We are thrilled to say the 10-Minute Writer's Workshop has picked up a ton of new listeners, so, we're bringing you this bonus episode to say thank you! and welcome...we are ecstatic to have you! On this episode, author, columnist and critic Olivia Laing. Her most recent work, The Lonely City, is part memoir, part searching exploration of loneliness and artists whose outsider experience inspired their creativity, from seeming social gadfly Andy Warhol to the reclusive Henry Darger. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, married co-authors Kevin Flynn & Rebecca Lavoie. Together, they have written four true crime books, most recently Dark Heart: A True Story of Sex, Manipulation, and Murder. They are also two of the eponymous crime writers behind the podcast Crime Writers On... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"Kill 'em and leave" was James Brown's commandment to his band before every show...it's also the title of a biography of the soul legend, the latest by James McBride. The National Book Award winner is also a musician and composer. We sat down with him just before his appearance at the Writers in the Loft series at the Music Hall Loft in Portsmouth, NH. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a writer, Joe Hill's family name gave him a leg up. Instead, he chose to create his own. We sat down with the best-selling author just before his appearance at Writers on a New England Stage at the Music Hall in Portsmouth, NH, where he was discussing his latest thriller, The Fireman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Richard Russo is the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Empire Falls and Nobody’s Fool - both were adapted into films starring Paul Newman. He returns to the fictional working class town of North Bath for his most recent novel, Everybody's Fool. We sat down with him on the darkened stage of an eerily empty theater before an extended interview at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, NH. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A bona fide podcasting star, Aaron Mahnke has turned his love of the darker side of history into the spooky smash hit, Lore, which he researches and authors. He's also the author of four thrillers, a veteran of self-publishing, and handy with an 80s film reference. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The bestselling author of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand - and bonafide Charming British Lady - Helen Simonson lets us in on her writing process, her thoughts on sunshine, and the perils of HGTV. Her latest novel, set in 1914, is The Summer Before the War. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Donald Hall is now 87 and no longer writing poetry, a pursuit he calls "a young man's game" which takes "too much testosterone." But Hall, former Poet Laureate of both New Hampshire and the United States, long ago cemented his place in literary history. In this episode of the 10-Minute Writer's Workshop, Virginia and Sara traveled to Hall's home in Wilmot, NH, to speak to him - getting lost along the way, and, ultimately, finding themselves right at home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anyone who's ever been an awkward adolescent knows that for decades now, dog-eared copies of Judy Blume's books have been passed around school playgrounds like secrets, or read under the covers after lights out. Her best known books - Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Deenie, Blubber, and Forever - offered young readers plain language and shame -free stories about periods, bullying, sexual urges and, even 'going all the way'. Judy Blume finally tells her own story with In the Unlikely Event. It’s set in 1952, when three planes crashed into her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey. We sat down with her in the greenroom at the Music Hall in Portsmouth before a Writers on a New England Stage live event. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Essayist, novelist, columnist, sportswriter and former ethicist for the New York Times Magazine, Chuck Klosterman has got a wildly original voice. That makes sense for a guy who's written about glam metal bands in North Dakota, or whether you should hire a detective to trail your spouse. He's author of several best-sellers including Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs and most recently But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kelly Link is one of a handful of writers to manage to be wondrous, fantastical and ominous at the same time. As Kirkus says, her work is “like Kafka hosting Saturday Night Live, mixing humor with existential dread.” Her most recent collection, Get in Trouble, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. She and her husband manage Small Beer Press. Photo © 2014 Sharona Jacobs Photography Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Andre Dubus III's memoir Townie told the story of his violent childhood on the wrong side of the tracks. Writing was his way out, and he's made more than good, with multiple NYT bestsellers, an Oprah’s Book Club pick, and an Oscar-nominated film adaptation (for his novel The House of Sand and Fog). And he gets out there, as a public speaker and writing instructor for graduate programs, seminars and retreats. We caught up with him at New Hampshire Writers’ Project's annual Writers’ Day. Photo of Virginia & Andre by Karen