New York Times bestselling author Victoria Christopher Murray has written or cowritten more than 30 novels, including Stand Your Ground and The Personal Librarian. In our discussion, Murray discusses her latest book, Harlem Rhapsody , a historical fiction novel about Jesse Redmond Fauset, a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Murray shares her extensive research process, which involved moving to Harlem and reading numerous editions of Crisis Magazine , as well as her discovery of a romantic af...
Jul 14, 2025•16 min
No insects were injured in comedian Steve Hofstetter’s new comedy special, “Kill the Butterflies.” Instead, Hofstetter combines stand-up comedy with documentary interviews exploring comedians’ experiences with anxiety and mental health. He discusses his own mental health journey, along with more than a dozen comics. His career has offered plenty of material for comedy and mental health issues, from hecklers to an audience member collapsing during his set. We discuss how he keeps his comedy fresh...
Jul 08, 2025•12 min
How do you ensure authenticity as a writer? Some authors do a lot of library research. Others write what they already know about life. Gregg Hurwitz “introduces [his] face to the training mat repeatedly and …gets choked out.” It’s all in the service of ensuring that he knows intimately what his characters endure. Hurwitz is the bestselling author of 36 novels, including his latest, Nemesis , part of the Orphan X series. In this installment, his protagonist, the assassin Evan Smoke, tries to recl...
Jul 08, 2025•16 min
The award-winning fiction, poetry, and criticism of writer Amal El-Mohtar have appeared in publications ranging from Tor.com, Fireside Fiction , Lightspeed , Uncanny , and Strange Horizons , and in her own collection, The Honey Month . With Max Gladstone, she co-authored the multiple award-winning This is How You Lose the Time War . Her most recent book is The River Has Roots . She is one of 4 featured authors for the Columbus Metropolitan Library’s Columbus Book Festival , which will be held at...
Jun 25, 2025•20 min
New York Times bestselling author Katherine Applegate has written or cowritten an impressive number of books from the 54-volume Animorph series to her latest, Odder . We discuss the inspiration behind Odder , the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s surrogate mother program for orphaned otters. Applegate co-wrote the Animorphs series with her husband, and we discuss the challenges and rewards of collaborative writing versus solo writing. We finish our delightful talk with insights into why she incorporates c...
May 09, 2025•15 min
Singer-songwriter Iris Dement has released seven albums since 1990, including her latest, Workin’ on a World . Her songs sometimes juxtapose heavy lyrics with upbeat music, letting the listener feel energized while contemplating the difficulties of life. While she doesn’t see herself as a political singer songwriter, her lyrics engage with the politics of the times, like “How many more people of color are we gonna let be gunned down by police/How many more perpetrators are we gonna sit back and ...
May 01, 2025•15 min
Emmy-nominated producer, writer, and freelance journalist Nora Neus will visit the Columbus Metropolitan Library’s South High Branch on April 11 as part of the Authors at the Library series. Her most recent book is “Renegade Girls, ” a young adult graphic novel that fictionalizes the 19th-century relationship between reporter Helena “Nell” Cusack and street photographer Alice Austin. Neus worked as a journalist for CNN and other outlets before writing novels, including 24 Hours in Charlottesvill...
Apr 09, 2025•13 min
American writer, illustrator and filmmaker Vashti Harrison is the New York Times bestselling creator of Big , winner of the 2024 Caldecott Medal, both the Coretta Scott King Book Award Author and Book Award Illustrator Honor, and a National Book Award finalist. Big traces a child’s journey to self-love and shows the power of words to both hurt and heal. I encourage you to share this wonderful book and its powerful ending with your children. She’ll appear in town as part of the Columbus Metropoli...
Apr 04, 2025•14 min
Mary Robinette Kowal, author of The Martian Contingency , will appear with John Scalzi, author of When the Moon Hits Your Eye , to celebrate the release of their books on Sunday, March 23 at 2:00pm at the Columbus Metropolitan Library. Mary Robinette Kowal’s Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Lady Astronaut series chronicles how courageous women become astronauts in an alternate 1950’s America. The latest installment follows Elma York all the way to Mars, continuing a series that Library Journal call...
Mar 20, 2025•10 min
The past few years have seen rising problems in the United States and increasingly divided citizenry. Conflict seems to be getting worse. So what can we do? Harvard negotiation expert Robert Bordone argues that conflict can be reframed as a positive force for stronger relationships and more authentic connections. Bordone and co author behavioral neurologist Joel Salinas, M.D., have published Conflict Resilience: Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In , and offer ways to turn con...
