KUCI: Get the Funk Out

4/8/19 @9am pst - Cindy Kolbe joins Janeane to chat about her new memoir, Struggling with Serendipity

ABOUT CINDY KOLBE
Cindy is the author of the new Struggling with Serendipity memoir. She has been a lifelong disability advocate, even before her youngest daughter's spinal cord injury. She managed group homes, ran a non-profit, and taught literacy to adults with disabilities at a state institution. An active volunteer, she served on the Ohio Swimming Board of Directors as Adapted Chairperson for swimmers with a disability. She is a Peer Mentor, Guest Blogger, and Regional Champion for the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation. She supports other Warrior Momz and the international nonprofit AbleThrive. She also provided four years of personal care after Beth's spinal cord injury.
Cindy is a mom on a mission to share the power of hope and connection. Since March of 2016, Cindy published 50 articles related to disability and mental health in many different media. (Listed on her "Press and News" webpage!) She also writes a popular blog and her upcoming memoir, Struggling with Serendipity, will be available on April 9, 2019 everywhere books are sold.
Cindy attended Ohio State University as one of thirteen Freshman Scholars in 1976, and majored in English at Heidelberg College. She married her best friend John 41 years ago and raised three children in Tiffin, Ohio. Beth works as a lawyer, Ben is a librarian, and Maria teaches young students with disabilities. Cindy and John also lived in Massachusetts and South Carolina before his retirement from teaching. They recently moved to the beautiful Shenandoah Valley to be closer to their children.
ABOUT HER BOOK
Cindy’s new memoir, Struggling with Serendipity, shares her battle with depression and guilt after her daughter injury. They shared unexpected adventures from their small town in Ohio to Seattle, Harvard, Capitol Hill, and around the world. Cindy is a writer with a blog and more than 50 articles since 2016 in Power of Moms, Motherly, AbleThrive, This Is My Brave, Reeve Foundation, and other media. She is on a mission to share a message of hope for those in crisis.

4/8/19 @9:45am pst - Filmmaker Lorenzo DeStefano and musician/composer Rachel Flowers joined Janeane to talk about Rachel Flowers up-coming Hearing is...

Filmmaker Lorenzo DeStefano and his team have created a dynamic and engaging portrait of nearly two years in the life of a tight knit American family, a single mom and her two kids, living paycheck to paycheck in working class Oxnard, California, with Rachel’s stunning music as the soundtrack. “Hearing is Believing” revels in Rachel’s joyous and free-flowing love of song, illuminating the bonds of family and the divine mysteries of creativity. Rachel Flowers is a true survivor, a hyper-abled individual whose inspiring story has the potential to be a beacon of hope out there.
Appearing with Rachel in “Hearing is Believing” are Grammy winners Arturo Sandoval, Stevie Wonder, Dweezil Zappa, two-time Grammy nominated jazz pianist, Taylor Eigsti, the late Progressive Rock icon Keith Emerson, Hawaii ukulele master Benny Chong, and 50 members of the Santa Barbara Youth Symphony performing Rachel's original composition, “At The End Of The Day”.
Rachel has appeared at the Havana International Jazz Festival (2016), Progfest 2017 & 2018, and at the PDX Portland Jazz Festival (2018). She has shared the stage with Dweezil Zappa, Arturo Sandoval, Taylor Eigsti, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, Marc Bonilla, Jordan Rudess, Steve Porcaro, Rick Wakeman, Burt Bacharach, Bob Reynolds, Cuban legends Bobby Carcassés, Bellita Y Jazz Tumbatá, and Orlando "Maraca" Valle, the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra and the Birmingham (UK) Symphony Orchestra.
Rachel has performed since her youth for Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Quincy Jones, Clark Terry, Herbie Hancock, Herb Alpert, and Wayne Shorter. She has three albums in release – “Listen” (2016), “Hearing is Believing Motion Picture Soundtrack” (2017), and “Going Somewhere” (2018). Rachel is a very active part of several jazz lineups in California and is composing original songs and works for orchestra, jazz combo, piano, and voice. At this point in her eventful musical career she is deeply exploratory, forging a variety of stylings as immensely accomplished as they are uniquely her own.

