Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. Jeff Leen, author of The Queen of the Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds, and the Making of an American Legend published by Atlantic Monthly Press.

Jeff Leen is the author of two books, The Queen of the Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds and the Making of an American Legend (Atlantic Monthly Press, August 2009) and, with Guy Gugliotta, Kings of Cocaine: A True Story of Murder, Money and International Corruption (Simon & Schuster, 1989).

He received his A.B. in English Literature and Drama in 1979 from Washington University in St. Louis, where he worked as a senior editor on the school magazine, Subject to Change.

In 1982, he received his M.A. in Journalism from the University of Missouri in Columbia. After graduation, he joined the Miami Herald as a reporter in the Gulf Coast Bureau. In 1985, he began covering the cocaine trade in Miami.

Beginning in 1987, he worked on the paper's investigative team in Miami. That year, he co-authored a 10-part series on the Medellin Cartel that became Kings of Cocaine. The series resulted in the seizure of Pablo Escobar's vacation home on Miami Beach and the druglord's $10 million apartment building in Broward County.

At the Herald, Leen also contributed to the coverage of Hurricane Andrew that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service in 1993.

Since 1997, he has been a reporter and an editor in the Washington Post's investigative unit, where he was part of a four-reporter team whose investigation of D.C. police shootings won the 1999 Pulitzer Gold Medal, the paper's first since Watergate. As the Post's investigations editor and later assistant managing editor in charge of investigations, he has directed reporters investigating deaths among the mentally retarded and at-risk children, plutonium poisoning in Kentucky, overseas drug testing, the 9/11 terror attacks, the business activities of the Nature Conservancy, the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, federal farm subsidy abuse, the Dick Cheney vice presidency and the Chandra Levy homicide case. The work has been honored with five Pulitzer Prizes, including another Gold Medal and two for investigative reporting.

He is married to Lynn Medford, senior Style Editor at The Washington Post.  Visit his website.

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Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Liz Welch and Ms. Diana Welch authors of The Kids Are All Right: A Memoir with Dan and Amanda Welch published by Harmony.

Liz Welch is an ASME award-winning journalist, and contributing writer at Glamour and Inc. magazines. Her work has also been published in Real Simple, O, The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and many others. She lives in Broooklyn, NY.

Diana Welch is a writer living in Austin, Texas, where she works with the multimedia label Monofonus Press. Her reportage, fashion, and travel writing has appeared in the Austin Chronicle, Nylon and Night Magazine. Visit their website.

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Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Nancy Rappaport, MD, author of In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother's Suicide published by Basic Books.

Nancy Rappaport is assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is attending child and adolescent psychiatry consultant to the Cambridge Public Schools and director of school-based programs in child psychiatry at the Cambridge Health Alliance. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Visit her website.

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Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. Weldon Long, author of The Upside of Fear: How One Man Broke the Cycle of Prison, Poverty, and Addiction published by Greenleaf Book Group Press.

Weldon Long knows firsthand that Maui is nicer than prison. After thirteen years of federal and state incarceration, he emerged a transformed man: a powerful speaker, driven motivator, and successful trainer/entrepreneur. Long holds a BS in law and an MBA in management, despite dropping out of high school in the ninth grade. He splits his time between the beaches of Maui and the mountains of Colorado with his wife, Janet, and son, Hunter. Visit his website.

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Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. Freeman Hall, author of Retail Hell: How I Sold My Soul to the Store Confessions of a Tortured Sales Associate published by Adams Media.

Freeman Hall (Los Angeles, CA) is a retail survivor who began slaving in retail at the age of twenty at Macy’s. His most notable retailicious experience was with specialty clothing store Nordstrom, where he spent fifteen years as an award-winning handbag manager and salesperson. Check out RetailHelltheBook.com for his blog, videos, sounding board, and more.

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Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Kaylie Jones, author of Lies My Mother Never Told Me: A Memoir published by William Morrow.

Kaylie Jones was born in Paris, France, and attended French schools until she returned with her family to the United States in 1974. She attended Wesleyan University and Columbia University's School of the Arts. She is the author of A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, which was made into a film starring Kris Kristofferson and Barbara Hershey, Celeste Ascending, As Soon as It Rains, and Speak Now. She also chairs the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, which awards $10,000 annually to the writer of an unpublished first novel. She lives in New York City.  Visit her website.

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Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Katherine Russell Rich, author of Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Awake in Another Language A Memoir published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Katherine Russell Rich is the author of the award-winning memoir The Red Devil: To Hell with Cancer and Back, and she has written for New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, Salon.com, and National Public Radio. Visit her website.

