Joe Bageant

Video of Joe at Brisbane Writers Festival

On his recent tour of Australia, Joe Bageant was interviewed the Australian Broadcasting Company's Steve Austin at the Brisbane Writers Festival. Austin is a great interviewer and quickly got to the heart of Joe's second book, Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir, which has been published in Australia and will soon be available in North America and the UK.

The interview is an hour long and is available in MP4 and WMV video formats. Also available are a short video of highlights of the interview and an MP3 audio format. Click here and look in the left column to choose a format.

Down Under radio interviews with Joe

Joe Bageant is on a two-week tour of Australia and New Zealand where he is talking about his new book, Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir, published by Scribe Publications. The book is a collection of stories from his own background growing up among the gun-owning, uninsured, underemployed white tribes of West Virginia -- the people who according to President Obama "cling to their guns and their religion".

Rainbow Pie will be published by Granta/Portobello in the UK later this year. A date has not yet been set for the US release.

In addition to speaking at book fairs and writers' festivals, Joe has been interviewed by a number of print and broadcast journalists. Below are three radio interviews. For each, follow the link and look for a button to download an MP3 file.

Richard Fidler of ABC Brisbane welcomes Joe back to a second visit to discuss Rainbow Pie. Joe was a guest on this popular radio program two years ago when Deer Hunting with Jesus was published in Australia. Click here.

Joe is interviewed by Kathryn Ryan of Radio New Zealand. Click here.

Annie Warburton of ABC Northern Tasmania interviews Joe. Click here.

-- Ken Smith

Joe's Australia, New Zealand book tour

Joe Bageant will be on a two-week tour of Australia and New Zealand, starting 27 August 2010. He will talk about his new book, Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir, to be released by Scribe Publications in Australia and New Zealand during his tour. At two writers' festivals, Joe will also discuss his first book, Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War.

Here's one of the early reviews of Rainbow Pie: "An amazing read. What Harper Lee had to hide behind fiction to write, Joe Bageant has done straight-up, with all the bones showing. This is a majestic work." -- Bob Kincaid, Head-On Radio Network, "America's Liberal Voice".

Check back to this page for updates.

-- Ken Smith

Joe appears on Australian national TV

Joe Bageant is on a two-week tour of Australia, promoting his book Deer Hunting with Jesus, at the invitation of his Australian publisher, Scribe Publications. One of his many stops was at the Network Ten studios for a great interview on the show 9am with David and Kim.

Network Ten is one of Australia's three major commercial television networks, and owns stations in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. Network affiliates cover most of the rest of country.

Click here to watch the video of Joe's interview by David Reyne and Kim Watkins.

Excerpt from Deer Hunting with Jesus

A six-page excerpt from Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War is available in PDF format  and can be downloaded from ColdType.net -- a web site based in Canada that publishes "writing worth reading from around the world". For those who grow tired of reading on a computer screen, all of the writing on ColdType is formatted like a magazine in a PDF file that you can send to your printer. Click here for the link to the excerpt from Joe Bageant's book.

But, don't stop with the book excerpt. There is much else well worth reading at ColdType. Some four dozen of Joe's online essays are available in PDF format -- click here. And, this month's 80-page ColdType Reader is in two sections. The first section Our covers subjects that include the funding of sports stadiums, crimes of the CIA, failings of the media, apartheid states, immigration, Michael Moore, Neo-cons, Conrad Black and Canada’s uppity girls, bloggers, trench liberals, eco-junk and much more. Contributors include some of the best writers in the world. The 14-page second section features insightful interviews with three of ColdType's favourite contributors: Joe Bageant, William Blum and Norman Solomon.

