Promoting a Book, (Not) Giving Readers What They Want
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In case you missed them, there are two new Drafting the Past episodes for you to catch up on over spring break.
First up, Rebecca Brenner Graham joined me to talk about her first book, Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany. I was especially excited to talk with Rebecca about her herculean efforts to promote the book--I think anyone with a book coming out might be taking notes! Plus, I loved getting to hear about how her experience teaching high school history shaped her approach to the book.
In the most recent episode, I interviewed Judith Giesberg about her newest book, Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families. It's an incredibly moving book, and one that artfully illuminates the far-reaching cruelties of slavery, long past the end of the Civil War. The book originated in an online project, and I was especially interested to hear from Judy about how her interactions with the public, and Black genealogists in particular, affected her narrative choices.
One last happy note: as you may have already seen, recent Drafting the Past guest James Tejani was one of two winners of the prestigious Bancroft Prize this year!