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Poet and novelist Liz Kay joins me six years after her first appearance on Lives. We spoke again as she publishes Fallout, a novel rooted in the military world of her own childhood. Our conversation moves through memory, mothers and daughters, gender and power, and what writing can reveal when we return to the past with different eyes. Liz Kay is the author of the novel Monsters: A Love Story, the poetry collection The Witch Tells the Story and Makes It True, and other poetry and literary work. When Kay joined me on Lives in 2020, we talked about writing, poetry and publishing, as well as gender, power, and the childhood that took her from one military posting to another as the daughter of an Army officer and nuclear security expert. That childhood now provides the world for her new novel, Fallout, set among American military families in West Germany in 1985.

Alex McKiernan of Robinette Farms returns for the second part of our conversation, recorded in a field on his farm near Lincoln, Nebraska. In part one (Lives show S3E172) we explored Alex's relationship with the land, how he and his wife Chloe came to farming, and their efforts to build a business that reflects their values. This second part of our conversation takes a different turn. In 2014, just four years into their farming enterprise and with three very young children, Alex was involved in a devastating car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. An accomplished rock climber, arborist, athlete, and farmer, Alex suddenly faced a future in which many of the physical abilities central to his identity were uncertain. We talk about his recovery, his remarkable return to climbing, and how his experiences have shaped his understanding of loss, identity, and the possibility of finding meaning in circumstances we cannot control.

Alex McKiernan, co-owner with his wife Chloe Diegel of Robinette Farms near Lincoln, Nebraska, invited me to join him in a field, surrounded by birds, grasses, and the occasional passing rain shower. We explored what it means to build a life connected to the land. This is the first of two conversations, in which McKiernan talks about food, farming, and the challenges of reconciling what we value with what it takes to earn a living. In the following episode, dropping next week, our conversation takes a deeply personal turn as McKiernan describes a car accident that left him paralyzed, his long recovery, and how the experience challenged his understanding of who he was. We also discuss his extraordinary return to rock climbing, and what he has learned about loss, acceptance, and being present in the world.

Amanda McGill Johnson is a former journalist and Nebraska state senator, current Millard School Board member, and executive director of Nebraska Cures. She talks about entering public life at 26, learning to collaborate across differences, what we mean by the common good, and how loss and life experience have changed her understanding of expectations, control, and living well. Amanda McGill Johnson studied broadcasting and political science at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln before beginning her career as a television reporter. Her interest in politics eventually moved her from covering public life to participating in it. At 26, she ran for Nebraska’s nonpartisan Legislature and won, serving two terms from 2007 to 2015. McGill Johnson’s work since then has included child welfare and anti-human-trafficking advocacy, congressional service, science and health policy, and public education. She is executive director of Nebraska Cures, co-director of Nebraska Women in STEM, and serves on the Millard Public Schools Board of Education. She is also the author of The Unicameral and You: Collaborating for the Common Good in Nebraska’s Capitol.

Stacy Jolley's life has taken her from theater to motherhood, community volunteering, elected office, and back to the stage as creator of Advice Night. We talk about choosing public life, being needed, changing identities, and what other people’s questions can tell us about the times in which we live and about herself. Stacy Jolley is a longtime community volunteer and elected member of the Millard Public Schools Board of Education. She also works several part-time jobs, including as a standardized patient helping train future healthcare professionals. More recently, she has returned to another early interest—performance—as the creator and host of Advice Night, a live show mixing humor, conversation, and the dilemmas people bring from their everyday lives.

Susan Swenson's life includes being an athlete, coach, mother, Christian, entrepreneur, and wellness practitioner. She has lived through both achievement and profound physical adversity. She talks about the accident that changed her life, the long road of recovery, her faith, and who we can become when familiar roles and abilities are taken away. Susan Swenson’s life was dramatically altered by a serious car accident. Her long recovery from traumatic brain injury, neurological damage, and cancer deepened her Christian faith and eventually led her to establish PEMF Nebraska. Swenson’s story is one of athletic discipline, family, faith, suffering, healing, and an evolving sense of purpose.

Sofia Valle is a music therapist who works with older adults and people in hospice care. She talks about the family and faith that shaped her, what music can offer when words or medicine are not enough, and how she finds connection, comfort, and moments of joy alongside illness, grief, and death. Valle also performs a couple of songs for us live in the studio. Valle is a board-certified music therapist who uses music to create connection, comfort, and expression, particularly for older adults and people nearing the end of life. Inspired in part by her close relationship with her grandmother, she has helped expand music therapy across Omaha, developing programs for Immanuel Communities and Suncrest Hospice. She now works with the Holistic Hearts Foundation, bringing person-centered music therapy to individuals and families throughout the community.

Amy Haddad's career has crossed nursing, healthcare ethics, education, poetry, and publishing. In the show, she talks about caring for patients, navigating choices without easy answers, and finding in poetry another way to attend to the human experience. Haddad also reads some of her own poems for us. Amy Haddad is a nurse, educator, bioethicist, poet, and publisher. She taught nurses and pharmacists at Creighton University for more than three decades and served as director of its Center for Health Policy and Ethics. A nationally recognized leader in healthcare ethics, she later completed an MFA in creative writing, has been published in various literary journals, authored two chapbooks and the poetry collection titled An Otherwise Healthy Woman, and became owner and publisher of Ex Ophidia Press. Her life and work connect care, moral inquiry, creativity, and the responsibility of helping others find their voice and grow.

