Author Sara Alexander, calls in to our KUCI studios 7/31 9:15am pst to talk about "Under a Sardinian Sky" with Janeane Bernstein

LISTEN TO TODAY'S SHOW WITH SARA ALEXANDER!

ABOUT SARA ALEXANDER'S, UNDER A SARDINIAN SKY

“A beautifully told story about one woman’s determination to exorcise the sorrows of her family’s past. It brought tears to my eyes more than once—always a good sign. I look forward to reading more novels by Sara Alexander.” —Holly Chamberlin, author of Home for the Summer

Set against the beautiful backdrop of post-World War II Sardinia, Sara Alexander’s evocative novel is a sweeping story of star-crossed romance between an American lieutenant and a local girl.

Sometimes a family’s deepest silences hide the most important secrets. For Mina, a London-based travel writer, the enigmatic silence surrounding her aunt Carmela has become a personal obsession. Carmela disappeared from her Italian hometown long ago and is mentioned only in fragments and whispers. Mina has resisted prying, respectful of her family’s Sardinian reserve. But now, with her mother battling cancer, it’s time to learn the truth.

In 1952, Simius is a busy Sardinian town surrounded by fertile farms and orchards. Carmela Chirigoni, a farmer’s daughter and talented seamstress, is engaged to Franco, son of the area’s wealthiest family. Everyone agrees it’s a good match. But Carmela’s growing doubts about Franco’s possessiveness are magnified when she meets Captain Joe Kavanagh. Joe, an American officer stationed at a local army base, is charismatic, intelligent, and married. Hired as his interpreter, Carmela resolves to ignore her feelings, knowing that any future together must bring upheaval and heartache to both families.

As Mina follows the threads of Carmela’s life to uncover her fate, she will discover a past still deeply alive in the present, revealing a story of hope, sacrifice, and extraordinary love.
Janeane and Sara will discuss:

• Raising a family and juggling her creative career, and allowing the mess in (the answer is not just "be really structured and organized!"
• FOOD! She loves it! Cooking it, eating it, writing about. Sardinian food!
• How her real life Sardinian background influenced this book
• Her life as an actress on stage and screen in the UK, with credits such as Dr. Who and the 7th Harry Potter film
  Set against the beautiful backdrop of post-World War II Sardinia, this evocative novel follows a travel writer as she unravels family mystery and discovers the star-crossed romance between an American lieutenant and a local girl.
  
  
  
  A gorgeous Italian island in the Mediterranean? A post-WWII romance coupled with family secrets? Yes please.
  
  This enchanting novel is a delightful read, perfectly suited for a warm beach with a cold beverage. Readers who enjoy Adriana Trigiani’s historical Italian family sagas will adore Alexander’s debut." --Booklist
  
  "Readers will become immersed in Mina’s journey into the past as she explores the nature and prejudices of her aunt’s time, the complexities of familial relationships, and the allure of love. Alexander’s novel will leave readers riveted until the explosive conclusion." --Publishers Weekly
  
  
  Under a Sardinian Sky by Sara Alexander
  
  Sometimes a family’s deepest silences hide the most important secrets. For Mina, a London-based travel writer, the enigmatic silence surrounding her aunt Carmela has become a personal obsession. Carmela disappeared from her Italian hometown long ago and is mentioned only in fragments and whispers. Mina has resisted prying, respectful of her family’s Sardinian reserve. But now, with her mother battling cancer, it’s time to learn the truth.
  
  In 1952, Simius is a busy Sardinian town surrounded by fertile farms and orchards. Carmela Chirigoni, a farmer’s daughter and talented seamstress, is engaged to Franco, son of the area’s wealthiest family. Everyone agrees it’s a good match. But Carmela’s growing doubts about Franco’s possessiveness are magnified when she meets Captain Joe Kavanagh. Joe, an American officer stationed at a local army base, is charismatic, intelligent, and married. Hired as his interpreter, Carmela resolves to ignore her feelings, knowing that any future together must bring upheaval and heartache to both families.
  
  As Mina follows the threads of Carmela’s life to uncover her fate, she will discover a past still deeply alive in the present, revealing a story of hope, sacrifice, and extraordinary love.
  