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Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Melanie Gideon, author of The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After published by Knopf.

Melanie Gideon was born and raised in Rhode Island and now lives in the Bay Area with her husband and son.  She graduated from Emerson College with a degree in journalism.  She has been a waitress (a very clumsy waitress).  She has worked in advertising.  She was a buyer for a company that made one of the first parallel processing supercomputers.  Her favorite job was working in a herbal apothecary where she learned to appreciate kale.  When she’s not worrying about earthquakes, she is working too hard at housebreaking her puppy.  She is the author of two young adult novels, The Map that Breathed and Pucker.  The Slippery Year is her first memoir.  Visit her website.

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Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Ellen Graf, author of The Natural Laws of Good Luck: A Memoir of an Unlikely Marriage published by Trumpeter.

Ellen Graf writes out of rural upstate New York where she lives with her husband Zhong-hua Lu. She is a graduate of Bennington Writing Seminars in non-fiction. Her first book, The Natural Laws of Good Luck: A Memoir of an Unlikely Marriage, is scheduled for release by Shambhala publications on August 11, 2009. The book has been selected for Barnes and Noble’s Discover New Authors promotion and Border’s Original Voices program. Ellen is a Ludwig Volgelstein Writers Grant and a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts 2009 Fellowship in Non-fiction.  Visit her website.

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Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Carlene Bauer, author of Not That Kind of Girl: A Memoir published by Harper.

Carlene Bauer was born in 1973 in New Jersey. She earned an M.A. in Nonfiction Writing from the Johns Hopkins University's Writing Seminars, and has worked in and around New York publishing for this last long while. Her work has been published in The Village Voice, Salon, Elle, The New York Times magazine, and on the website of n + 1. She lives and writes in Brooklyn, and hopes that you don't hold that against her. 

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Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Suzanne Giesemann, author of The Priest and the Medium: The Amazing True Story of Psychic Medium B. Anne Gehman and Her Husband, Former Jesuit Priest Wayne Knoll, Ph.D published by Hay House,

Suzanne Giesemann is a writer and popular motivational speaker focusing on personal excellence and spirituality. She is a former Navy Commander who served as a Commanding Officer and aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 9/11. An avid sailor and U.S. Coast Guard licensed captain, she and her husband, Ty, have sailed their 46-foot sloop Liberty across the Atlantic Ocean and throughout the Mediterranean.  Her other books include Conquer Your Cravings, It’s Your Boat Too (A Woman’s Guide to Greater Enjoyment on the Water), and the memoir Living a Dream.  Visit her website.

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Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. Mark Millhone, author of The Patron Saint of Used Cars and Second Chances: A Memoir  published by Rodale Books.

Mark Millhone is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, columnist and teacher.

After graduating from Columbia University with an MFA in Film Direction and winning the Academy Award for Best Student Film, Mark spent more than five years wandering the vast desert of Hollywood development hell before resurfacing as a screenwriting professor at NYU Film School and the Dysfunctional-Male-in-Residence at Men's Health Magazine. His humorous columns for that magazine (and his need to deal with a very un-humorous year from hell for his family) are what begat his memoir, The Patron Saint of Used Cars & Second Chances. But, of course, like every other moron who went to film school, what Mark really wants to do is direct and has several projects in development: The Other Jennifer (a romantic-comedy based on one of his magazine columns) and Serenity Falls (his Sisyphusian attempt to re-make Chinatown set in present-day Dallas, Texas). Cameras roll on his feature film directorial debut Minuteman, this summer.

Mark lives in Virginia with his family and has two lovely children and two rather strange-looking dogs.  Visit his website.

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Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Lucinda Fleeson, author of Waking Up In Eden: In Pursuit of an Impassioned Life on an Imperiled Island published by Algonquin Books.

Lucinda Fleeson is director of the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship Program at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. She was a reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer for many years and has been awarded an Arthur Rouse Award for Press Criticism, a McGee Journalism Fellowship in Southern Africa, a Knight International Press Fellowship, and a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard. Before settling in Washington DC, she lived in Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Budapest, Botswana, and, most notably, Kauai.  Visit her website.

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Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Aisling Juanjuan Shen, author of A Tiger's Heart: The Story of a Modern Chinese Woman published by Soho Press.

Aisling Juanjuan Shen worked as a teacher, saleswoman, and translator in China before immigrating to the United States in 2000. In 2005 she graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College; she currently works for an investment management firm in Boston. Excerpts of A Tiger’s Heart have appeared in Pindeldyboz and H.O.W.  Visit her website.

