Writing Westward Podcast

03/06/2024

BAD NEWS:
Writing Westward is on hiatus for June-August for a much-needed overhaul of various behind-the-scenes tech issues.

GOOD NEWS:
You have 3 months to catch up on the existing 65 episodes at https://www.writingwestward.org & new monthly episodes will resume in September 2024.

Episode transcriptions are not currently available but each episode is available with closed captioning on the Redd Center YouTube Channel.

03/05/2024

🚨New Episode Alert🚨

This month we speak with poet, essayist, & English Professor Julie Carr (CU Boulder English Department & CU-Boulder Women & Gender Studies) about her recent book, "Mud, Blood, and Ghosts: Populism, Eugenics, and Spiritualism in the American West" (University of Nebraska Press, 2023).

Julie Carr is Professor of English at the University of Colorado, Boulder and Chair of the Department of Women and Gender Studies. Her training and degrees from Barnard College, NYU, and the University of California, Berkeley are in creative writing, poetry, and English. She is the author of 16 book...

26/04/2024

The BYU Charles Redd Center for Western Studies 2024 Award Announcement is here!

Emails will be sent out to awardees in early May with specific amounts and instructions on how to process disbursment of funds. If your proposal was not funded, you are encouraged to apply again next year. Feel free to contact Assoc. Director Brenden Rensink to discuss further.

05/04/2024

🚨New Episode Alert🚨

This month we chat with journalist, author, & National Geographic Explorer Lyndsie Bourgon about her widely-praised book "Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods" (Little, Brown and Company Sparks, 2022) & learn about tree poaching in the .

Lyndsie Bourgon is a journalist, author, oral historian, fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and National Geographic Explorer. Her work intersects the environment, history, culture, identity, and more and has appeared in venues such as National Geographic Magazine, Smithsonian Magazin...

11/03/2024

Annaley Naegle Redd Research Assistantships facilitate research on the American West by BYU faculty in any department. Grants of up to $12,000 enable faculty members to hire upper-division undergraduate or graduate students of their choice to work as research assistants on significant projects deali...

01/03/2024

🚨New Episode Alert🚨

Enjoy this conversation with geographer & Navajo Nation member Andrew Curley (University of Arizona School of Geography, Development & Environment) about his book "Carbon Sovereignty: Coal, Development, and Energy Transition in the Navajo Nation" (The University of Arizona Press 2023).

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/063-andrew-curley-carbon-sovereignty-coal-development/id1435794931?i=1000647699744

‎Show Writing Westward Podcast, Ep 063 - Andrew Curley - Carbon Sovereignty - Coal, Development, and Energy Transition in the Navajo Reservation - Mar 1, 2024

02/02/2024

🚨New Episode Alert🚨

This month we talk w/ historian Peter Boag (WSU Department of History) about his book "Pioneering Death: The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-of-the-Century Oregon" (University of Washington Press 2022).

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/062-peter-boag-pioneering-death-the-violence-of/id1435794931?i=1000643976175

‎Show Writing Westward Podcast, Ep 062 - Peter Boag - Pioneering Death - The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-of-the-Century Oregon - Feb 2, 2024

26/01/2024

🚨New Episode🚨

A great chat with cartoonist Navied Mahdavian (The New Yorker ) about his graphic novel memoir "This Country: Searching for Home in the (Very) Rural West" (Princeton Architectural Press 2023).

Navied Mahdavian is is a cartoonist and writer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker since 2018. You may have also seen his work in Readers Digest, Wired, and elsewhere. His recent graphic novel memoir, This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America was published by Princetone Architec...

17/01/2024

The Redd Center's funding season has arrived. Please help spread the word and please apply! If you're doing research or public programming in any discipline on the Intermountain West, the Redd Center would probably like to give you money!

Annaley Naegle Redd Research Assistantships facilitate research on the American West by BYU faculty in any department. Grants of up to $12,000 enable faculty members to hire upper-division undergraduate or graduate students of their choice to work as research assistants on significant projects deali...

03/01/2024

Our servers are back up and running! Your podcast listening may recommence!

