sweet clover hay that had gone bad. It’s quite a story about quite a scientist, which Doug Moe tells quite well.

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie talks with author Denise S. Robbins about her debut novel The Unmapping.

There is no flash of light, no crumbling, no quaking. Each person in New York wakes up on an unfamiliar block after the buildings all switch positions overnight. The power grid has snapped, thousands of residents are missing, and the Empire State Building is on Coney Island—for now. The next night, it happens again.

Esme Green and Arjun Varma work for the city of New York’s emergency management team and are tasked with managing the disaster response for “The Unmapping.” As Esme tries to wade through the bureaucratic nightmare of an endlessly shuffling city, she’s distracted by the ongoing search for her missing fiancé. Meanwhile, Arjun focuses on the ground-level rescue of disoriented New Yorkers, hoping to become the hero the city needs.

Denise S. Robbins is from Madison, Wisconsin, the city where she grew up and to which she returned after sixteen years of living and working in climate activism on the East Coast. In Madison, she lives with her husband in a yellow house circled by oaks and pines and two owls, and works as a consultant for several climate advocacy groups. She is a Pushcart Prize–nominated author whose stories have been published in literary journals including The Barcelona Review, Gulf Coast, and many more.

Stu Levitan interviews former U.S. Ambassador to Norway (1993-1997) Tom Loftus about his new book, Mission to Oslo, Dancing with the Queen, Dealmaking with the Russians, Shaping History (Mineral Point: Little Creek Press, 2024).

Amb. Loftus served during a pivotal period in diplomatic and military history, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It was a time of optimism, but it was fraught with uncertainty, a time of particular concern in neighboring Norway. Amb. Loftus’s success helping forge the agreement among the U.S., Norway and the new Russia to start the clean-up of the nuclear waste the former Soviet Union had dumped for decades into the Arctic Ocean (a toxic legacy of its submarine fleet just across the border in Murmansk) is largely why the King of Norway bestowed upon him the Grand Cross, the highest order of the Norwegian Order of Merit, for outstanding service in the interest of Norway. Amb. Loftus also did a major solid for the incoming president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, solving a looming trade crisis that saved his textile industry.

Among the leading supporting players in this engaging and perceptive account are three powerful and impressive women: First Lady Hilary Clinton, UW Chancellor Donna Shalala, and Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, whose later selection as director general of the World Health Organization Amb. Loftus helped secure. There’s also an inside account of his close relationship with Bill Clinton, whose presidential nomination he helped secure by leading his Wisconsin primary campaign in 1992.

Grandson of Norwegian immigrants, Amb. Loftus writes and speaks with emotion and insight into the people and places of his ancestral homeland. He also gives a real sense of diplomatic nitty-gritty, from celebrating Syttende Mai with Their Majesties the King and Queen to posing for photos with Yassir Arafat.

Amb. Loftus served in the Wisconsin State Assembly from 1977 to 1991, the final eight years as its speaker — the longest any Democrat has ever held that post. In 1990, he was the Democratic nominee for governor, finishing second behind Governor Tommy Thompson, who, 30 years later, as interim president of the University of Wisconsin system, would hire him as a senior policy advisor. By then, Amb. Loftus had already had a close relationship with the UW, graduating from the UW Whitewater, earning his master’s from the UW Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs, and serving on the Board of Regents from 2005 to 2011.

Jane Hirshfield—widely regarded as one of America’s greatest living poets—joins Madison Book Beat for a rich conversation about poetry, the natural world, and the human condition. The New York Times Magazine has called her work “some of the most important poetry in the world today,” and her latest collection, The Asking: New & Selected Poems, showcases the depth and range of a life devoted to lyrical inquiry.

In this episode, host David Ahrens and guest co-host Heather Swan, a poet and faculty member at UW-Madison and the Nelson Institute, delve into the themes that define Hirshfield’s work: ecological awareness, tenderness amid grief, and poetry as a vehicle for transformation.

