Human stories bring history home

Rebecca Rule and I talking before she interviewed me for the UNH author series. Thanks to Dave Sullivan for the pic.

A few weeks ago, Rebecca Rule of New Hampshire Public Television interviewed me for the station's New Hampshire author series. It was a great honor to join the ranks of Donald Hall, the late Maxine Kumin, Wesley McNair, Meredith Hall, the late Donald Murray and many other fine writers I know or knew.

I've also known Becky Rule for more than 20 years. During the 1980s, she was an early citizen-contributor to the Concord Monitor. She submitted many good human stories from her home in Northwood. But as you'll hear in the interview, she's a native of Boscawen. In Our War, she was pleased to find the chapters about her fellow Boscawen-born writer, Charles "Carleton" Coffin, the Civil War correspondent for the Boston Journal.

Becky is a superb storyteller in her own right, and it was a pleasure to talk about our mutual respect for words and stories. The interview took about 45 minutes, and then I took questions from the audience. The session was edited to 26 minutes for television.

The show has aired a few times on NHPTV and can now also be seen on the web. Here's the link.