02/01/2024

Due to server maintenance the podcast website and archive of episodes is currently unavailable (along with the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies website). We apologize for the break in access. We're hoping it will be back up soon.

30/12/2023

Professors! I am hearing of people putting podcast episodes on their syllabus. Please share how you’re using them, assignments types, successful or unsuccessful experiences, etc. I’d love to hear. Also, I (Brenden Rensink) am always up for a virtual class zoom visit if useful.

01/12/2023

🚨New Episode Alert🚨

In Ep. 60 (!!!) learn about the roles a business can play immigrant community place making from Prof. Natalia Molina (USC American Studies & Ethnicity) and her multiple-award-winning book "A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community" (University of California Press 2022).

Natalia Molina is Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and Dean's Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. In 2020 she was named a MacArthur Fellow. Her most recent book, A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a C...

03/11/2023

🚨New Episode Alert🚨

This month we chat with Prof. Sarah Keyes (University of Nevada, Reno, Dept. of History) about emigrant deaths & burials & American claims to Western Lands in her *brand new* book "American Burial Ground: A New History of the Overland Trail" (University of Pennsylvania Press 2023).
⬇️

Sarah Keyes is an assistant professor of history at the University of Nevada, Reno. She earned her PhD from the University of Southern California and studies the intercultural relations between Indigenous and Euro-American peoples. After securing publications of articles in field-defining outlets li...

06/10/2023

Ep. 58 is here & just in time for the upcoming ski season AND upcoming 7 Nov. 2023 paperback of Heather Hansman's great Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns, and the Future of Chasing Snow" (Hanover Square Press / HarperCollins, 2021).

Subscribe, share, review!

Heather Hansman is the author of Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns, and The Future of Chasing Snow (Hanover Square Press, 2021, paperback, 2023), and Downriver: Into the Future of Water in the West. She's a contributing editor at Outside magazine, and an award-winning journalist whose work appears...

22/09/2023

New episode!

This month we talk with historian Molly Rozum (University of South Dakota History Department) about children, plains/prairies identity formation, & her recent book "Grasslands Grown: Creating Place on the U.S. Northern Plains and Canadian Prairies" (University of Nebraska Press & University of Manitoba Press, 2021).

Molly P. Rozum is associate professor of history and the Ronald M. Nelson Distinguished Professor and Chair of Great Plains and South Dakota History at the University of South Dakota. She holds degrees in American Studies, Folklore, and History. She is editor, co-editor, and author of multiple books...

11/09/2023

Lecture titles are tentative and room locations are tentative. Updates will be posted on the individual Facebook Event page (linked below). View all upcoming events here: https://www.facebook.com/pg/BYUReddCenter/events.

01/08/2023

New Episode!

Learn about University of Maine at Farmington Professor of American Literature Michael K. Johnson's 2023 University of Nebraska Press book, "Speculative Wests: Popular Representations of a Region and Genre."
⬇️
▶️https://reddcenter.byu.edu/Blogs/redd-center-blog/Post/writing-westward-podcast-056---michael-k-john
⬆️

03/07/2023

Episode 55 is here! Head outdoors with Brenden Rensink for a conversation with Geoscience Professor Ellen Wohl (Colorado State University Warner College of Natural Resources) & her 2021 & 2022 Oregon State University Press books👇

"Something Hidden in the Ranges: The Secret Life of Mountain Ecosystems"

&

"Dead Wood: The Afterlife of Trees"

🔗 https://reddcenter.byu.edu/Blogs/redd-center-blog/Post/writing-westward-podcast-055---ellen-wohl---s 🔗

🏔️🌲🦫🪲🐿️🐟

Dr. Ellen Wohl is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Colorado State University.  Her two most recent books are Something Hidden in the Ranges: The Secret Life of Mountain Ecosystems and Dead Wood: The Afterlife of Trees (Oregon State University Press, 2021 and ...

