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A new episode of The Humanist Hour is available for listening. Keep reading to find out details about this month’s program.

In this month’s show, Todd and Kim interview four Humanist Press authors, discovering the diversity of quality books being offered by the publishing arm of the American Humanist Association, including fiction, poetry and history.

Listen as Todd and Kim discuss, among other things, how each author incorporates humanist ideas into their work and and why it matters.

Susan K. Perry

Kylie’s Heel Book Description: When “A Rational Woman” columnist Kylie Moran’s religious twin sister takes Kylie’s teen son with her to Africa on a medical mission, Kylie’s fears for his safety become justified. When developments across the globe threaten all she holds dear, how does a rational woman cope with an irrational world? Quirky, funny, sometimes dark, Kylie’s Heel takes readers on an emotionally compelling journey.

Susan K. Perry is the author of six nonfiction books, including the Los Angeles Times bestseller Writing in Flow. She blogs for The Brights and Psychology Today. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, poet Stephen Perry. Kylie’s Heel is her first novel.

Stephen Perry

Questions About God book description: Stephen Perry’s exuberant, boundary-shattering poems feature many diverse voices, whose odd points-of-view often deconstruct themselves, like many of Nabokov’s peculiar protagonists, and they’re are often as droll and hilarious. Complex, unreliable narrators are rare in poetry, but even rarer is Perry’s range of subject matter, drawing on philosophy, science, history, etymology, archeology, psychology, poetry, sexuality, music, etc., in fact anything of human interest. He combines world mythologies of an astonishing range—from Greek to Judeo-Christian, from Hindu to Buddhist, even flirting with American Indian Blackfoot lore—coalescing all into a kind of monomyth, a synthesis of science and myth. It is a grand celebration of the natural world. The perspective is wholly humanist, of interest to skeptics and agnostics and atheists and all those who distain the absurdities, crudities, and cruelties of a simplistic fundamentalist mindset. If Bart D. Ehrman’s God’s Problem had been written in verse, this would be it. It’s a fine romp.

Stephen Perry has published numerous poems in top journals: The New Yorker, The Yale Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, North American Review, Antioch Review, Denver Quarterly, Salmagundi, Wisconsin Review, Cimarron Review, Beloit Poetry Re¬view, Poetry East, and many others. His poetry has been anthologized in The Bedford Anthology of Literature, Fourth and Fifth Editions (St. Martin’s Press) and Mixed Voices: Contemporary Poets about Music (Milkweed Editions). Perry was a featured reader at the Los Angeles Poetry Festival, as well as at the Henry Miller House in Big Sur and many other venues. He has taught creative writing at Long Beach City College, UC Irvine, and UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program. He was once hired as perhaps the only poetry consultant in Disney Corporation’s history.

He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Susan K. Perry, whose first novel, Kylie’s Heel, is also available from Humanist Press.

John G. Rodwan, Jr.

Holidays and Other Disasters book description: This book considers the major U.S. holidays—Easter, Christmas, Opening Day, etc.—from an atheist’s perspective. It examines explicitly religious holidays, those that have a definite if not always acknowledged religious thrust (Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving) and secular holidays that had religious elements added on (like Labor Day) by way of personal stories, usually the author’s own. Where other people have especially revealing holiday stories, as is the case with Jack Johnson (the first black heavyweight champion) and the Fourth of July, novelist Salman Rushdie and Valentine’s Day or labor leader Eugene V. Debs and Labor Day, Rodwan tell theirs. Of course, holidays aren’t about religion alone, and Holidays and Other Disasters doesn’t look narrowly at them as pageants of piety. Rather, the book considers the various issues holidays raise, including race and class, and discusses other forms of expressive activity, such as literature, music and sports, along with religion and holiday rituals.

John G. Rodwan, Jr., is the author previously of the essay collection Fighters & Writers (Mongrel Empire Press, 2010). His writing has appeared in journals, newspapers and magazines such as The American Interest, Blood and Thunder, Concho River Review, Cream City Review, Critical Moment, Fight News, Free Inquiry, Jazz Research Journal, The Humanist, The Mailer Review, The Oregonian, Philip Roth Studies, Midwestern Gothic, Pacific Review, Pea River Journal, San Pedro River Review, and Secular World. He has lived in Brooklyn, New York; Detroit, Michigan; Geneva, Switzerland; and Portland, Oregon.

Laury A. Egan

The Outcast Oracle book description: Set in 1959 on the shores of New York’s Lake Ontario, fourteen-year-old Charlene Beth Whitestone has been deserted by her parents, leaving her in the custody of her grandfather, C.B. Although he loves Charlie, he is a charming con artist, moonshiner, and religious fraud who inducts her into his various enterprises yet also encourages her dreams of becoming a writer. When C.B. suddenly dies, Charlie is left alone and must use her wits and resourcefulness to take charge of her life, all the while wrestling with the morality of continuing her grandfather’s schemes. When a handsome cowboy-stranger, Blake, arrives, he insinuates himself into C.B.’s religion business and into Charlie’s heart. Despite her resistance, Blake mounts a lucrative PR campaign, touting Charlie as an “oracle” and arranging for her to perform miracles.

Laury A. Egan is the author of Jenny Kidd, a psychological suspense novel, and Fog and Other Stories (also available from Humanist Press), which was short-listed for a UK Saboteur Award. In addition to writing fiction, two poetry collections, Snow, Shadow, a Stranger and Beneath the Lion’s Paw, were issued by FootHills Publishing as well as a chapbook, The Sea & Beyond. Her work has appeared in over 35 literary journals and anthologies and has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, Best of the Web, and Best of the Net. She lives on the coast of New Jersey.

Links from this month’s episode:

Music from this month’s episode (in order of appearance):

Theme Song: “Flow” by Words Such as Burn

“Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey

“Science Frontier” by Monty Harper*

*Monty Harper has launched a crowdfunding campaign to record a second innovative science CD for kids. In 2010, Harper gained widespread support from the online science education community for his Songs From the Science Frontier CD. Educators often see music as little more than a way to help students memorize facts, but Harper asks more of the songs he writes. Harper’s songs, inspired by conversations with scientists about their research, focus on the process of science. He translates scientist’s passion for their own work into terms kids can relate to. His aim is to use music to instill in his young listeners wonder, awe and excitement for scientific exploration. Harper’s current Kickstarter campaign has a Dec 13 deadline.

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