Kenney Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The novelist, short story writer and essayist Cynthia Ozick's best known piece of writing is called The Shawl, a brutal, phantasmal story of a woman and two children marching to a Nazi concentration camp. The Holocaust and Jewish identity are recurring topics in Ozick's fiction and criticism. Growing up in the Bronx, she was called Christ-killer, and humiliated for not singing Christmas carols at school. Now 88, her 7th volume of criticism, Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, And Other Literary Essays, was published recently, in July 2016. Ozick's last public reading was 6 years ago, but, happily, we got her on the phone from her home in Westchester County, New York. Photo: Ric Kallaher Music: Podington Bear Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Legal decisions are rarely read for pleasure. And though read and re-read and excerpted and quoted, they are not always quotable. Clocking in at an average of just under 5000 words, they can sound jargony, pompous and bone-dry in the wrong hands. Today's 10-Minute Writers Workshop asks an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States about what goes into writing an opinion. Justice Stephen Breyer was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1994 and is an exuberant advocate for participatory democracy, animated explainer of the reasoning behind decisions and author of several books. I spoke with Justice Breyer in the green room at The Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, just before talking with him about his most recent, The Court and the World - American Law and the New Global Realities for Writers On A New England Stage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of the 10-Minute Writer’s Workshop, singer-songwriter, musician and novelist Josh Ritter – who might say writer first, musician second. It was a song that spun into his 2011 novel Bright's Passage. Josh Ritter’s songs draw deeply from the narrative traditions of American and Scottish folk music he studied after dropping out of the neuroscience program at Oberlin. They're little stories of character and place...wild prairies, snake oil salesman, teenage lust, and adults running out of road. Josh describes his most recent album Sermon on the Rocks as “messianic oracular honky-tonk.” We caught up with him at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, New Hampshire, the day it was announced that Bob Dylan would be rewarded the Nobel Prize. So we focused on songwriting... let’s call this the 10-Minute Songwriter’s Workshop. Music: Josh Ritter, "Henrietta, Indiana" (used with permission) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s our 30th episode, this time with the phenomenally successful Jodi Picoult. Small Great Things is her 24th novel - and the ninth straight to debut at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. If Picoult has a "thing" it's writing about thorny ethical issues from the perspective of multiple characters...and a twisty ending! She's written in the voice of suicidal teens, rape victims, a school shooter…but until now, never as a black character and never directly confronting race, privilege and inequity - which most people avoid talking about. We caught up with her in the green room at the Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire before Writers on a New England Stage. Music: “Many Hands” by Poddington Bear Photo: David J. Murray, cleareyephoto.com We are proud to be sponsored by Blue Apron. To receive a free week of meals, visit http://blueapron.com/10minute Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A National Book Award winner, Pulitzer-Prize nominee, Guggenheim fellow, and winner of a MacArthur "genius" grant, Colson Whitehead's new book, The Underground Railroad, was one of the most anticipated works of fiction this year. Virginia caught up with him backstage at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, New Hampshire before a reading with novelist Ben Winters hosted of Gibson’s Bookstore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tom Gauld -- a cartoonist, illustrator of comics and covers for the New Yorker and The Believer. His weekly cartoon about the arts for The Guardian newspaper is a wry, often deadpan favorite among writers. He is extremely prolific, author of more than a dozen books of comics, including You're Just Jealous of My Jetpack and most recently Mooncop. The lunar cop is perfectly Gauldian character - doesn't say much, spends a lot of time walking the barren landscape, is pretty lonesome and quaint. Virginia met with Tom before his talk at Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just an hour's drive from our studio. The challenge was finding a quiet spot to record in Harvard square...at rush hour. Music: "Feeding Pigeons" - Poddington Bear Ad Music: "Joy in the Restaurant" - David Szesztay Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Irish author Emma Donoghue may be best known for Room, her novel written in the voice of a young boy confined with his mother in a single room. It was nominated for a Man Booker prize and made into an Oscar-winning film, for which she wrote the screenplay. Her most recent novel is The Wonder, about a "fasting girl" in 1850s Ireland. Music: Podington Bear - "Evenhanded" Ad Music: David Szesztay - "Joy in the Restaurant" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