4/1/19 @9:45am pst - Peter Noble Darrow joins host Janeane live on KUCI 88.9fm!

The New York Times recently released an article on the “College Admissions Scandal,” exposing the parents of high school graduates who paid as much as $1.2 million to ensure their children’s acceptance to prestigious universities-- in most cases, kids were underqualified for their placements and unaware of their parents’ behavior.
Peter Noble Darrow provides commentary on how these parents’ are negatively affecting their children’s psyche as a result. A Millennial trust fund baby who spent his way too rapidly through his tony Upper East Side NY inheritance, this former 1%er is focusing on what really makes life valuable now...and sharing his lessons learned with readers in “Wise Millennial” (April 30, 2019). I've sent you a copy of his book already.
“I can understand and sympathize with the social pressures that society puts on higher education and parents' human desire to want to protect their children, but this is a microcosm of a larger gross confusion between ‘parental protection’ and emotional manipulation. This type of behavior robs children of their identity and any sense of self worth. I would even bet that this kind of behavior, even if successfully executed, would ultimately have an adverse psychological effect in the long run.” Darrow shares.
In “Wise Millennial” Peter Noble Darrow asks Millennials to think deeply about their parents’ expectations for their lives and find their own paths, instead.
Darrow shares his thoughts on “identity” in the college admission scandal.

4/1/19 @9:30am pst author Irene O’Garden live on KUCI 88.9fm!

What Others are Saying About Irene O’Garden’s Risking the Rapids (there are numerous other wonderful reviews!)
For many years now, the poet, playwright, and memoirist Irene O'Garden has been a hero to me. I think of her as a walking, writing, beam of light. It is my hope that ...numberless others will come to know her gifts and, most of all, her captivating talent for wonder and marvel. —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic
“Family is landscape,” writes Irene O’Garden in her breathtaking memoir, Risking the Rapids. She gives us a bold dose of both as she embarks on a remote river trip to help make sense of a family wild and dangerous. In her brave eloquence, O’Garden adds a thoroughly welcome voice to the rich vein of American literature on the singular healing powers of wilderness. —Florence Williams, author of The Nature Fix, LA Times Book Prize winner and editor at Outside Magazine Risking the Rapids is a deep and powerful memoir.
Irene O’Garden sifts through her family’s shared pain (and shared joy!) with elegance and care — searching for nothing less than ultimate understanding and supreme forgiveness.” —Martha Beck, Bestselling author, columnist for O, The Oprah Magazine
Irene O’Garden has won or been nominated for prizes in nearly every writing category from stage to e-screen, hardcovers, children’s books as well as literary magazines and anthologies. Her criticallyacclaimed play Women on Fire (Samuel French), starring Judith Ivey, played to sold-out houses at Off-Broadway’s Cherry Lane Theatre, and was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award. Her new play, Little Heart, won her a Berilla Kerr Playwriting Fellowship and was awarded full development at the New Harmony Play Project. O’Garden was awarded a Pushcart Prize for her lyric essay “Glad to Be Human,” (Untreed Reads.) Harper published her first memoir Fat Girl and Nirala Press recently published Fulcrum: Selected Poems, which contains her prize-winning poem “Nonfiction.”
On January 31, 2019 O’Garden’s upcoming memoir, Risking the Rapids: How My Wilderness Adventure Healed My Childhood is being published by Mango Publishing. O’Garden’s poems and essays have been featured in dozens of literary journals and awardwinning anthologies (including A Slant of Light, USA Book award Best Anthology), and she has been honored with an Alice Desmond Award and an Oppenheimer for her children’s books. A seasoned and entertaining presenter both on stage and video, O’Garden has appeared at top literary venues: including The Player’s Club, the Bowery Poetry Club, Nuyorican Poetry Café, and KGB in Manhattan; The Poetry Café, Mycennae House and Vinyl Deptford in London, and all throughout the Hudson Valley. She’s a regular contributor to 650―Where Writers Read, in New York City and Sarah Lawrence College and has received several grants from Poets and Writers.