01/06/2023

***UPDATE
Heads up! There was an audio glitch where the outro started playing OVER the interview at ~ 20 minutes from the end. The fixed audio is now live but if you have auto-downloads enabled, it will have downloaded the messed up version. Remove and redownload. Sorry for the trouble.
***

Our June episode features historian Andrea Geiger (prof. emerita, Simon Fraser University Department of History) & her new book, "Converging Empires: Citizens and Subjects in the North Pacific Borderlands: 1867-1945" (University of North Carolina Press & UBC Press 2023).

▶️ https://reddcenter.byu.edu/Blogs/redd-center-blog/Post/writing-westward-podcast-054---andrea-geiger-

23/05/2023

New episode alert!

Listen to Brenden Rensink's conversation w/ KNAU Arizona Public Radio journalist Melissa Sevigny. Today is publication day for her new book "Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon" (W. W. Norton & Company, 2023)!

Melissa L. Sevigny is a science journalist at the Arizona Public Radio station KNAU in Flagstaff. Her writing intersects science, nature, and history, with a focus on the American southwest. She earned a BS in Environmental Science and Policy from the University of Arizona and an MFA in Creative Wri...

27/04/2023

Congratulations to all awardees!

Note that amounts funded may be different than the amounts in original proposals. Emails will be sent out to awardees in the next couple of weeks with specific amounts and instructions on how to process disbursment of funds. If your proposal was not funded, you are encouraged to apply again next yea...

03/04/2023

Our April episode ( #52) is here! Host Brenden Rensink speaks w/ award-winning author & Montana farmer/rancher Bryce Andrews about his new book/memoir on fi****ms in the West, "Holding Fire: A Reckoning with the American West" (Mariner Books HarperCollins 2023).

Bryce Andrews is an award-winning author originally from Seattle but who has spent the majority of his adult life as a rancher and farmer in western Montana. His first book, Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West (Atria Books, Simon & Schuster imprint, 2014) won the Barnes & Noble Discov...

17/03/2023

Get you hiking boots on before listening to Ep. 051.

Brenden Rensink's talk with desert wanderer extraordinaire Craig Childs about his book, "Tracing Time: Seasons of Rock Art on the Colorado Plateau" (Torrey House Press, 2022) will inspire you to get outside!

Craig Childs is a multiple-award winning author with more than a dozen books (and countless shorter pieces) on outdoor adventures, wilderness, and science to his name. His recent book that we talk about today, Tracing Time: Seasons of Rock Art on the Colorado Plateau (Torrey House Press, 2022).

10/02/2023

We celebrate our 50th EPISODE (🤯) with award-winning historian & Western Historical Quarterly editor-in-chief, Prof. Anne F. Hyde (OU History Department), & her book, "Born of Lakes and Plains: Mixed-Descent Peoples and the Making of the American West" (W. W. Norton & Company, 2022).

Anne Hyde is Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma and Editor-in-Chief of the Western Historical Quarterly. Her most recent book, Born of Lakes and Plains: Mixed-Descent Peoples and the Making of the American West, was published by W. W. Norton in 2022.

10/02/2023

Psst. Hey you. Let me let you in a little secret. We got a humdinger of an episode on the way...

27/01/2023

Still accepting feedback om whether to do a Q&A episode or not. If you are a regular (or occasional) listener of Writing Westward, please fill out this quick 1-question survey!

FEEDBACK NEEDED!

25/01/2023

FEEDBACK NEEDED!

Should Brenden Rensink do a Q&A episode in celebration of the Writing Westward Podcast surviving to episode 50? Would you send in questions for him or follow-up questions for him to ask of previous guests?

Please take a quick moment to vote here:

FEEDBACK NEEDED!

13/01/2023

Episode 49 is here and features historian Tim Bowman (West Texas A&M University Department of History) & his new book, "You Will Never be One of Us: A Teacher, A Texas Town, and the Rural Roots of Radical Conservatism" (University of Oklahoma Press 2022). We talk West Texas, rural Western identity, politics, & change.

Timothy Paul Bowman is Associate Professor History and Chair of the Department of History at West Texas A&M University where has also helped adminsiter the Center for the Study of the American West. Bowman earned a bachelor’s degree from Texas Christian University in 2002, a masters degree from th...