Mar 20, 2025•13 min
Scottish-born Canadian singer-songwriter David Francey has released 13 albums, including his latest, “The Breath Between.” He’ll perform selections from across his catalog on February 14 at Six String Concerts. He talks about “The Breath Between,” created during the COVID-19 pandemic; his solitary songwriting process; collaborations with musicians like Terra Spencer; and what it’s like to publicly perform–or not–deeply personal songs....
Jan 26, 2025•10 min
Identical twins Adam and David Moss perform as the Brother Brothers, and they’ll be in Columbus on January 10, 2024, with Six String Concerts. Their latest release is The January Album , so named because they recorded it in January 2021. Adam regards it as their “most collaborative effort yet,” with the brothers working closely throughout the recording and production. Tune in to hear more about their music, their influences and which brother is into Brazilian Tropicalia right now (hint, it’s not...
Dec 19, 2024•7 min
New York Times best-selling author Tod Goldberg has turned to editing for his latest work, Hanukkah Noir: Eight Very Bad Nights . The collection features 11 stories by critically acclaimed authors and explores the dark, noir side of Hanukkah. As Goldberg puts it: Hanukkah is the perfect holiday for a noir setup because it’s eight nights. By about the third night, if you’re with your family, you’re ready to kill somebody. When he isn’t destroying a beloved holiday, Goldberg is a professor wf writ...
Dec 18, 2024•18 min
Science writer Erika Engelhaupt, author of one of my favorite recent books, Gory Details: Adventures From the Dark Side of Science , joins me to discuss her new book Go to Hell: A Traveler’s Guide to Earth’s Most Otherworldly Destinations . It’s a travel bucket list with over 50 destinations worldwide that are linked to various interpretations of hell, underworlds, and eerie locations. Engelhaupt says that “cultures throughout history and around the world have had some kind of version of the und...
Dec 11, 2024•17 min
Columbus poet Darren C. Demaree makes his returns to Craft to discuss his latest poetry collection, his 23rd: So Much More . He explores death, fatherhood, nature, and empathy, along with other topics. Demaree discusses his approach to poetry, emphasizing the importance of the writing process over the final product. Demaree’s productivity may be partly explained by his personal rituals, such as consuming sugar only while writing. Listen in to the interview to hear more about his feelings about t...
Nov 27, 2024•14 min
What does is take to be a successful comedian, like David Nihill? Practice. And a desire to tell people interesting facts, like Columbus used to have the oldest captive gorilla and currently has the longest span, single tower S-shaped suspension bridge in the world . Irish author, comedian, speaker, and coach David Nihill will be in Columbus on November 16 with his Shelf Help tour, discussing books and telling the audience which are the best ones to read. Nihill’s love of travel is intertwined w...
Nov 13, 2024•18 min
Most scary Halloween stories work because evil creatures or people threaten the protagonist is threatened by. “Torture the women!” Hitchcock famously said. But this year’s halloween story considers the question of “Who’s the monster?” something worth considering at any time of year, but especially in the fall. Cast Students from Christopher Ray’s Whetstone Academy of Performing Arts (Whetstone High School) Dominic Holmes – Malik Collins Diesel Berkowitz – Gage Freshour Hannah Kemper – Opal Shipl...
Nov 02, 2024•39 min
The days are getting shorter, a chill is in the air, and pumpkins are attacked mercilessly by knife-wielding maniacs: it must be Halloween season. It’s also one of the favorite times of year of Maxwell I. Gold , a Columbus native, author, and executive director of the Horror Writers Association . We discussed his work in weird and cosmic fiction, including his latest, the poetry collection Bleeding Rainbows and Other Broken Spectrums . This Bram Stoker Award-nominated collection contains cosmic ...
Oct 16, 2024•9 min
Blogger and food writer Sarah Lohman won not one but two 2024Ohio Book Awards: the Ohio Book Award in Nonfiction and the Reader’s Choice Award for her book Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Food . The Ohioana Library will present the Ohio Book Awards at the 83rd Annual Ohio Book Awards Celebration on October 29th, where you can meet the award winners. Lohman also wrote Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine , which argues that eight flavors unify American cooking: black pepper,...
Oct 10, 2024•29 min
Singer-songwriter Ruth Moody will be in Columbus on September 27 with Six String Concerts . We discussed her new solo album “Wanderer,” her first in a decade, which reflects on motherhood, grief, and love. The album, recorded in Nashville, is deeply personal and resonates with her audience through its emotional vulnerability. She details the challenges of balancing motherhood with her career, including the difficulty of touring with a young child and the need to write in short, focused intervals...