4/1/19 @9:15am pst - Author Diane Les Becquets live on KUCI 88.9fm

Diane Les Becquets is the author of THE LAST WOMAN IN THE FOREST (March, 2019) and BREAKING WILD, both published by Berkley, Penguin Random House. BREAKING WILD, an Indie Next Pick and a national bestseller, received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist. It was also the recipient of the Colorado Book Award in Fiction, the New Hampshire Outstanding Work of Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Reading the West Book Award in Fiction. Les Becquets is also the author of three young adult novels: THE STONES OF MOURNING CREEK (Kirkus starred review); LOVE, CAJUN STYLE (Booklist starred review) and SEASON OF ICE, the latter being the recipient of a Pen American Fellowship. Other awards she has received include a BCCB Blue Ribbon Award, the Maine Lupine Award, ALA Best Book of the Year, Foreward Reviews Gold Winner Book of the Year, Volunteer State Book Award Selection, and Garden State Book Award Finalist.
A former professor of English, Les Becquets has served as a judge for the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and the Maine Arts Commission, and has taught writing workshops at venues across the country, including the University of Mississippi, Auburn University, the New Hampshire Writers' Project, the Department of Forestry, Writers Conference at Ocean Park, Writers in Paradise, the Arkansas Literary Festival, the Telluride Arts District, and at shelters for Katrina victims. She is a volunteer at Back in the Saddle Equine Therapy Center and an avid outdoors woman, enjoying archery, bicycling, snowshoeing, swimming, and backpacking with her dog, Izzy. Before moving to New Hampshire, where she now resides with her husband, she lived in a small ranching town in Northwestern Colorado for almost fourteen years, raising her three sons.
Diane Les Becquets is a member of the New Hampshire Writers' Project, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, and the Pen American Center.

4/1/19 @9:00am pst - Author JB Jamison kicks off Monday’s show!

J.B. Jamison’s Emily Graham series has fascinating characters thrown into situations that are crazy enough to capture your attention, but just plausible enough to be believable.
He is a life-long believer in the power of stories. First as a pastor, then educator, creator of Centers for Innovation at multiple universities, Director of a national Game and Simulation academic degree program, a consultant for e-learning and brand development, John has used the power of story to bring about serious change and have some fun in the process.
ABOUT HIS LATEST BOOK
Emily Graham continues to tackle danger as thrilling adventures continue with third book in series, ‘Disbelief’

3/25/19 @9:45am pst - Award-winning author Carol Goodman joins Janeane on KUCI 88.9fm

Award-winning author Carol Goodman is back with a psychological thriller that will take your breath away! The Night Visitors (William Morrow, March 26) is full of secrets and intrigue, and Goodman explores abusive relationships with a deft hand.
‘The Night Visitors’ is a genre-bending thriller with smart commentary on abusive relationships and family trauma
RED HOOD, NY –The latest thriller from the internationally bestselling author of The Lake of Dead Languages and The Other Mother is a story of mistaken identities, missed chances, forgiveness, and vengeance.
Alice is fleeing an abusive relationship and desperate to protect ten-year-old Oren when she finds herself stepping off a bus in the middle of a snowstorm in Delphi, NY. Though Alice is wary, Oren bonds nearly instantly with Mattie, a social worker in her fifties who lives in an enormous run-down house in the middle of the woods.
According to protocol Mattie should take Alice and Oren to a local shelter, but she brings them home for the night instead. She has plenty of room, she says. What she doesn’t say is that Oren reminds her of her little brother, who died thirty years ago at the age of ten.
Alice is keeping her own secrets. And as the snowstorm worsens around them, each woman’s past will prove itself unburied, stirring up threats both within and without.
CAROL GOODMAN graduated from Vassar College, where she majored in Latin. After teaching Latin for several years, she studied for an MFA in Fiction. She is the author of twenty novels, including The Lake of Dead Languages and The Seduction of Water, which won the 2003 Hammett Prize. Her 2017 thriller The Widow’s House won the Mary Higgins Clark Award. Her books have been translated into sixteen languages. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her family and teaches writing and literature at The New School and SUNY New Paltz.

