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Best of the Book Nook: The Gates of the Alamo by Stephen Harrigan

Vick Mickunas' 2001 interview with Stephen Harrigan

It feels like it could have been just yesterday that the author Stephen Harrigan was on a book tour for his novel "The Gates of the Alamo" and he came out to our studios in Yellow Springs to do a live interview. That day remains so fresh in my mind-it was actually 20 years ago.

His book "The Gates of the Alamo" is a superb fictional rendering of the tumultuous events that took place at the Alamo as the territory of Texas was being wrested away from Mexico. Mexico won this epic battle but they lost the war and some massive territory.

I looked up the author on Wikipedia as I was listening to this interview. Stephen Harrigan is known for many things, books, screenplays. According to Wikipedia this novel is his best known work. This was also his only appearance, to date, on the program. Since we were doing the interview live it was impossible to cut out all the times the author coughed during our conversation. He was a real trouper; he had a terrible cold that day. One of the really positive aspects of digitizing and editing shows from the past is that we have the ability of edit out lots of stuff, like coughing, as we create these revised editions of our programs. We were able to edit out almost all of his coughing! Authors can get well on the Book Nook. It just might take 20 years to do it. As I was marking the spots in the sound file that we would want to remove I kept thinking; should I be wearing my mask? We are living in a different world. Have you noticed that hardly anybody has gotten a cold this winter? I haven't. I think masks have been a very good thing.

The Book Nook on WYSO is presented by the Greene County Public Library with additional support from Washington-Centerville Public Library, Clark County Public Library, Dayton Metro Library, and Wright Memorial Public Library.

Vick Mickunas introduced the Book Nook author interview program for WYSO in 1994. Over the years he has produced more than 1500 interviews with writers, musicians, poets, politicians, and celebrities. Listen to the Book Nook with Vick Mickunas for intimate conversations about books with the writers who create them. Vick Mickunas reviews books for the Dayton Daily News and the Springfield News Sun.