Sep 11, 2024
Poet George Bilgere, aka, Our Man in Berlin , drops by to discuss his latest, Cheap Motels of My Youth , which began at a café in Berlin and won the Rattle Magazine chapbook contest. We talk about his writing process, family, and approach to poetry in the digital age. He reads several of his poems, providing a fascinating glimpse into his creative life, largely brought on by being in Berlin (ok, I may be exaggerating here for reasons that will become clear when you listen to the podcast). For mo...
Aug 14, 2024
Violinist Savannah Buist, cellist Katie Larson, and percussionist Michael Dause make up The Accidentals, who will perform in Columbus on March 12 with Six String Concerts . I spoke with Sav and Katie about their time as musicians, how the pandemic changed their musical abilities (think: engineering), and how they got to cowrite with some of their musical heroes on the Timeout Project. “The timeout project is actually kind of a side project …[and] a bunch of cowrites that we do with people who i...
Mar 04, 2022•12 min
If you’re looking for a break from the various crises filling our lives right now, you might find some solace in reading up on a volatile moment in the United States’ past. This week we talk to Columbus author Karin Cecile Davidson on her first novel, Sybelia Drive , which released on October 6th from Braddock Avenue Books. Sybelia Drive is interwoven with the perspectives of characters living in the Gulf Coast through the tumultuous ‘60s and ‘70s as they attempt to grapple with the Vietnam War ...
Feb 09, 2021•24 min
My father was a school administrator for many years and I heard his enthusiasm for schools throughout my childhood. So I was intrigued by the title of Doris Caceres-Schumick’s book Public School Teaching Sucks, Period.: A Memoir of a Special Education/ESL Teacher . She’ll be an author with the virtual 2020 Ohioana Book Festival on August 28-30 , but you can hear about what makes public school teaching suck on this broadcast. Enjoy...
Aug 19, 2020•15 min
Ohioana 2020 author Jodi Andes has worked at the Columbus Dispatch and was a senior investigator at The Ohio Attorney General’s office, where she conducted an inquiry into the con artist Bobby Thompson, the subject of her book, Master of Deceit. Listen in to hear why this conman was able to get access to the top American politicians of the time, like George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani, Karl Rove, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, while defrauding American veterans of $100 million....
Aug 13, 2020•16 min
Kiya Renea Currently a doctoral candidate at Xavier University, 2020 Ohioana Book Festival author Kiya Renae has written three books: Through Her Own Eyes: This is Only the Beginning ; It’s Ok to Be Broken: Highs, Lows, and Happy Mediums ; and an as-yet untitled third book. Listen in to hear Ms. Renea share some of her writing and her story ahead of her participation in the virtual Ohioana Book Festival on August 28-30....
Aug 05, 2020•12 min
Along with her four sisters, Columbus, Ohio, resident Gabrielle C. Burton make up Five Sisters productions. Their recent YouTube release Old Guy features their late father Roger Burton as a man re-entering the acting field after having been away from it since the 1950s. His agent is played by Fraiser’s Peri Gilpin. Listen in to find out about The List that actors agree to with their agent.
Jul 15, 2020•12 min
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Connie Schultz published her first book Life Happens: And Other Unavoidable Truths , a collection of her columns for The Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper in 2006. She followed this in 2007 with a book about accompanying her husband Sherrod Brown on his senate campaign, … and His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man . Now, she’s released her first book of fiction, The Daughters of Erietown , which Kirkus Reviews termed “A masterful debut novel.”...
Jun 18, 2020•11 min
I don’t normally post the transcript of my interviews, but this episode makes sense to have it available. Doug Dangler From a secret location in room 100 of 540 jack Gibbs Boulevard, this is Craft. I’m your host Doug Dangler. Dr. Iahn Gonsenhauser, chief quality and patient safety officer for the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center, has been dealing extensively with the corona virus outbreak. Welcome to craft Dr. Gonsenhauser. Iahn Gonsenhauser Doug, thanks for having me. I’m really happy to be her...
Mar 26, 2020•5 min
While Ant-Man floats in the endless expanse of the Marvel Universe Quantum Realm, scientists like Professor Nadya Mason at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign work diligently to discover what the rules of quantum mechanics really are. Professor Mason’s January 13 Science Sundays talk at Ohio State is titled “Going Through the Quantum Tunnel” and she “was inspired by several things in this talk.” “One is that my own research is on quantum mechanical properties of materials and devices:...
Jan 05, 2019•13 min
