Folklife Author Jack Solomon

Steve Grauberger interviews, Alabama folklore scholar, teacher and writer Jack Solomon at his home in Tallassee, Alabama. He discusses various books he produced with his late wife Olivia and talks about his life with her and his long career as a teacher and college professor. Their books include Cracklin Bread and Asfidity, Zickary Zan, Ghosts and Goosebumps, Sweet Bunch of Daisies, and Honey in the Rock.

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Alabama Arts Radio, Joe Dan Boy Author of "Judge Jackson and the Colored Sacred Harp"

This program is a repeat of a 2003 interview by Joey Brackner with Joe Dan Boyd about his book on Judge Jackson, the Ozark, Alabama man who published the "Colored Sacred Harp" tunebook in the 1930's. Included in the show are historic musical examples of African American songsters.

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Alabama Arts Radio, Playwright Barry Bradford

This week, Yvette Jones-Smedley interviews  Alabama native Barry Bradford, a Southern playwright who writes often about small towns, racial conflict and the vanishing South. Bradford discusses how he was commissioned to write The Face in The Courthouse Window, a theatrical work produced annually in Carrolton, Alabama detailing the legendary story of Henry Wells whose face was indelibly etched in the Pickens County courthouse window. Bradford is known for his fearless portrayal of delicate subjects - like slavery and racism - and for his ability to bring to light the unique struggles of the human condition. Currently residing in Hammond, LA, he is a graduate of the University of Alabama and has been writing plays for over nineteen years. Some of Barry's  works include Rugs, Chairs, Tables; Conquistadors;  Was; and Hit and Miss.  In 2003 his play Dead Towns of Alabama was work-shopped at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and scenes from it were read as part of ASF's Festival of New Plays. Since that time he has won the Southern Playwrights Competition three times (2005, 2009, and 2011). (more)

Alabama Arts Radio, Poet Abraham Smith

This week Anne Kimzey interviews poet Abraham Smith of Tuscaloosa, recipient of a 2012 Literary Arts Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts.  A 2004 graduate of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama, Smith is an instructor of English at the University and the assistant editor at Slash Pine Press. During the program he reads a few of his poems and talks about the influences of his rural Wisconsin childhood on his writing.  He will be giving public readings of his poetry on April 21st at the Alabama Book Festival in Montgomery and April 27th at the Alabama Writers Symposium in Monroeville. (more)