Public Radio

21st Show: Illinois Public Radio: Filmmaker and journalist team up on new crime thriller novel set in Illinois

Posted in Interview/Review, Public Radio, Writing Samples by Jeff Biggers / December 3, 2024 / Comments Off on 21st Show: Illinois Public Radio: Filmmaker and journalist team up on new crime thriller novel set in Illinois

"Disturbing the Bones” is the name of a new novel set in Illinois. It’s part crime story and part geopolitical thriller. The book is a collaboration between film director Andrew Davis and journalist Jeff Biggers.
 
Both men are sons of Illinois. Davis was raised in Chicago, and went on to direct big Hollywood films such as “The Fugitive,” “Under Siege,” and “Holes.” Along the way he worked with luminaries such as Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones, Kneau Reeves and Morgan Freeman, and Michael Douglas and Gwynyth Paltrow, and others. Jeff Biggers is also from Illinois — though at the opposite end of the state. He’s written at least 10 books, including “Resistance: Reclaiming an American Tradition,” and “Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland.”

Davies and Biggers discuss their experience working together and how "Disturbing the Bones" came into fruition on the 21st today.

Full story: https://will.illinois.edu/21stshow/story/filmmaker-and-journalist-team-up-on-new-crime-thriller-novel-set-in-illinois

In Sardinia in New York: Italics CUNY TV Program

Posted in Interview/Review, Public Radio, Video, Writing Samples by Jeff Biggers / August 19, 2024 / Comments Off on In Sardinia in New York: Italics CUNY TV Program

In our upcoming episode, we visit The Center at West Park’s Sanctuary Space for the concert and performance “In Sardinia in New York”. The event features the Polyphonic Pauliccu Mossa Choir Of Bonorva, Sardinia, along with American playwright and journalist Jeff Biggers, known for his book “In Sardinia”. Before the performance we talked to curator and creative producer from Sardinia, Valeria Orani and to Jeff Biggers

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Bologna Underground: Italy

Posted in Public Radio, Public Radio by Jeff Biggers / July 23, 2001 / 0 Comments

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What started out as a simple Sunday outing in hills of Bologna, Italy, turned into an underworld of discovery for Jeff Biggers. He recently traveled to Bologna, the home of the famous Garisenda Tower and the medieval porticos that ring the city historic center. If you looked closely at the base of the leaning tower or the Santo Stefano complex, you'd find carvings in gypsum, quarried from the nearby hills. But Jeff didn't stay on the city streets. Continue reading →

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Down in Eagle Creek

Posted in NPR, Public Radio by Jeff Biggers / January 23, 2001 / 0 Comments

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Last year, in the Sierra Madre canyons in Mexico, I labored in the corn fields with a Tarahumara Indian, as part of a travel story. After weeding the fields, I returned to our cabin to read a letter from my Uncle Richard in Kentucky.

Our family homestead, down in southern Illinois, was gone. The old pond, the four plum trees, the corn fields, and the 200-year-old log cabin, were all buried in a crater, two hundred feet deep. A coal mining company had bought the hollow where my mother's family had lived for two centuries and blasted away our home. Continue reading →

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Spoon River Valley: Stirring the Ghosts of Edgar Lee Masters

Posted in Public Radio, Public Radio by Jeff Biggers / July 23, 2000 / 0 Comments

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Traveling into the past can be a haunting experience. We never know what we'll find lurking behind the ruins and old monuments, or even the pages of an old book. For Jeff Biggers, traveling through the Spoon River Valley in rural Illinois, the ghosts of the past came alive, just as they did in the celebrated Spoon River Anthology. Continue reading →

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De Gullah Roots Tour

Posted in Public Radio, Public Radio by Jeff Biggers / July 23, 2000 / 0 Comments

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Beyond the glittering tourist resorts, golf courses, and gated communities in the famed Sea Islands, a dense forest hems the marshes and fields that wind around the islands like the back warrens into another world. This is the world of the Gullah/Geechee people, the descendants of the slaves from the west African "rice coast" who developed and worked the indigo, rice and cotton plantations in the American colonies. Jeff Biggers recently traveled to St. Helena, an island off the coast of South Carolina, in search of the greater Sea Island experience today... Read transcript →