  

12/4 9:00am pst - Janeane spoke with Editor, Annie Chagnot of Spiegel & Grau, about How Lovely the Ruins: Inspirational Poems and Words for Difficult Times - Annie Chagnot (Editor),‎ Emi Ikkanda (Editor),‎ Elizabeth Alexander (Foreword)

LISTEN to today's show featuring
Spiegel & Grau's Annie Chagnot!

This wide-ranging collection of inspirational poetry and prose offers readers solace, perspective, and the courage to persevere.

In times of personal hardship or collective anxiety, words have the power to provide comfort, meaning, and hope. The past year has seen a resurgence of poetry and inspiring quotes—posted on social media, appearing on bestseller lists, shared from friend to friend. Honoring this communal spirit, How Lovely the Ruins is a timeless collection of both classic and contemporary poetry and short prose that can be of help in difficult times—selections that offer wisdom and purpose, and that allow us to step out of our current moment to gain a new perspective on the world around us as well as the world within.

The poets and writers featured in this book represent the diversity of our country as well as voices beyond our borders, including Maya Angelou, W. H. Auden, Danez Smith, Rumi, Emily Dickinson, Naomi Shihab Nye, Alice Walker, Adam Zagajewski, Langston Hughes, Wendell Berry, Anna Akhmatova, Yehuda Amichai, and Robert Frost. And the book opens with a stunning foreword by Elizabeth Alexander, whose poem “Praise Song for the Day,” delivered at the inauguration of President Barack Obama, ushered in an era of optimism. In works celebrating our capacity for compassion, our patriotism, our right to protest, and our ability to persevere, How Lovely the Ruins is a beacon that illuminates our shared humanity, allowing us connection in a fractured world.

Includes poetry, prose, and quotations from:
Elizabeth Alexander • Marcus Aurelius • Karen Armstrong • Matthew Arnold • Ellen Bass • Brian Bilston • Gwendolyn Brooks • Elizabeth Barrett Browning • Octavia E. Butler • Regie Cabico • Dinos Christianopoulos • Lucille Clifton • Ta-Nehisi Coates • Leonard Cohen • Wendy Cope • E. E. Cummings • Charles Dickens • Mark Doty • Thomas Edison • Albert Einstein • Ralph Ellison • Kenneth Fearing • Annie Finch • Rebecca Foust • Nikki Giovanni • Stephanie Gray • John Green • Hazel Hall • Thich Nhat Hanh • Joy Harjo • Václav Havel • Terrance Hayes • William Ernest Henley • Juan Felipe Herrera • Jane Hirshfield • John Holmes • A. E. Housman • Bohumil Hrabal • Robinson Jeffers • Georgia Douglas Johnson • James Weldon Johnson • Paul Kalanithi • Robert F. Kennedy • Omar Khayyam • Emma Lazarus • Li-Young Lee • Denise Levertov • Ada Limón • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Nelson Mandela • Masahide • Khaled Mattawa • Jamaal May • Claude McKay • Edna St. Vincent Millay • Pablo Neruda • Anaïs Nin • Olga Orozco • Ovid • Pier Paolo Pasolini • Edgar Allan Poe • Claudia Rankine • Adrienne Rich • Rainer Maria Rilke • Alberto Ríos • Edwin Arlington Robinson • Eleanor Roosevelt • Christina Rossetti • Muriel Rukeyser • Sadhguru • Carl Sandburg • Vikram Seth • Charles Simic • Safiya Sinclair • Effie Waller Smith • Maggie Smith • Tracy K. Smith • Leonora Speyer • Gloria Steinem • Clark Strand • Wisława Szymborska • Rabindranath Tagore • Sara Teasdale • Alfred, Lord Tennyson • Vincent van Gogh • Ocean Vuong • Florence Brooks Whitehouse • Walt Whitman • Ella Wheeler Wilcox • William Carlos Williams • Virginia Woolf • W. B. Yeats • Saadi Youssef • Javier Zamora • Howard Zinn

Corabel Shofner, an attorney and author, joins Janeane 7/31 9:45 am pst

LISTEN TO CORABEL ON TODAY'S SHOW!