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Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. Douglas Anderson, author of Keep Your Head Down: Vietnam, The Sixties, and a Journey of Self-Discovery published by W.W. Norton & Co.

Doug Anderson, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, teaches at the University of Connecticut Greater Hartford Campus and lives in Hartford.

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Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Kyria Abrahams, author of I'm Perfect, You're Doomed: Tales of a Jehovah's Witness Upbringing published by Touchstone.

Kyria Abrahams is the author of I'M PERFECT, YOU'RE DOOMED: Tales of a Jehovah's Witness Upbringing (Touchstone, 2009).

Her humor has also been published in Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure (Harper Perennial, 2007) the THE BOOK OF ZINES: Reading From the Fringe. For two years, Kyria Abrahams was a regular columnist for Jest Magazine, where she was featured alongside performers and writers from The Daily Show and Chappelle's Show. She has been a past performer at alternative comedy shows like Eating It and Invite them Up, as well as literary readings like How to Kick People.

She lives in Queens with an abused cat that she just knows will start to love her some day.  Visit her website.

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Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. Michael Bunting, author of A Fair Cop: The True Story of a Policeman's Struggle to Survive Prison published by HarperCollins U.

Following his prison sentence, Michael Bunting was dismissed from the police force. He now runs a successful sports injury clinic and is currently working as a lecturer for the company with which he trained upon his release from prison. He spent the first four years after his release writing A Fair Cop.  Visit his website www.afaircop.co.uk

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Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Diana Joseph author of I'm Sorry You Feel That Way: The Astonishing But True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother, and Friend to Man and Dog published by Putnam Adult.

Diana Joseph has worked as a waitress, a short-order cook, a typist, and a teacher. Her essay “The Boy” won the Kentucky Women Writers Prize for Creative Nonfiction. Joseph currently teaches in the MFA program at Minnesota State University, Mankato.  Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Marie Etienne, author of Confessions of a Bi-Polar Mardi Gras Queen published by Alluvium Books.

Marie Etienne is the author of STORKBITES: A MEMOIR. Her work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Contra Costa Times, and Diablo magazine, among other publications. In addition to writing, Marie is a competitive springboard diver, an artist, and a three-time participant of the Oakland A's Fantasy Baseball Camp. She lives in Northern California with her two sons. Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Veronica Chater, author of Waiting for the Apocalypse: A Memoir of Faith and Family published by W.W. Norton.

Veronica Chater has written for national women's magazines and This American Life. Her stories have also appeared in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, the Guardian (London), and various anthologies. She currently lives in Berkeley, California.  Visit her website.

Dr. Kevin Keough, host of the Warrior Traditions and North Star Guardians podcast, interviews Dr. Robert Kull, author of Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes: A Year Alone in the Patagonia Wilderness published by New World Library.

Born in Ventura, California, Robert Kull has spent years wandering North and South America working as a scuba instructor, travel guide, construction worker, logger, community organic gardening teacher, truck driver, bartender, dishwasher, firefighter, photographer, and professor. In 1985 he lost his lower right leg after a motorcycle crash in the Dominican Republic. He began undergraduate studies at age forty and now holds a PhD from the University of British Columbia. Bob currently lives in Vancouver, BC. Visit his website.

 

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Susanna Sonnenberg, author of Her Last Death: A Memoir published by Scribner

Susanna Sonnenberg was born in London in 1965 and grew up in New York. Her essays have appeared in Elle, O, the Oprah Magazine and Parenting, among other magazines. She lives in Montana with her husband and two sons. Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Dr. William McKeen, author of Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson published by W.W. Norton.

 

William McKeen is the author of Highway 61 and editor of Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay. A professor of journalism at University of Florida, Gainesville, he lives with his family near Wacahoota, Florida.Visit his website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. Imran Ahmad, author of Unimagined: a Muslim boy meets the West published by Aurum.

Imran Ahmad was born in Pakistan, but moved with his parents to London, at the age of one. Too lazy to get the grades he needed for medical school, he ended up at Stirling University in Scotland, studying Chemistry, learning about Islam and trying to impress women.  Ultimately he was quite successful in Chemistry and became quite knowledgeable about Islam as well, but he didn’t impress any women – despite having an Alfa Romeo and a microwave oven (quite possibly the only privately owned microwave on campus at that time.)

In careers brochures, he saw people in business suits travelling and having meetings (This looked like fun to him, but he wasn't sure what the people in suits actually did.) He persuaded one of those big global companies to hire him into their graduate scheme and he ended up working all over the world, including five years living in the United States.

