Don Photo Gallery
HERE
Don’s Houses
Where I’ve lived
HERE
edited and with an introduction by
S.T. Joshi
Amazon
Hippocampus Press
[Don Swaim's] ...writing is elegiac at points, sardonic at others, and -- for fans of his supernatural fiction -- often gripping with terror. -- Oldstyle Tales Press
Sandra Carey Cody Interviews Don Swaim about The Assassination on Ambrose Bierce: A Love Story on her blog: Birth of a Novel
The Society of Illustrators in New York has honored artist Jared Boggess for his striking Ambrose Bierce cover.
BIERCE MYSTERY REVIEWED
Read Chris Opfer's article on the disappearance of Ambrose Bierce in the online magazine How Stuff Works. Don Swaim was interviewed for this article. Access HERE.
Five Questions About Ambrose Bierce
Don Swaim is questioned by Boston literary magazine
DaRK PaRTY ReVIEW. HERE
DECOPUNK FROM MONTAG PRESS Don Swaim's Man With Two Faces is described as "a Depression era superhero radio serial." In the Great Depression, a soldier of fortune, diamond thief, and rum runner turned vigilante annihilates hit men, kidnappers, mobsters, blackmailers, Chinese tongs, spies, and Nazis. Celluloid glamour and radio riches clash with the Dust Bowl and Hoovervilles as Tokoloshe and his Amazonian-bred, blowgun-wielding sidekick Diana fight for truth and justice.
"Don Swaim writes with such bravura assurance and rollicking good humor that the readers are carried along from beginning to end with little chance--or desire--to catch their breaths." -- S.T. Joshi, leading scholar of weird fiction
Interview with Don about Man With Two Faces in the Bucks County (PA) Herald.
Read here
"Decopunk and Self-Reflection," Don's essay on how Man With Two Faces sprang from its literary cocoon can be read on Sandra Carey Cody's blog:
Birth of a Novel
FROM ERRATA PRESS
 Satirical echoes of Lovecraft, Bierce, and Poe permeate this alt-universe hallucinatory world of 1964 in which JFK survives, Cuba occupies the Gulf Coast, the East and West coasts of America have been destroyed, and Wichita, Kansas, is now capital of the US. A reluctant Kansan advertising exec, tasked with orders to assassinate Norman Mailer, crosses the no-man's land of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio while combating zombies, deadly halflings, gun molls, gunslingers, and canal-boat pirates. AMAZON.COM .
"Amazing imagery ... It is, in short, a hoot."
"A brilliant satire. Unusually perceptive."
"Outrageous sendup. A freakin' literary romp."
BACK IN PRINT!
 Don Swaim's H.L. Mencken Murder Case, originally published by St. Martin's Press, returns to print as a trade paperback through the Authors Guild Backinprint program. Available at amazon.com. $12.95. "...there's a dusty-attic charm to Mr. Swaim's fond evocation of bookshops past, and he couldn't have enticed a livelier ghost than Mencken to haunt them." --The New York Times Sunday Book Review
FOR FANS (& ENEMIES) OF STEAMPUNK
 Inspired by Rudyard Kipling's poetry, Woodrow D'Urberville, his stunning companion Angelina Jekyl, and their mentor, the dirigible-residing Professor Emory, set out to save the world -- starting with the rescue of Oscar Wilde from Reading Gaol. Every Steampunk weapon, mode of transportation, piece of clothing, and cliché is utilized in Don Swaim's more than 11,000-word send-up of the genre. Illustrated by the author. SPECIAL: As an introductory offer, Steampunk Electroblaster Romance is on sale for 99-cents -- yes, 99¢! CLICK to buy.
LITERATURE FOR A
TROUBLED TIME NOW IN PRINT. Covid-19: The Pandemic Project, eighteen stories by Don Swaim and members of the Bucks County Writers Workshop about the pandemic: humor, narratives, fiction, essays, poetry, satire, photography. Buy HERE.