'In Maine, when we say something is "wicked good" – we really mean it.' That's how LL Bean describes their Wicked Good Slippers, and how we describe Jeff Ryan, who for decades wrote Bean's catalog copy. We spoke to him about finding the story in everyday objects and the tricks of the trade when it comes to copy writing. Jeff Ryan is also the author of Appalachian Odyssey, a memoir of hiking the Appalachian Trail, bit by bit, over 28 years. Episode music: "Auld Lang Syne" by Podington Bear Credit music: "Joy in the Restaurant" by David Szesztay Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jonathan Lethem is the best-selling author of Gun, with Occasional Music, Fortress of Solitude, and other novels, including the Naitonal Book Critics' Circle award-winning Motherless Brooklyn. He's known for reanimating and remixing genres - hard-boiled crime novels, post-apocalyptic science fiction, superhero comics and even technicolor westerns. His most recent novel is called A Gambler's Anatomy. It's about a high-stakes competitive backgammon player and con artist - a character who, like Lethem, was raised in the bohemian Brooklyn of the 1970s. Episode music: "Crate Diggin" by Ari de Niro Ad music: "Joy in the Restaurant" by David Szesztay Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Caitlin Moran is the best-selling author of How to Be a Woman, Moranthology, and columnist for the Times of London. She and her sister developed and write 'raised by wolves" --a British television series loosely based on their experience in a family of ten growing up in a tiny subsidized flat in the English midlands. She is also a mother of two, an unapologetic feminist, and really, really funny. Caitlin Moran is now out with Moranifesto, her second collection of columns and essays. The Harvard Book Store sponsored her event at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We caught up with her before she went on stage. She was warm and playful and not at all anxious about going on stage - or writing. Episode Music: "American Weirdos" by Hurry Up Ad Music: "Joy in the Restaurant" by David Szesztay Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ottessa Moshfegh says she writes to explore why people do weird things. The daughter of a Croatian mother and Iranian father, she was a serious piano student who knew she didn't want to be a pianist when she felt the call to write - and not just write, but be bold. We spoke to her before her reading at Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass. Episode Music: Kevin MacLeod, "Trio for Piano, Violin and Viola" Credit Music: Uncanny Valleys, "Curious or Disconcerting" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Victoria Schwab... VE Schwab... V... the author's name depends on her audience, which, like the dark worlds she builds, is a well-thought out design. Ms. Schwab, we'll say, burst onto the scene in 2011 with The Near Witch. A dozen books later, adult, young adult and middle grade readers have followed her into supernatural worlds, sinister scenarios and richly formed fantasy worlds. A self-described pagan, Victoria managed to survive a happy, independent childhood, with a morbid streak. "I definitely hung my teddy bears from the stair railing, execution-style,” she told Book Page. That slightly twisted imagination has served her well, and she continues to build speculative worlds and cutthroat characters that probe the human capacity to be monstrous to each other - and to the natural world. Her newest novel, A Conjuring of Light, is part three and the culmination of the Shades of Magic fantasy series. We reached her at her home in Nashville via Skype. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lindy West, columnist for The Guardian, and author of How to be a Person and Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman. Lindy writes about feminism, social justice, body image, pop culture and, lately, politics. She's a funny and original thinker, and brave. She's been a contributor on several memorable episodes of This American Life - one on "coming out" as fat, another about confronting an internet troll, one of hundreds who'd harassed her online. She's got a bunch of balls in the air - TV and movie projects, an idea for a podcast - but we honed in on the demands of being a columnist. Episode music by Ari de Niro Ad music by Uncanny Valleys Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ben Winters is a little incomprehensible. Not his output, which is consistently great, but his wild imagination and range. He's a teacher, a playwright, an Edgar and Phillip K. Dick Award-winning novelist, he's written children's books, an existential detective series and landed a New York Times bestseller with the Jane Austen meets the kraken mash-up, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. His most recent novel, Underground Airlines, imagines an alternative American history - and present. The civil war never happened, and slavery is legal in four southern states under protection of the Constitution. Underground Airlines is an ingenious work of speculative fiction that at times seems chillingly plausible. It landed on several top ten lists in 2016...from Fresh Air contributor Maureen Corrigan to the BBC. We caught up with him at the Capital Center for the Arts in Concord, NH before interviewing him and The Underground Railroad author, Colson Whitehead. Episode music by Podington Bear Ad music by Uncanny Valleys Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tana French is the Edgar Award-winning author of the Dublin Murder Squad series. The newest, called The Trespasser, is the sixth in the best-selling, habit-forming series. "It’s taken for granted that anybody who’s read one [Tana French novel] will very shortly have read them all,” wrote Laura Miller in the New Yorker. French wrote her debut novel, In The Woods, in the long stretches between parts as a stage actress in Dublin. That theatrical training - understanding people from the inside out - may well be the edge that sets her books apart from other mysteries and police procedurals. The search for the killer becomes entangled with a search for the self, or as Miller put it, "in most crime fiction, the central mystery is who is the murderer? In French’s novels, it’s who is the detective?” Music by Podington Bear Ad music by Uncanny Valleys Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John Scalzi, the Hugo Award-winning author of science fiction both serious and less-so and an internet star from way, way back. He is former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, perhaps best known for his Old Man's War series, his blog “Whatever,” and his novel Redshirts, which is currently being developed for television. He joined us in the NHPR studios while on tour for The Collapsing Empire, the first novel of a new space-opera sequence set in an all-new universe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anita Shreve had a small, but devoted following as a literary author when her second novel, The Pilot's Wife was named an Oprah Book Club pick. The recognition propelled her into a New York Times bestselling novelist. Two days after her 18th novel, The Stars Are Fire, was released, she canceled her extensive book tour, later writing on her Facebook page that she would be undergoing chemotherapy. This most recent novel uses wildfires that raged through coastal Maine in 1947 as the backdrop for the story of one woman’s extraordinary resilience. Music by Tyler Gibbons Ad Music by Uncanny Valleys Find Anita Shreve on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/anitashreve/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Krista Tippett is probably best known as the host & creator of the public radio program On Being. But she's also the author of three books that pull from her decades of interviews with a broad variety of thinkers and seekers, exploring the intersections between spirituality, science, and living. The most recent is called Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery & Art of Living. We spoke to her backstage at The Music Hall in Portsmouth, NH before a Writers on a New England Stage event. Music: Podington Bear - "Daydreamer" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ian Rankin is best known for two characters: Inspector John Rebus, the protagonist of now 21 mystery novels, and the city of Edinburgh, whose dark corners come alive in Rankin’s hands. Rebus made his debut in the 1987 crime novel Knots & Crosses. In Rankin’s newest novel - Rather Be the Devil - a retired Rebus returns to a case that has haunted him for decades. Episode music by Podington Bear Ad music by Uncanny Valleys Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Author, outspoken vegetarian, social media abstainer and writing teacher Jonathan Safran Foer is author of three novels: Everything Is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and, most recently, Here I Am, which follows four generations of a Jewish family grappling with identity, connection and disaster. His nonfiction book about factory farming, Eating Animals, was also a New York Times best-seller. Episode music by Broke For Free Ad music by Uncanny Valleys Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