In an intimate and expansive interview, Ahrens and Swan trace Hirshfield’s poetic origins through six life-shaping jobs (as recently profiled by Swan on Lit Hub) and revealing her belief in poetry’s ability to create moments of changed understanding—acts of witness, clarity, and care.

Jane Hirshfield will give a public reading from The Asking tonight — Monday, May 12 — at 6 PM at the Madison Central Library, 3rd Floor. The event is sponsored by the Madison Book Festival and the Nelson Institute, with books available for purchase from Mystery to Me and a signing to follow.

A book club is a great way to build community—bringing people together around shared interests, while also introducing them to new perspectives and ideas.

Today, Bill Tishler hosts his inaugural episode centered on community. Tishler, who is also a local elected official, has been hosting book clubs in his district. On today’s episode, four area residents join him in the WORT studio to share their thoughts on recent book clubs they participated in this year and how the books they read raised awareness about issues in our city.

Those issues range from pedestrian and bicycle safety to the health effects of loneliness and social disconnection, to the dangers of too much road salt and PFAS contamination in our area lakes and drinking water. The books discussed included The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging by Charles Vogl (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2016); Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (Houghton Mifflin, 1962); and Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion that Science Underlies Our Transportation System by Wes Marshall (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2024).

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with AJ Romriell on his debut memoir Wolf Act (University of Wisconsin Press, 2025).

Wolf Act is a “memoir in essays,” and these essays take on a variety of forms. The work is divided into three different Acts, and each act is made up of chapters that are both interlinked but can also stand on their own as well. While the majority of the prose is narrative nonfiction, there are a number of chapters that include lengthy lists, definition entries like you would find in a dictionary, as well as passages that mirror a kind of Mormon liturgy and educational upbringing.

As the title suggests, wolves are a central metaphor throughout the work, and Romriell seamlessly weaves in references to wolves from mythology, fables, fairy tales, and religious beliefs as a way of processing his exit from the Mormon faith and his intentional turn towards self-love and joy.

AJ Romriell is a storyteller, photographer, and educator. His memoir Wolf Act is about his experience growing up queer and neurodivergent in the Mormon religion; it earned first prize in the Utah Original Writing Competition and was a finalist for the Writers’ League of Texas Manuscript Contest. He is a 2025 Pushcart nominee, and his essays, stories, and poems have been featured in Electric Literature, The Missouri Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Black Warrior Review, Brevity, New Delta Review, and elsewhere. He has been the recipient of the Vandewater Prize in Poetry, the Kenneth W. Brewer Creative Writing Award, and the Ralph Jennings Smith Creative Writing Endowment, and his work has been shortlisted for Ploughshares’ Emerging Writer’s Contest, CRAFT’s Hybrid Writing Contest, and the Black Warrior Review and New Ohio Review contests for creative nonfiction.

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie chats with Wisconsin Poet Laureate Brenda Cárdenas about her new position and the exciting plans she has in the works during her service.

Brenda Cárdenas was born and raised in Milwaukee and has also lived in Beaver Dam, Appleton, Menasha, and Fond du Lac. She obtained her undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the University of Michigan. She recently retired from a 35-year career teaching Creative Writing to students at every level from seventh graders to doctoral candidates. From 2007 to 2024 she taught Creative Writing and U. S. Latino/x Literatures at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

A former City of Milwaukee poet laureate, Cárdenas has authored two full-length books: Trace (Red Hen Press) and Boomerang (Bilingual Press). She has also authored or co-authored three chapbooks: Bread of the Earth/The Last Colors, Achiote Seeds/Semillas de Achiote, and From the Tongues of Brick and Stone. Her three-year term as Wisconsin Poet Laureate began on January 15, 2025 and runs through December 31, 2027.

Brenda will be doing many events and workshops throughout the state during her Poet Laureate term. You can see a full list by visiting her website here.