 His book, Unimagined, describes with poignant humor and painful insight the experience of growing up Muslim in the WestUnimagined was selected by no less than three major newspapers (Independent, Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald) in their ‘books of the year’ lists. The Dutch version was released recently and is called ‘ Mohammed, Jezus en James Bond’ (there being no catchy word for ‘Unimagined’ in Dutch, apparently) and a television series is being developed.

 Imran is on the Board of British Muslims for Secular Democracy, which opposes the imposition of theological or regressive cultural values on any individual, group or gender.  Visit his website.

Dr. Kevin Keough, host of the North Star Guardians and Warrior Traditions podcast, interviews Mr. Jonathan Mooney, author of The Short Bus: A Journey Beyond Normal published by Holt Paperbacks.

Jonathan Mooney is a dyslexic writer and activist who did not learn to read until he was 12 years old. He is a graduate of Brown University’s class of 2000 and holds an honors degree in English Literature. Jonathan is founder and President of Project Eye-To-Eye, a mentoring and advocacy non-profit organization for students with learning differences. Project Eye-To-Eye currently has 20 chapters, in 13 states working with over 3,000 students, parents and educators nation wide. Visit his website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Susan Richards, author of Chosen Forever: a memoir published by Soho Press.

Susan Richards and her husband Dennis Stock, live in Bearsville, New York with four dogs and a cat. Susan has a B.A. in English from the University of Colorado and a Master of Social Work degree from Adelphi University. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Chosen By A Horse. Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Dr. Doreen Orion, author of Queen of the Road: The True Tale of 47 States, 22,000 Miles, 200 Shoes, 2 Cats, 1 Poodle, a Husband, and a Bus with a Will of Its Own published by Broadway.

Doreen Orion is a triple-boarded psychiatrist on the faculty of the University of Colorado Health Science Center. She is an award-winning author, has lectured throughout the U.S. and has appeared on major national media such as Larry King Live, 48 Hours, Good Morning America and been interviewed by the New York Times, People Magazine and many others. Still, she considers her greatest accomplishment that her bus was the centerfold for Bus Conversions magazine (which she is the travel writer for), thus fulfilling a life-long ambition of being a Miss September.  Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Teresa Miller, author of Means of Transit: A Slightly Embellished Memoir published by University of Oklahoma Press.

Teresa Miller is author of the novels Remnants of Glory and Family Correspondence. In 1994 she founded the Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers, based at Oklahoma State University - Tulsa, where she teaches advanced fiction. She is host and executive producer of the television interview program Writing Out Loud, now entering its eleventh season on OETA, Oklahoma's PBS affiliate. Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Julia Flynn Siler, author of The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty published by Gotham.

Julia Flynn Siler is the author of The New York Times bestseller, The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an Dynasty. A native Californian, Ms. Flynn Siler has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Business Week. The House of Mondavi, her first book, was released in paperback this summer. It began as a front-page story for The Wall Street Journal and was honored as a finalist for both a James Beard Foundation award and a Gerald Loeb award for distinguished business reporting. Her next book, The Lost Kingdom, will be published by Grove/Atlantic Press in 2011. Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Professor William Davies King, author of Collections of Nothing published by the University of Chicago Press.

William Davies King has explored numerous odd corners of theater history in books and articles, including Henry Irving’s “Waterloo", which won the Joe A. Calloway Prize. He is professor in the Department of Theater and Dance at University of California, Santa Barbara.  Visit his faculty page at UCSB and view a collection of his work.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Stephanie Elizondo Griest, author of Mexican Enough: My Life Between The Borderlines published by Washington Square Press.

Stephanie Elizondo Griest has mingled with the Russian Mafiya, polished Chinese propaganda, and belly danced with Cuban rumba queens. These adventures inspired her award-winning memoir Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana and the guidebook 100 Places Every Woman Should Go.  A former Hodder Fellow at Princeton, she won the 200 Richard J. Margolis Award for social justice reporting.  Visit her website .

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Sarah Manguso, author of The Two Kinds of Decay: A Memoir published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Sarah Manguso is the author of two books of poetry, Siste Viator (which won the Rome Prize awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letters) and The Captain Lands in Paradise.

Winner of a Pushcart Prize, she has also been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and Bread Loaf, and her work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and the Best American Poetry series.

Educated at Harvard and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has taught literature and writing at the University of Iowa, the Pratt Institute, and the New School. She lives in New York. Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Noelle Oxenhandler, author of The Wishing Year: A House, a Man, My Soul A Memoir of Fulfilled Desire published by Random House.