US scientists have reaffirmed the benefits of eating walnuts in a new study. Specialists from the University of California at Davis conducted a series of experiments on a group of male mice diagnosed with prostate cancer. The mice were divided into three diet groups. The first group did not consume walnuts, the second group received walnuts, and the third one was fed with walnut oil. The experiment showed that the development of the tumor and malignant cells significantly slowed among the rodents in the second and the third groups. According to Natural News, the scientists explained the success of the experiment with the content of powerful phytonutrients in raw walnuts. This natural product contains that inhibit cancer cells and prevent them from developing.Just two handfuls of walnuts every day reduces the risk of cancer by almost 50 percent, the scientists said.Furthermore, walnut oil reduces the amount of harmful cholesterol in blood and increases insulin sensitivity, which helps fight heart disease and reduces the risk of diabetes. For example, one study found that overweight adults with type 2 diabetes who consumed just one-quarter cup of walnuts daily reduced their fasting insulin levels in just a few months' time compared to those on non-walnut diets. It is believed that walnuts can shrink levels of the hormone IGF-1, known to play a key role in development of both prostate and breast cancer, Natural News says.Thanks to their omega-3 fat content, walnuts are often the subjects of cancer-preventive studies. However, one should be cautious with eating them as walnuts are a high calorie product. For example, just 2.6 ounces of walnuts is about 482 calories, which may - in some people - contribute to an excess of stored fat. Health benefits of walnuts have been known since time immemorial. Hippocrates and Avicenna mentioned them in the treatment of various diseases. In addition, the ancients thought that they stimulate mental activity. Anna Protsenko, a nutritionist, told MedPulse.ru. "Walnuts contain a great deal of minerals," the expert explains. "They include iron, copper, cobalt, potassium, sodium, phosphorus, magnesium, calcium, and iodine. Many of them are antioxidants. In addition, walnuts contain unsaturated fatty acids, more than 20 amino acids, and vitamins A, E, B, P and C. By the way, they contain nearly 50 times more vitamin C than citrus, and 8 times more than black currants. In addition, walnuts are rich in protein.

