Sound & Spirit Host:
Ellen Kushner
Ellen Kushner is a novelist, performer and public radio personality who unites her talents as host of WGBH Radio's remarkable series, Sound & Spirit. A weekly series of hour-long radio programs produced by WGBH Radio Boston and distributed by Public Radio International, Sound & Spirit explores the human spirit through music and ideas. Bringing an intellectual openness, a keen ear, a lush voice and a genuine enthusiasm to each show, Kushner has deftly crafted Sound & Spirit into what Bill Moyers calls "the best program on public radio, bar none." Sound & Spirit weaves history, myth, and spiritual traditions together with music to take listeners on a journey around the world and through the ages.Ellen Kushner grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and studied anthropology and the arts at Bryn Mawr College and Barnard College. She worked as a fiction editor for New York publishing houses and later as a freelancer. She relocated to Boston and joined WGBH Radio in 1987, creating an eclectic music mix for NightAir, keeping overnight audiences entertained with an unusual blend of classical and contemporary music. On Sunday afternoons she hosted Caravan, a mix of folk and world music. Ellen's national radio debut came when she was cast as the irreverent host of the Nakamichi International Music Series of classical concert music. Ellen then created three award-winning Jewish radio specials for PRI that quickly became listener favorites.
In April 1996, Ellen and her team first launched Sound & Spirit on the national airwaves. Produced at WGBH in Boston, and distributed by PRI, Sound & Spirit airs on over 100 stations, and has won awards for its excellence in writing, content and production.
Kushner is also a highly praised fiction writer. Her first novel, Swordspoint, is considered the progenitor of the "mannerpunk" school of fantasy. It was followed by Thomas the Rhymer, winner of the Mythopoeic and the World Fantasy Awards, and The Fall of the Kings (co-written with Delia Sherman). Her new novel, The Privilege of the Sword, was published by Bantam Books in Summer 2006. Her work has been translated into Japanese, Spanish, German, French, Russian, Catalan and Latvian.
Ellen Kushner's children's story The Golden Dreydl: A Klezmer "Nutcracker" for Chanukah, which she performs live with Shirim Klezmer Orchestra, is available on CD from Rykodisc. It will be published as a children's book by Charlesbridge Press in Fall 2007.
For Rykodisc she also created the album Welcoming Children Into the World, a collection of music based on the Sound & Spirit show of that name. Her adult performance piece, Esther: the Feast of Masks which was originally created for Sound & Spirit, tours the U.S. in live performance as well.
A popular speaker, Kushner lectures and gives readings around the country at a variety of venues, from synagogue pulpits to speculative fiction conventions. She has taught writing at the prestigious Clarion Writers' Workshop, Odyssey Workshop, and elsewhere. She is a proud member of the Endicott Studio for Mythic Arts, and has served on the board of the Boston Early Music Festival, and is currently Vice President of an organization dedicated to breaking down genre barriers, which she helped to found, the Interstitial Arts Foundation.
Ellen Kushner recently moved to New York City, where she is working on a musical theatre piece (with composer Ben Moore), The Bone Chandelier, based on Jacobean revenge tragedy and nineteenth-century waltzes, a stage show (with Yale Strom and Elizabeth Schwartz) based on Jewish women's history, and a new novel.
Ellen Kushner loves to travel, and considers reading a necessity, not a hobby. She has recently discovered an unexpected passion for gardening, and has always dreamed of being asked to play Hamlet.
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