Noelle Oxenhandler is the author of two previous nonfiction books, A Grief Out of Season and The Eros of Parenthood. Her essays have appeared in many national and literary magazines, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Vogue, Tricycle, Parabola, Utne Reader, and O: The Oprah Magazine. She has taught in the graduate writing program at Sarah Lawrence College and is a member of the creative writing faculty at Sonoma State University in California. A practicing Buddhist for more than thirty years, Oxenhandler is the mother of a grown daughter and lives in Northern California. Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. David Giffels, author of All the Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling-Down House published by William Morrow.

Former Beavis and Butt-Head writer David Giffels is a columnist for the Akron Beacon Journal. Giffels is the coauthor of two other books: the rock biography Are We Not Men? We Are Devo! (SAF Publishing, 2003); and Wheels of Fortune: The Story of Rubber in Akron, a 1998 history of his hometown that is the bestselling title in University of Akron Press history.

 His essays appear in The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia (Indiana University Press, 2006), and The Appalachians: America’s First and Last Frontier (Random House, 2004), and he received a “Notable Essay” citation in Da Capo Best Music Writing 2004.. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times magazine and Redbook. He is a contributing commentator and essayist on National Public Radio station WKSU in Kent, Ohio.

 In a 17-year career, he has won dozens of journalism awards, including the 2006 National Award for Commentary from the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors. He has been nominated five times for the Pulitzer Prize.

Giffels has Bachelor’s degrees in English and Mass Media and a Master’s degree in English/Creative Writing from the University of Akron. Visit his website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. Brian Frazer, author of Hyper-chondriac: One Man's Quest to Hurry Up and Calm Down published by Atria Books.

Brian Frazer is a former stand-up comic who has also written for a variety of television shows, including Mad TV, The Tom Green Show and Blind Date, where he met his wife, Nancy, when they were both thought-bubble writers.

He now writes regularly for Esquire and ESPN the Magazine, and has a monthly column for Los Angeles Magazine. Brian has also written for Vanity Fair, Premiere and Maxim. Visit his website.

Jamie Mason, co-host of The North Star Guardians Podcast, interviews Author Darcey Steinke, author of Easter Everywhere: A Memoir published by Bloomsbury USA.

Darcey Steinke is the author of four novels, two of which were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her novel Suicide Blonde has been translated into eight languages, and her novel Milk has been translated into four. Her nonfiction has been featured in Vogue, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Village Voice, Spin, the Boston Review, and the New York Times Magazine. She currently teaches at both Columbia University and New School University in New York City. She lives with her daughter in Brooklyn.  Visit her website.

Visit Jamie Mason's website and blog.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Professor Eric Liu, author of  The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker published by Vintage.

Eric Liu is the author of Guiding Lights: How to Mentor- And Find Life's Purpose, the Official Book of National Mentoring Month.  He is also the author of The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker, a New York Times Notable Book featured in the PBS documentary Matters of Race, and he edited the Norton anthology Next: Young American Writers on the New Generation.

Eric served as a speechwriter for President Clinton in the first term and as White House deputy domestic policy adviser in the second. After the White House, he was an executive at the digital media company RealNetworks. He's also been a frequent commentator of CNN, MSNBC and CNBC. In 2002, Eric was named by the World Economic Forum as one of the 100 "Global Leaders of Tomorrow."  He lives in Seattle, where he teaches at the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs and hosts an acclaimed television interview program called Seattle Voices. In addition to organizing the annual Guilding Lights Weekend, Eric speaks regularly at conferences, corporations and campuses around the country. Visit his website.

 

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Michael Datcher, M.A., author of Raising Fences: A Black Man's Love Story published by Riverhead Trade.

Michael Datcher is the author of the critically-acclaimed New York Times Bestseller RAISING FENCES -- a TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB Book of the Month pick. The film rights were optioned by actor Will Smith's Overbrook Productions, who hired Datcher to write the screenplay. He is co-editor of TOUGH LOVE: The Life and Death of Tupac Shakur. Datcher's latest play SILENCE was commissioned by and premiered at the Getty Museum. He has appeared on both news programs Nightline and Dateline as an analyst and is a frequent commentator on BBC Radio. He is co-host of the weekly public affairs news magazine BEAUTIFUL STRUGGLE on 90.7 FM KPFK. Datcher's writing has appeared in the Washington Post, LA Times, Baltimore Sun, The Source, Ladies Home Journal, Vibe among many other publications. He has curated and/or presented his work at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, The Hammer Museum and other art institutions.

Datcher is the former Director of Literary Programs at the World Stage Writer's Workshop in Leimert Park. He is co-editor of the new national journal of literary nonfiction THE TRUTH ABOUT. Datcher is a professor of English at Loyola Marymount University.