This week we branch out away from Louisville and venture out into the state to the Appalachian mountains of eastern Kentucky, where our guest this week resides. Bobi Conn is a technical writer by day and author whose first book, In The Shadow of the Valley, was published this past May by Little A Publishing, the literary imprint for Amazon.

It’s officially summer. The kids are done with school and it feels like time to relax a little after a stressful spring. Wouldn’t we all like to be sitting on a beach, by a lake, or on a shaded porch reading the perfect book? But not everyone’s plans are what they once were with the uncertainty that has plagued us in 2020. Maybe our biggest escape is through the pages of a book. Our guest this week is someone we trust to help us with finding that book. We are excited to welcome back friend of the show and bookseller Sam Miller, from Carmichael’s books here in Louisville KY.

Our guest this week, James Markert, is a Renaissance man. He was a tennis pro for over 20 years, a bookstore owner, a screenwriter, and the author of 5 historical fiction novels. His first novel, A White Wind Blew, focused on some local Louisville history with the story of the Waverly Hills Sanatorium, one of the largest facilities in the country for tuberculosis patients during the TB epidemic in the early 1900s.

We thought it would be fun for our 1-year anniversary recording and 47th episode to put ourselves in the hot-seat, and fortunately, Carrie’s daughter, Norah, agreed to ask us the questions. Like a lot of 16-year-olds, she was excited to do it the night before but seemed to be completely bored and uninterested during the actual interview. She yawned and Pinterest-ed her way through our answers, which may be what a lot of our listeners do as well as they listen to it.

Our guest this week, Hannah Rose Neuhauser, is the co-founder and program director of The Young Author’s Greenhouse, an organization inspired by the 826 Valencia writing organization for children and teens launched by author Dave Eggers.

Our guest today, Robin Weiss, had a different kind of quarantine goal. She was determined to revitalize her reading life. This mother of 9 who is also a professor of public health as well as a childbirth expert and doula, fell out of love with reading when she attended grad school. In the intervening years, her knowledge of new titles and authors got stuck in a time warp where she left off in the 1990s. So, she formed an online quarantine bookclub with fellow readers across the country to help get her literary groove back.

Our guest today, Anita Martin, puts much time and energy into melding 2 of her favorite things; postcards and books. Her website Postcards and Authors invites bibliophiles of all types, including writers, book clubs, and bookish podcasts to send a postcard that lets readers get a glimpse of who they are.

But now that you’ve had your Kentucky Derby primer from Carrie and I, we can all still celebrate this event quarantine-style, with a book and maybe a glass of bourbon. Our guest today, D.C. Alexander, is doing his part to help. D.C. is originally from Seattle but has eagerly adopted Louisville as his hometown. He is a former federal agent turned author who has written several mystery novels with the setting of his most recent being right here in Kentucky.

Are you nostalgic about a book you read as a kid? What book from your childhood remains vivid in your mind? Our guest today, Diane Neu, hosts a podcast that explores that very question. The podcast titled Shaped by Stories features one avid reader each episode who talks about the book from their childhood or early adolescence that made the biggest impact on them and why. Diane had been a podcast fan for many years; in fact she’s been a podcast listener since almost the beginning of podcasts 12 years ago. But some changes in her own life convinced her there was no time like the present to start her own.

Our guest today, Patty Clark, is a digital services librarian with the Oldham County library system. Oldham County is a more rural and suburban county on the far outskirts of Louisville Kentucky. The Oldham County library system is a member of the Kentucky Library Consortium, as are most of the library systems within the state except for large independent library systems in Louisville and Lexington. Members of the consortium pool their resources to offer their patrons as many technical services as possible.