ColdType.net is produced by Tony Sutton, a gifted newspaper designer. "Although I appreciate the reach of the Internet, I'm not too keen on its limited formatting," Sutton says. "And, like many other internet readers, I still like to print out stuff, read it and file it -- holding a publication in your hands and turning pages is so much more fun than reading on a computer monitor. The great thing about the PDF format is that it allows me to publish without having the hassles of advertising or subscriptions or print runs or returns or paying printing bills and postage -- or making a profit! And I think there’s something respectful in presenting great journalism in a manner that avoids the generic blandness of HTML, making it instead enticing, unique, readable."

-- Ken Smith, webmaster

Publisher's press release on Joe's book

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Crown Publishing, a division of Random House

A fascinating look at why small town America
is on the brink of catastrophe

DEER HUNTING WITH JESUS
Dispatches from America’s Class War

By Joe Bageant

"Bageant mixes a reporter’s keen analysis, a storyteller’s color, and a native son’s love of his roots in this absorbing dissection of America’s poor. A wise, tender, and acerbic look at life among America’s working poor." —Booklist

Joe Bageant speaks in Philadelphia

As the guest of Prof. Linh Dinh, of the University of Pennsylvania, Joe Bageant will speak in Philadelphia next Tuesday. The event is free and open to the public. Here is an email announcement sent by Prof. Dinh:

The Gonzo Laptop Truth Machine:
Becoming an authentic and dangerous writer

A raucous evening of storytelling and political commentary with Joe Bageant, author of Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War, to be released by Random House Crown in June, 2007.  By turns brutal, tender, incendiary, and seriously funny, his online columns at (www.joebageant.com) have made him a cult hero among gonzo journalism junkies and progressives. Bageant's fans include Studs Terkel, who says "Joe Bageant's writing has the power of an old-time Scottish Border ballad. It is maddening and provocative," and that "Bageant's writing is as lyrical as Nelson Algren's, and if there's a semblance of hope, it's that he catches on with new readers thanks to the alternative media." Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States says, "Joe Bageant is a brilliant writer. He evokes working class America like no one else."

Tuesday, April 3, 2007, from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm in the Arts Café, with an introduction by Linh Dinh, CPCW Fellow in Poetics and Poetic Practice.

Location: Kelly Writers House
3805 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Joe Bageant’s book available on Amazon

Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches From America’s Class War

Well my friends, lo and bediddle, I woke up to this morning to an email from my friend Nancy informing me that my book is now offered for presale on Amazon.com. So I guess it’s OK to talk a little more about it than I have previously, not wanting to inadvertently screw up those mysterious processes by which book publishers and marketers and other slick folks up there in the Big Tater do their thing, and also not wanting toot my own horn in a more embarrassing manner than I already do at times.

Cover drawing for my upcoming book

Here is the dust jacket drawing for my book, Drink, Pray, Fight and Fuck, to be published next year by Crown, a division of Random House. The artist is Mike Caplanis, who has been called one of America's finest caricaturists. Mike says: "If I'm so good why am I so broke? CALL ME!" Mike is represented by Joan Sigman of the Newborn Group in New York. (212) 989-4600. One of these days I'd like to do a ripping gonzo book on America with Mike as my Ralph Steadman. We shall see.

Publisher's announcement about my book

Publisher's Marketplace, May 2005:

Rachel Klayman has gotten in on the class act. The Crown editor has bought the primevally titled DRINK, PRAY, FIGHT, FUCK: Dispatches from America's Class Wars, which blogger Joe Bageant fills with observations and tales of how most Americans really spend their lives. The love-child of Barbara Ehrenreich and Hunter Thompson is how Klayman describes the voice.

Publisher's Weekly:

Gonzo web columnist Joe Bageant's DRINK, PRAY, FIGHT, F -- K: Dispatches from America's Class Wars, about the parallel world of working class America today, focused on Winchester, Virginia, taking us from the local Rubbermaid plant to the "Christian madrassas" to karaoke night at the local tavern, and challenging the left to get to know their working class brethren, all in a funny, furious, blunt voice that evokes Hunter S. Thompson, to Rachel Klayman at Crown, by Daniel Greenberg at Levine Greenberg Literary Agency (world).