Booktalk: Novelist Karen Russell’s THE ANTIDOTE

Host Diana Korte speaks with award-winning Karen Russell, author of 6 books.

THE ANTIDOTE opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm in the 1930s ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories.

The book follows five characters–a “Prairie Witch,” whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a talkative scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.

Russell’s “climate change” fiction in novels and short stories, includes the bestsellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. She has received MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
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    The Antidote UNEDITED.m4a Karen Russell UNEDITED

Top authors are interviewed on this 10-minute program that captures their words about their books and ideas and often the story behind the story. The show, hosted by Diana Korte and engineered by Gene Korte, is in its 30th year of production. 

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