Welcome to Cadence, from Shannon Henry Kleiber

Hello, and welcome to Cadence – On Writing & Sound. Here, we’ll talk about books, poetry, audio, writing craft and everything literary. The newsletter is just getting started, and it will evolve with our new community of readers and writers.

If you’ve found me here, you might know some of my background and interests I’ll bring to this place. For many years I studied poetry and literature and worked for literary magazines in Boston. Then I became a journalist, and was a staff writer and columnist for The Washington Post, covering technology culture. My first book, “The Dinner Club,” is about the rise and fall of the dot com era. I’ve written for many other newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Washington Technology and American Banker. My interest in all things food took me into writing for Edible Madison and running a community with my best high school friend, called Cooking With Friends. My second book, "On My Honor,” is about the woman who founded the Girl Scouts, Juliette Gordon Low.

A deep love of public radio and the intimacy of the human voice after working for NPR in my 20s brought me back to audio, and for nearly eight years I’ve been a producer and interviewer for the national public radio show “To the Best of Our Knowledge.” I have been thrilled to interview many writers including Roz Chast, Bernardine Evaristo, Pico Iyer, Alice Walker, Lydia Millet, and Maggie O’Farrell. Our show is being “sunset” after an incredible 35 year run, and now I’m working as an independent creator, on projects you’ll hear about in this space. I’m in Madison, Wisconsin, but I’ll write from other places, maybe about some local bookstores I visit or book or music festivals, or literary experiences I don’t even know about yet.

I hope you’ll let me know what you’d like to read and that the “Cadence” of this newsletter will give you a pause from the everyday, a bit of inspiration or whimsy or insight, and more connection that we all need in this world.

– Shannon