Jordan Abel + Tony Hiss

This week on the Richard Crouse Show Podcast we meet Griffin Poetry Prize winner Jordan Abel. He joins me to talk about his intriguing new book Nishga. It’s a groundbreaking, deeply personal, and devastating autobiographical meditation that attempts to address the complicated legacies of Canada's residential school system and contemporary Indigenous existence. Drawing on autobiography and a series of interconnected documents (including pieces of memoir, transcriptions of talks, and photography), NISHGA is a book about confronting difficult truths and it is about how both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples engage with a history of colonial violence that is quite often rendered invisible. Then, veteran New Yorker staff writer Tony Hiss joins me on Zoom from his home in New York City’s East Village. His new book, "Rescuing the Planet" is an urgent call to protect 50 percent of the earth's land by 2050--thereby saving millions of its species--and a candid assessment of the health of our planet and our role in conserving it.