Severance Radio: Episode 13

About the Event

Featuring Christopher Coake and Claire Vaye Watkins

Severance Radio is an on-air book club dissecting Ling Ma’s satirical, dystopian novel Severance. The novel is a moving family story that explores loneliness, corporate monotony, and survival in the midst of a global health crisis.

Severance Radio airs on KUNV 91.5FM Sundays at 7 pm PST. Stream it live anywhere in the world at kunv.org/listen/.

Ways to Listen

Las Vegas: 7 PM at KUNV 91.5 FM | Stream it live: kunv.org/listen/
Reno: Noon at KWNK 97.7FM | Stream it live: kwnkradio.org/listen

Rebroadcast

Las Vegas: Mondays at 11 AM on KUNV 91.5 HD-2 | Stream it live: therebelhd2.com/live
Reno: Wednesdays at 6 PM PT on KWNK 97.7FM | Stream it live: kwnkradio.org/listen 

About The Episode

In this episode, does the end of the world as we knew it make room for new worlds and new ways of living? Severance Radio host Heidi Kyser interviews expert speculative fiction writers and creative writing professors Christopher Coake and Claire Vaye Watkins on the imaginative work of starting over again. As we listen to the audiobook, you can follow along on pages 252 – 270 of the Severance paperback.

Christopher Coake is the author of You Came Back (Grand Central Publishing, 2012), as well as the collection of short stories We’re In Trouble (Harcourt 2005), which won the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship. In addition, Coake was listed among “Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists” in 2007. His stories have been published in several literary journals and anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories 2004 and the Best American Noir of the Century. A native Hoosier, he received his MFA in fiction from Ohio State University.

Claire Vaye Watkins is the author of Battleborn, winner of the Story Prize, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. Battleborn was named a Best Book of 2012 by the San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Time Out New York, and Flavorwire, and a Best Short Story Collection by NPR.org. In 2012, the National Book Foundation named Claire one of the 5 Best Writers Under 35. Her stories and essays have appeared in Granta, One Story, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, Best of the West 2011, Best of the Southwest 2013, and elsewhere. A graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno and the Ohio State University, Claire has received fellowships from the Writers’ Conferences at Sewanee and Bread Loaf. An assistant professor at Bucknell University, Claire is also the co-director, with Derek Palacio, of the Mojave School, a free creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada.

Severance Radio: A Nevada Reads Book Club is jointly produced by Nevada Humanities and the Black Mountain Institute, and is part of Nevada Reads, a statewide program of Nevada Humanities. This program is made possible with the support of: Nevada Humanities, Black Mountain Institute, Nevada State library, Archives and Public Records, The Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Nevada Center for the Book. The Nevada Center for the Book is a program of Nevada Humanities and is the state affiliate of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress.