Podcast
Inside the Blanket Fort
Hosted by Amy Etcheson, Mandi Jourdan · EN
Inside the Blanket Fort features special segments. You can meet the producers, get previews and reviews of episodes, and get a special glimpse behind the blankets. SIU Press and WSIU present Blanket Fort Radio Theater, a project highlighting works published by SIU Press. This series includes work from students in the SIUC Creative Writing Program, who have taken SIU Press books and brought them to life. Join us each Thursday for a new installment of Blanket Fort Radio Theater.
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Episodes
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Inside The Blanket Fort - Episode 242
Feb 500:05:45Tap to summarize(SIU Press / SIU Press)Journey back Inside The Blanket Fort as we dive into some of the incredible books that SIU Press is spotlighting in February for Black History Month, a few of which are part of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry.Persons Unknown, Jake Adam York’s stunning continuation to the poetry collection A Murmuration of Starlings, dedicated to those who lost their lives during the Civil Rights movement, presents another set of searing portraits of these martyrs—men whose murders haunt America’s history.Consisting of two dynamic song cycles, Cyrus Cassells’s sixth poetry volume, The Gospel according to Wild Indigo, keeps the reader on edge with a timeless and beguiling feast of language that fuses together history, memory, and family.
Transcribe →Inside The Blanket Fort - Episode 241
Jan 2900:05:54Tap to summarize(SIU Press / SIU Press)Journey back Inside The Blanket Fort as we learn more about a SIU Press 2025 title and the most recent addition to the Perspectives on Crime and Justice series: Evolving Constitutional Rights: The Roberts Court and Criminal Justice, by Christopher E. Smith, Michael A. McCall and Madhavi M. McCall.Evolving Constitutional Rights: The Roberts Court and Criminal Justice offers a compelling and in-depth analysis of how the U.S. Supreme Court has reshaped constitutional protections under Chief Justice John Roberts. The authors examine the Court’s significant decisions from 2005 to Justice Breyer’s retirement in 2022, revealing a complex judicial landscape where traditional doctrines are revised and fundamental rights are redefined.
Transcribe →Inside The Blanket Fort - Episode 240
Jan 1500:05:32Tap to summarize(SIU Press / SIU Press)Journey back Inside The Blanket Fort as we delve into a new group of SIU Press books to celebrate the new year! This week we start with the just released title: Called to Reckon: Replacing History and Reclaiming Mission at a Midwestern College, edited by Jane E. Simonsen.Augustana College, a predominantly white institution in Rock Island, Illinois, was founded in 1860 by Swedish Lutheran settlers with a mission to educate for the common good and “serve the neighbor so that all may flourish.” But has it lived up to that call? This collection—written by historians, alumni, diversity leaders, and religion scholars—reveals the stories of those who have held the college accountable to its foundational mission.
Transcribe →Inside The Blanket Fort - Episode 239
Dec 1800:05:55Tap to summarize(SIU Press / SIU Press)Journey back Inside The Blanket Fort as we finish our dive into an amazing group of books published by SIU Press in 2025.While COVID-19 lockdowns affected nearly everyone worldwide, feelings of anxiety and fear were exacerbated for those already entangled in the criminal justice system. Scholars recognized the unique opportunity to study crime and the justice system’s response during this period, though they soon realized that determining the pandemic’s effects would be a complicated, nuanced process. Crime, Corrections, and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Responses and Adaptations in the U.S. Criminal Justice System, edited by Breanne Pleggenkuhle and Joseph A. Schafer for the Perspectives on Crime and Justice series, features analyses and findings from more than thirty contributors in eleven essays. The collection examines the multifaceted social, economic, cultural, legislative, and policy responses to COVID-19 and their impacts on crime and justice. It also explores how professionals across the criminal justice system adapted to unprecedented challenges.The Scenographic Model: Third Edition by Darwin Reid Payne, Ronald Naversen, and Brad M. Carlson builds upon the theories and exercises in noted scenographer Payne’s landmark text to provide a modern exploration of the practice of theatrical modelmaking. With chapters on traditional and contemporary materials, tools, and techniques, the book serves as a foundational guide to understanding the historical, theoretical, and practical aspects of scenographic modelmaking, making it essential for the beginner, generalist, and professional design practitioner. This comprehensive text provides information not just from theater but also from other modeling disciplines and sources, including architecture, film, dioramas, dollhouse modeling, and model railroading. A useful resource for high school, community college, university, and community theater enthusiasts, it is an excellent reference book for theater designers throughout the country.
Transcribe →Inside The Blanket Fort - Episode 238
Dec 1100:05:59Tap to summarize(SIU Press / SIU Press)Journey back Inside The Blanket Fort as we near the end of the year, we’ll be starting a recap of the incredible group of books that SIU Press has published in 2025.Southern Illinois Fishing: A Comprehensive Guide for Anglers by Colby Simms shares the secrets the author has gleaned from years of hard-won experience: colossal catfish dominate the Mississippi River; monstrous muskies rule over Kinkaid Lake. Rend gives up record crappie and bowfin, while Crab Orchard produces excellent largemouth bass fishing and Cedar offers huge striped bass. Whether you’re powerboating a large lake or paddling an out-of-the-way oxbow, the region presents countless opportunities for different styles of fishing. Abraham Lincoln belongs to everybody. The women he interacted with helped forge the outstanding moral character of America's greatest president. The unique biography Loving Lincoln: A Personal History of the Women Who Shaped Lincoln’s Life and Legacy, by Stacy Lynn, features thirty historical and personal essays, and within them, the stories of more than ninety women, each with their own mini biographies in an appendix. Among them are Lincoln’s friends, clients, and extended family, as well as writers, artists, and—blurring the lines between history and memoir—author Stacy Lynn herself.These books and more, this week on Inside The Blanket Fort.
Transcribe →Inside The Blanket Fort - Episode 237
Nov 2000:05:58Tap to summarize(SIU Press / SIU Press)Journey back Inside The Blanket Fort as we continue our look at the SIU Press series Illinois Lives: Memoirs from the Prairie State.Memoirs—the personal, evocative, true stories we tell—have the power to educate, enlighten, and entertain. In its continuous and longstanding goal to amplify diverse voices, for more than fifty years, SIU Press has published hundreds of memoirs and autobiographies. We are seeking to build on this strong foundation by publishing up to two new memoirs a year written by people who are from or in Illinois. We will also consider edited historical memoirs by people from Illinois and its surrounding states. New books will feature the voices of people who have traditionally been overlooked. We welcome a diversity of background, thought, style, and expression. You can send queries and book proposals to Executive Editor Sylvia Frank Rodrigue at acqeditor@siu.edu. The deeply personal story of a historic time in Chicago, Robert B. McKersie’s A Decisive Decade: An Insider's View of the Chicago Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s follows the unfolding action of the Civil Rights Movement as it played out in the Windy City. McKersie’s participation as a white activist for black rights offers a unique, firsthand viewpoint on the debates, boycotts, marches, and negotiations that would forever change the face of race relations in Chicago and the United States at large. The author illumines the tensions experienced by two major institutions in responding to the demands of the civil rights movement: the university and the church. Packed with historical detail and personal anecdotes of these history-making years, A Decisive Decade offers a never-before-seen perspective on one of our nation’s most tumultuous eras.
Transcribe →Inside The Blanket Fort - Episode 201
Dec 19, 202400:05:10Tap to summarize(SIU Press / SIU Press)Journey back Inside The Blanket Fort as we continue to explore SIU Press’s new releases in 2024.Civil twilight is the astronomical term for the minutes just before sunrise and just after sunset. If one took a snapshot, it would be impossible to tell whether the light was increasing or diminishing. The poems in Civil Twilight, the newest collection from National Book Award finalist Cynthia Huntington, arise in this liminal space. With luminous precision, Huntington examines the civil twilight we live in now, unsure of whether the darkness is closing in or whether the light is about to break. In a world teetering on the edge of collapse, Civil Twilight wrestles hard-won hope from disquiet, coming to rest in what is.In August of 1968, approximately 7,000 people protested the Vietnam War against the backdrop of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. This highly televised event began peacefully but quickly turned into what was later termed a “police riot.” Brian Mullgardt’s investigation of this event and the preceding tensions shines a light on the ministers, Yippies, and community members who showed up and stood together against the brutality of the police. Charting a complex social history, Brian Mullgardt’s Wear Some Armor in Your Hair: Urban Renewal and the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Lincoln Park brings together Chicago history, the 1960s, and urbanization, focusing not on the national leaders, but on the grassroots activists of the time.In 1924 Beulah Annan was arrested for killing her lover, Harry Kalsted. Six weeks later, a jury acquitted her of murder. Inspired by the sordid event, trial, and acquittal, reporter Maurine Watkins wrote the play Chicago, a Broadway hit that was adapted several times. Through a fresh retelling of Annan’s story and Watkins’s play, in They Both Reached for the Gun: Beulah Annan, Maurine Watkins, and the Trial that Became Chicago, Charles H. Cosgrove provides the first critical examination of the criminal case and an exploration of the era’s social assumptions that made the play’s message so plausible in its time. He exposes the weaknesses of the case against Annan and vindicates the jury that tried her.Offering a glimpse into a world largely misunderstood by mainstream society, Mennonites of Southern Illinois: A Photographic Journal documents the period of eight years that Jane Flynn practiced with Mennonites in two different Southern Illinois communities: Stonefort, and Mount Pleasant in Anna. Despite her status as an outsider, Flynn was welcomed and allowed to photograph the Mennonites in their homes, making applesauce, farming, and beekeeping. The imagery explores the Mennonites’ labors, leisure, and faith by documenting their homes, places of work and worship, and the Illinois Ozark landscape they inhabit.Throughout his extensive career with the Boston Police, Paul F. Joyce was at the forefront of the Department’s anti-gang and youth violence initiatives. Later in his career, after thirty-one years in policing, Joyce transitioned to academia as a criminologist, seeking to better understand the lives of the gang members he had encountered during his time as an officer. He interviewed thirty Black and Latino men who witnessed and led the emergence of the street gang phenomenon in Boston. In It Started with the Hats: The Life Experiences of Boston’s Founding Street Gang Members, Joyce examines the influences that motivated the men toward joining gangs, their gang experiences, and the turning points that shaped their paths later in life, whether leading to desistance from or continued persistence in criminal behavior.Puerto Ricans in Illinois by Maura I. Toro-Morn and Ivis Garcia offer readers an opportunity to learn about the history of Puerto Rico, the migration of Puerto Ricans to Illinois, and the cultural, economic, and political contributions of the Puerto Rican women, men, and families that call Illinois home. A compelling weave of scholarship summary, archival research, and the extensive sociological study including interviews conducted across the state, the book documents just how much many fail to know about a growing and transforming community in Illinois.Watchman, Tell Us: John J. Bird and Black Politics in Post-Civil War Illinois by Wayne T. Pitard recently won the 2024 Friends of Morris Library Delta Award. This key biography of John J. Bird unveils the forgotten story of a remarkable Black political figure in post-Civil War Illinois. Emerging as a leader in Cairo, the city with Illinois’ second-largest Black community, Bird played a pivotal role in advancing civil rights within the state, also becoming Illinois’ first Black elected judge and first Black trustee of the University of Illinois.To destroy Confederate infrastructure, avenge the horrors of slavery, and shorten the war, the 45th Illinois Volunteer Infantry imposed the pillaging of hard-war philosophy upon Confederate lands. The Lead Mine Men: The Enduring 45th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, by Thomas B. Mack, is a comprehensive and engaging narrative that explores the Civil War ordeals and triumphs of this unit. Mack uncovers the history of this unit of resilient midwesterners and how they brought hard-war to the Confederacy in 1862, earlier than other historians have previously suggested.
Transcribe →Inside The Blanket Fort - Episode 200
Dec 12, 202400:05:46Tap to summarize(SIU Press / SIU Press)Journey back Inside The Blanket Fort as we celebrate our 200th episode of Inside the Blanket Fort! The show first aired on July 9th, 2020.Hosted by SIU Press Director Amy Etcheson and Professor Pinckney Benedict, it began with a focus on delving inside our Blanket Fort Radio Theater Productions—audio adaptations of the Press’s books, helmed by SIU students in Creative Writing.The first season adapted A Knight of Another Sort: Prohibition Days and Charlie Birger, by Gary DeNeal. Birger has gone down in southern Illinois history as a bootlegger, enemy of the Ku Klux Klan, and even as the reigning "kingpin of the Saline County underworld" during the Prohibition Era. Drawing from the colorful cast of the living, the dead, and the soon-to-be-dead—a state shared by many associated with Birger and his enemies, the Shelton gang—DeNeal re-creates Prohibition-era southern Illinois. I had the privilege of serving as a producer on this first season of Blanket Fort Radio Theater and providing voices for a few of the characters while working on my MFA, and I’ve recently celebrated two and a half years of working for SIU Press.The show’s second season adapted Survived by One: The Life and Mind of a Family Mass Murderer by Robert E. Hanlon and Thomas V. Odle. As our nation attempts to understand the continual mass murders occurring in the U.S., Survived by One sheds some light on the psychological aspects of why and how such acts of extreme carnage may occur. However, Survived by One offers a never-been-told perspective from the mass murderer himself, as he searches for the answers concurrently being asked by the nation and the world.The third season of Blanket Fort Radio Theater adapted two related SIU Press titles: American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin, by Hua-ling Hu, and The Undaunted Women of Nanking: The Wartime Diaries of Minnie Vautrin and Tsen Shui-fang, by Hua-ling Hu and Zhang Lian-hong. These two intertwining narratives tell the stories of female missionary in a time of terror and the only known daily account by a Chinese national written during the crisis and not retrospectively—a woman grappling with feelings of anger, sorrow, and compassion as she witnesses the atrocities being committed in her war-torn country.Since the airing of these three seasons, Inside the Blanket Fort has shined a spotlight on a number of other SIU Press titles, focusing on brand-new releases and themes across our catalog, from Black History Month and Women’s History Month to Pride Month to Spooky Season, and recently, we’ve delved into an incredible new roster of books published in 2024. Over this episode and the next one, we’ll be recapping all the amazing books that have been released by the Press this year. Celebrating the First Fifty Years of Southern Illinois University School of Law, by Frank G. Houdek, is a photographic commemoration of SIU Law’s milestones. The Southern Illinois University School of Law held its first class on September 4, 1973, in a temporary building on the outskirts of campus. 2023 marks fifty years since that humble beginning, and over the course of those years, the School of Law has expanded to offer eight joint-degree programs, four in-house clinics, and more than twenty student organizations. Featuring more than one hundred photographs, complete indexed lists of full-time faculty members and deans, and identification of numerous “firsts” in the law school’s history, this detailed commemoration is a testament to the faculty, staff, students, and alumni who have paved the way for future generations.First published in 1987 and revised in 1997 and 2007, Stage Rigging Handbook remains the only book in any language that covers the design, operation, and maintenance of stage rigging equipment. The reorganized and greatly expanded fourth edition of Jay O. Glerum’s industry standard text updates much of the information in the previous editions with the addition of chapters on truss, motorized chain hoists, hardware, and job safety, including fall protection systems. Award-winning production manager Shane Kelly preserves Glerum’s voice while bringing fresh information to a new generation of riggers.The scene of myriad grisly deaths, late nineteenth-century St. Louis was a hotbed for homicide, suicide, alcoholism, abortion, and workplace accidents. The role of the city’s Gilded Age coroners has not been fully examined, contextualized, or interrogated until now. In Sudden Deaths in St. Louis: Coroner Bias in the Gilded Age, Sarah E. Lirley investigates the process in which these outcomes were determined, finding coroners’ rulings were not uniform, but rather varied by who was conducting the inquest. These fascinating case studies explore the lives of the deceased, as well as their families, communities, press coverage of the events, and the coroners themselves.Sara Henning’s new poetry collection Burn draws readers deep into the moments that make us, focusing on instances of crisis and renewal to explore our relation to time and lived experience. In these poems, we follow a speaker as she works through the loss of young love, the death of her parents, marriage’s hardness and beauty, sexual assault, and the devastation of a pandemic—evolutions of trauma that fracture time and alter perception. Twinned with these extremes are shimmering manifestations of joy only an imperfect world can make possible.Pulling off the Sheets: The Second Ku Klux Klan in Deep Southern Illinois tells the previously obscured history of the Second Klan which formed in the area in the early 1920s. Through meticulous research into both public and private records, Darrel Dexter and John A. Beadles recount the Klan’s mythical origins, reemergence, and swift disappearance. This disturbing historical account challenges readers to “pull back the sheet” and confront the darkest corners of their past. Dexter and Beadles emphasize the importance of acknowledging the damage that white supremacy and racism cause and how we can move toward healing.
Transcribe →Inside The Blanket Fort - Episode 199
Dec 5, 202400:05:06Tap to summarize(SIU Press / SIU Press)Journey back Inside The Blanket Fort as we introduce a brand-new series from SIU Press: Illinois Lives – Memoirs from the Prairie State.Memoirs—the personal, evocative, true stories we tell—have the power to educate, enlighten, and entertain. In its continuous and longstanding goal to amplify diverse voices, for more than fifty years SIU Press has published hundreds of memoirs and autobiographies. These books include the stories of a woman pioneer, a Chicago Heights mob member, people who escaped enslavement through the Underground Railroad in Illinois, Civil War soldiers, politicians, Black families, a Civil Rights worker, and many more.We are seeking to build on this strong foundation by publishing up to two new memoirs a year written by people who are from or in Illinois. We will also consider edited historical memoirs by people from Illinois and its surrounding states. New books will feature the voices of people who have traditionally been overlooked. We welcome a diversity of background, thought, style, and expression. Send queries and book proposals to Executive Editor Sylvia Frank Rodrigue at acqeditor@siu.edu.
Transcribe →Inside The Blanket Fort - Episode 198
Nov 14, 202400:05:30Tap to summarize(SIU Press / SIU Press)Journey back Inside The Blanket Fort as we wrap up the last of our interviews conducted at Chicago’s Printers Row Lit Fest.This week we catch up with another author who has been featured on Inside the Blanket Fort before: Charles H. Cosgrove, who wrote Fortune and Faith in Old Chicago: A Dual Biography of Mayor Augustus Garrett and Seminary Founder Eliza Clark Garrett and They Both Reached for the Gun: Beulah Annan, Maurine Watkins, and the Trial That Became Chicago.
Transcribe →