Artist and educator Tim Guthrie talks about surviving grief, facing mortality, loving again, and living with a changed relationship to art. Along the way, the conversation becomes less about legacy and more about the small, human moments that make being alive feel like enough. Tim Guthrie is an Omaha-based multimedia visual artist filmmaker and professor at Creighton University where he holds the Joella Cohen Endowed Chair in Journalism. Working across drawing painting sculpture film digital fabrication and new media, Guthrie explores themes of truth, grief, memory, politics, and social justice. His films and visual art have received numerous national and international awards and his work has been presented around the world from TEDxOmaha to the Sorbonne in Paris. Guthrie previously appeared as a guest on the show in 2018. When he joined me then, we explored many of his artistic and other projects, including Extraordinary Rendition and the Museum of Alternative History. Having talked then about what Guthrie makes, this week’s show spends more time exploring whether he still believes art can do what he once hoped, what life has made of him, and a changed understanding of a satisfying life.

Susan Thomas talks about leaving small town Nebraska, for a much wider world, only to find that the road out eventually looped back. Her story carries her from Decatur to Harvard, Wall Street to China, and eventually back to Omaha. We talk about ambition, travel, adoption, and family, and what it means to choose a place again after leaving it behind. Susan Thomas grew up in Decatur, Nebraska, and studied at Macalester College, Vassar, and Harvard before building a career that took her to Wall Street. She and her husband adopted two daughters from China, then made the choice to return to Nebraska where Thomas dedicated herself to nonprofit and community endeavors. Her story includes family, career, adoption, travel, and a commitment to local and global community.

Julie Masters is a professor at the University of Nebraska and her work centers on gerontology, caregiving, and death education. We talk about why aging is not someone else’s story, but the human story waiting for all of us. Her perspective helps us think more honestly about time, dependence, wisdom, and the communities we need as we grow older. Julie Masters, PhD is a professor of gerontology at the University of Nebraska Omaha and holds the distinguished Terry Haney Chair of Gerontology. As a department with a statewide mandate, Julie teaches courses in gerontology and death and dying on the UNL campus, something she has done since 2000. In addition to teaching, Masters engages in research on end-of-life planning, older adults and their sense of meaning, and the role of gerontology and geriatric programming in the US. Masters is active in the community serving on various advisory committees and boards focused on aging adults and is a frequent presenter on aging issues and end-of-life planning throughout Nebraska.

Anastasiia Solianyk, a refugee from Ukraine, talks about the grief of losing the life she imagined, and the courage of building a new one with her family in Nebraska. Hers is a story not only of survival, but of how people carry memory, protect hope, and look for steadiness and community when the ground keeps shifting. Solianyk was born and raised in Ukraine and moved to the United States with her family in 2022. Her experience of displacement began much earlier, in 2014, when she had to leave her hometown in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. Eight years later, after Russia’s full-scale invasion, Solianyk and her husband and daughter were forced to leave Ukraine and begin again in America. Professionally, she works in manufacturing quality and has more than ten years of experience in the metallurgical and automotive industries. Outside of work, she enjoys playing piano and painting, and much of her life today is devoted to supporting her young daughter’s figure skating journey. Now living in Nebraska, Solianyk brings a story of resilience, adaptation, family, creativity, and the difficult work of building a future after losing home more than once.

Artist Laurie Victor Kay talks about her art and the life behind the work. Laurie has built a remarkable career as a photographer and multidisciplinary artist, but her work has turned toward the more personal terrain of anxiety, medication, surgery, grief, healing, and the courage to explore these deeply human experiences. Laurie Victor Kay is a multidisciplinary artist based in Omaha whose work moves across photography, painting, video, installation, and digital media. She has built a long creative career that includes fine art, public installations, professional photography, and collaborations with major clients and institutions. Trained at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago, Laurie has built a wide-ranging creative life with clients and collaborators including Nike, The New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Jim Thompson Thai Silk Company, and Desmalter Paris. Her work can be found in permanent installations at UNMC, the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center, 4 World Trade Center, and other public and private collections. Laurie’s more recent work has also become deeply personal. Through projects such as PATHOS, Apothecary, and Artist Hands as Instrument, she explores vulnerability, mental health, physical pain, grief, beauty, resilience, and the strange ways art can help us make sense of what we are going through.

Omaha-based artist Susan Knight's paper works and installations move through science, data, memory, and feeling. Her intricate cut-paper works are inspired by water and explore the deep currents of nature and the emotional force of environmental change. A painter, paper, and installation artist, Knight's work explores the intersections of art, science, nature, and environmental change. A Michigan native, Knight has exhibited nationally and internationally, with work shown in China, Ireland, Italy, Canada, and across the United States. Her art has been featured in Sci Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, Smithsonian Online Magazine, and Illuminations: Poems Inspired by Science. A recipient of a Nebraska Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, Knight has also held residencies with Colorado Art Ranch/The Nature Conservancy, Ragdale, and the International School of Art in Italy. She earned her BFA from Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. ************************* Today's show and others are supported by the generous membership of Amy and Tom Trenolone. *Bonus content* for Lives members only features exclusive content and more. Find a Lives membership tier that fits you - support link here.

Becky Korinek is a former teacher, patient advocate, writer, and lifelong learner whose life has been shaped by resilience, humor, and curiosity. In the show, Korinek talks about life as a teacher and what chronic illness and recovery taught her, and why creativity, play, and new beginnings matter in every season of life. After a thirty-year career in education, Korinek now serves as Director of Business Development for Outreach Patient Advocates in Omaha, where her work is informed by a lifetime as a patient herself, from severe childhood asthma to recovery from major back surgery. Korinek is also a reader, writer, artist, improviser, and lifelong learner who has described this chapter of life as her “next great adventure.” ************************* Today's show and others are supported by the generous membership of Amy and Tom Trenolone. *Bonus content* for Lives members only features exclusive content and more. Find a Lives membership tier that fits you - support link here.