Starting from May, Russia may start buying foreign currency for its reserves again. The country's budget has stabilized thanks to the growth of oil and gas export revenues, Bloomberg reports. The growth in revenues from the sale of energy products is already close to the target level. Since February of this year, the Russian Ministry of Finance has been selling reserves in Chinese yuan to cover the budget deficit. In April, sales collapsed by 50 percent compared to the beginning of the year. From May, purchases are likely to begin, Bloomberg notes. Such purchases can be relatively small at first — an equivalent of about $200 million in yuan. For the time being, Russia currently replenishes the National Welfare Fund only by purchasing Chinese currency.

This week, a Travis County district court judge convicted Sehgal & Sons Enterprises (Ultra Business Services Inc.) of first-degree felony in a scheme to defraud Texas Mutual Insurance Company (Texas Mutual).

Business owners have many decisions to make, including whether to provide workers’ compensation coverage to their employees. Texas is the only state that gives private-sector employers that choice.

Over 700 industry leaders and stakeholders gathered July 10-12 in Austin for the annual Texas Workers’ Compensation Conference hosted by the Texas Division of Workers’ Compensation.

The Texas Department of Insurance, Division of Workers' Compensation (DWC) recognized Tyler Beverages with the Lone Star Safety Program Award on July 19, 2024, for its exemplary workplace health and safety programs and low rates of work-related injuries and illnesses.

Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrates his 72nd birthday on October 7. The politician is expected to spend the day working. The head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov was one of the first to congratulate the Russian leader. He wished him good health, prosperity, happiness, long life, good luck and success in his difficult work. As the press secretary of the Russian leader Dmitry Peskov said, Putin will spend his birthday working.

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Utimaco has released new consumer research that has found a low level of trust around Internet of Things (IoT) devices. This has highlighted the need for more education from industry into how smart devices are secured with the latest digital security solutions.

Thoughtworks, the global technology consultancy that integrates strategy, design and engineering to drive digital innovation, has started a strategic partnership with UK-based cybersecurity startup Advanced Cyber Defence Systems (ACDS) by providing Thoughtworks DAMO AI-powered application managed services.