Corabel Shofner is a wife, mother, attorney, and author. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in English literature and was on Law Review at Vanderbilt University School of Law. Her shorter work has appeared or is forthcoming in Willow Review, Word Riot, Habersham Review, Hawai’i Review, Sou’wester, South Carolina Review, South Dakota Review, and Xavier Review. ALMOST PARADISE is her first novel. Find her on Twitter @corabel, or online at corabelshofner.com

Read her USA Today Q&A
Read her Guest Post on Trip Fiction
Read her Q&A on BookClubBabble
Read her Guest Post on Lifezette



In an interview, Sara will discuss:

Sardinian expat life
Italian food! Cooking, eating, and writing about both
How to create a romance without explicit scenes
How to be a full-time parent and a full-time writer
Her real life inspirations for the book
Best tips for Sardinian vacations
Her two upcoming novels, also set in Italy!
Her long acting career

ABOUT Almost Paradise

by Corabel Shofner Released on July 25, 2017

Twelve-year-old Ruby Clyde Henderson’s life turns upside down the day her mother’s boyfriend holds up a convenience store, and her mother is wrongly jailed for assisting with the crime. Ruby and her pet pig, Bunny, find their way to her estranged Aunt Eleanor’s home. Aunt Eleanor is an ornery nun who lives in the midst of a peach orchard on Paradise Ranch. With a little patience, she and Ruby begin to get along―but Eleanor has secrets of her own, secrets that might mean more hard times for Ruby.

Ruby believes that she’s the only one who can find a way to help heal her loved ones, save her mother, and bring her family back together. But being in a family means that everyone has to work together to support each other, and being home doesn’t always mean going back to where you came from. Corabel Shofner’s ALMOST PARADISE is a big-hearted novel about trust, belonging, and the struggles and joys of loving one another.

A Margaret Ferguson Book


Almost Paradise
by Corabel Shofner

Released on July 25, 2017

Twelve-year-old Ruby Clyde Henderson’s life turns upside down the day her mother’s boyfriend holds up a convenience store, and her mother is wrongly jailed for assisting with the crime. Ruby and her pet pig, Bunny, find their way to her estranged Aunt Eleanor’s home. Aunt Eleanor is an ornery nun who lives in the midst of a peach orchard on Paradise Ranch. With a little patience, she and Ruby begin to get along―but Eleanor has secrets of her own, secrets that might mean more hard times for Ruby.

Ruby believes that she’s the only one who can find a way to help heal her loved ones, save her mother, and bring her family back together. But being in a family means that everyone has to work together to support each other, and being home doesn’t always mean going back to where you came from. Corabel Shofner’s ALMOST PARADISE is a big-hearted novel about trust, belonging, and the struggles and joys of loving one another.

A Margaret Ferguson Book



Born in the early ‘50s as the youngest child of whimsical parents, Corabel Alexander Shofner was raised in a family of judges, farmers, and colorful women.

Brought up amidst formal tea parties and debutante balls of Jackson as well as the conflicting world of her wild Delta grandmother—who flew in the face of all convention—Corabel never learned to navigate the world of alcoholism, delusions of grandeur, and blatant paradoxes of her childhood. Somehow she missed the import of the civil rights movement which was happening right under her nose—in the middle of the social upheaval, at the age of 17, she simply hitchhiked away. After traveling around the world she landed in Manhattan, the first restful place she ever lived.

In the late ‘70s, after dating every single person in New York City, she enrolled in Columbia University and, though she had been a dismal student, a bright yellow window opened in her mind. She graduated with honors (magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) after studying English Literature and Arabic.

She met and married a wonderful architect, Martin Shofner, who loved her exactly as she was. They moved to Nashville, Tennessee where she did well at the Vanderbilt University School of Law and reentered (more or less) “proper” society. She and Martin have three children. She likes to say that she took her retirement first and that is why she loves her ordinary life in the suburbs: she knows she’s not missing a damn thing.

She’s pleased to report that her first novel is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, and her shorter work has appeared or is forthcoming in Word Riot, Willow Review Habersham Review, Hawai’i Review, Sou’wester, South Carolina Review, South Dakota Review, and Xavier Review.