3/25/19 @9:30am pst - Writer/Musician Doug Hoekstra joins host Janeane on KUCI 88.9fm

DOUG HOEKSTRA is a Chicago-bred, Nashville-based writer and musician, educated at DePaul University (B.A.) and Belmont University (M.Ed.). His first book, Bothering the Coffee Drinkers (Canopic Publishing, April 2016) was an Independent Publisher Award (IPPY) Bronze Medal Finalist for Best Short Fiction. Bothering garnered stellar print reviews and signature appearances at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville and WXPN World Café’s Summer Listening Series hosted by David Dye. Bothering also worked as a compliment to Hoekstra’s work as a singer-songwriter, as he included selections from the book in his live oeuvre during performances in the U.S. and Europe. https://doughoekstra.wordpress.com/

3/25/19 @9:15am pst - Ray Bouderau, CEO of Living the Dream Films, joins Janeane on KUCI 88.9fm!

As a native New Yorker born and raised in Rockaway, Queens, Ray Bouderau has had a lifelong love affair with movies and television. From a restaurant and bar owner to construction and New York City real estate, Ray continues to push to the edges of everyday life, adding successful Producer, Writer and Actor to his list of accomplishments.
With an indisputable zest for life, Ray captures the feeling of being alive through creating stories that need to be told in the most entertaining and powerful way. His work as an Actor is compelling, and as a Producer, Bouderau leaves you with a sense of disruption and self-reflection.
As the CEO of Living the Dream Films, Ray has worked on 7 feature length films in the last 2 years alone. His wholehearted passion for the entertainment industry has seen him work alongside the great talents of Amanda Seyfreid, Alec Baldwin, Johnny Depp, Adam Levine, Taylor Schilling and many others.
His films have been met with critical acclaim and wide audiences spanning several genres. It’s rare that filmmaker creates a such a splash right out of the gate, but Ray has accomplished just that, with his films screening at such prestigious festivals as the Toronto International Film Festival, South by Southwest, and the TriBeCa Film Festival.

3/25/19 @9:00am pst - Artist Nita Patel joins Janeane on KUCI 88.9fm

ABOUT NITA PATELNita Patel’s life of art began upon hearing the fable of the Balinese dragon, the Naga who claims to protect its people during the day and descends the ocean at night to see his true love, the Pearl. John Hardy’s Naga collection sparked her desire for creative expression and she began creating Asian inspired art, later evolving to incorporate her spirituality and ideation of love depicting both direct and indirect interpretations. Her abstract work embodies the unknowns we struggle to untangle where enlightenment is the only way out. Sharing her creative interpretations with others is her way of passing the message forward.
Nita is best known for her multi-media work in which she exploits an array of mediums – from the more typical oil and acrylics upon canvas, wood, rice paper and glass, to her uniquely clever and masterful utilization of precious materials such as diamonds, gold, and other exotic constituents. Her use of precious materials signifies the ounce of hope that gives us strength to carry us through the dark moments.
Further, in her expression of care towards those she engages, Nita leverages her corporate experience and her formal psychology education offering guidance to those who embark on their journey towards fulfillment.
Born in Croydon, UK, Nita traveled frequently between London and Dallas during her childhood, attending elementary school in both countries. Her formative years were influenced not only by the American and English cultures, but also by her parents’ South Asian Indian and African origins. Being an amalgam of values and mores helped to formulate her strong and resilient character as an artist.
Nita shows her work in the UK and US. She is currently based in Dallas.