THE YELLOW BOOKE Vol 6
 The latest edition of the annual collection of original weird stories published by Oldstyle Tales Press includes Don Swaim's Poe-influenced short story, "Dank Tarn of Auber," about a kid who grows up to become the first zombie mayor of Wichita, Kansas. Trade paperback at: Amazon.com. It can be read for free online at the Oldstyle Tales Press website
THE YELLOW BOOKE Vol 1
 Oldstyle Tales Press has published its first anthology of original weird tales: The Yellow Booke. Don Swaim's short story, "The Barrier," about a posse of nits crossing the no man's land between two human eyebrows to rescue a kidnapped female nit, is part of the collection. Trade paperback at: Amazon.com. It can be read for free online at the Oldstyle Tales Press website
edited by C. G. BauerDon Swaim's ghost story "Levin" is in this second volume of Bauer's ebook anthology series Crappy Shorts, which ain't crappy at all. HERE
DEFINITIVE INTERVIEW
Don Swaim's exhaustive interview with S.T. Joshi, the world's leading authority on Lovecraft, Bierce, sci-fi, horror, and weird fiction in general. READ
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AMBROSE BIERCE ALLEY
Bierce's San Francisco. Photo-essay by Don Swaim
HERE
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archy, mehitabel & james whitcomb riley
meditation by don swaim
read
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FIRST PRINTED BOOK IN THE AMERICAS
Gabriel Fernandez Ledesma, artist Rare woodcut found at a flea market in New Jersey led to this illustrated essay by Don Swaim. READ
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Don Swaim
An imagining by K.A. Silva
click to enlarge
| the AMBROSE
BIERCE site |
WCBS Newsradio 88
Appreciation Site
The Swaim in History
The Swaim in America
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SPRING/SUMMER 2022 ISSUE
Neshaminy is a historical and literary journal, with fiction, non-fiction, memoir, poetry, and art. Published twice a year. Publisher: Stu Abramson; Executive Editor: Don Swaim; Managing Editor: William Donahue. Neshaminy's website
HERE
PBS39, Allentown/Bethlehem, covered the Neshaminy inaugural event on August 1, 2019, for local TV, in which Don was interviewed. It can be viewed
HERE
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PREMIER ANTHOLOGY IN PRINT
More than twenty authors, members of the Bucks County Writers Workshop, past and present, have plied their craft into a new showcase anthology, Stolen Verbs, Lawless Nouns. As founding member of the BCWW and executive editor of the anthology, Don worked with managing editor John Schoffstall and associate editors LCW Allingham, Candace Barrett, and Natalie Zellat Dyen to bring this major collection to life. in print & digital
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OHIO UNIVERSITY COMPLETES
DIGITIZING BOOK BEAT
From Neil Romanosky,
Dean of University Libraries:
I am thrilled to share the news that we have completed the digitization of the Don Swaim Collection.
Phase one of the project was completed in January 2018, when the newly digitized Book Beat broadcasts with full transcripts were added to the Libraries' digital collections.
As of December 2019, the previously inaccessible, full-length interviews have been integrated into the Don Swaim Collection. This collection now contains 888 records of audio of interviews and radio broadcasts. Each interview and its resulting Book Beat broadcasts are grouped together and include a full transcriptions of the Book Beat broadcast.
You can review and access the full collection
HERE
Please contact Bill Kimok, University Archivist and Records Manager, with questions and comments.
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Visit us on Facebook
Don Swaim Profile at Ohio University Library
click HERE
BOOK BEAT'S HISTORYBroadcasting was a different world in 1967 when CBS began an all-news radio operation on its 50,000-watt WCBS, New York, flagship of its seven owned-and-operated AM stations. Then, WCBS broadcast a daily book review with contributions from the staff voiced by Dick Reeves. Don Swaim, a former television news editor from Baltimore, contributed regularly to this feature, transcripts of which were distributed to the news media. An excerpt from Swaim's review of an oral biography of Harry S Truman appeared in the New York Post on March 2, 1974:
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By late 1982, Swaim, who had been reporting on books and authors for the station for several years (as well as a contributor to a CBS-FM broadcast, "Crosstalk"), proposed a daily feature, "Book Beat," to which staff members, one of whom was WCBS political reporter Steve Flanders, would contribute. Flanders' sudden death scotched that idea, and Swaim embarked on the five-day-a-week feature alone. The executives in charge were Mike Ludlum and Lou Adler. Its first broadcast was January 3, 1983, with a profile of William Styron. Later, the network's CBS Radio Stations News Service headed by Joe Durso, Jr., made "Book Beat" available nationwide. Over the years, more than 700 writers, famous and unknown, were interviewed. "Book Beat"'s final broadcast was September 9, 1993, with an interview with Ray Bradbury on the 40th anniversary of Farenheit 451.
POSTSCRIPT
There was uncertainty as to how to preserve this remarkable archive. Finally, the raw interviews, all on tape, were acquired by the Telecommunications Center of Ohio University in Athens, which digitized the unedited Book Beat interviews and posted them on its Wired for Books site. The founder of the site, David Kurz, preserved the audio after the site went dark in 2016, even as the Ohio University libraries began re-digitizing the interviews from the original tapes, along with transcripts, a project that took three years to complete.
Ray Bradbury to Don Swaim:
THIS BOOK THING?
To find out what this is about click HERE
Gov Mario Cuomo's Sitting Board
One day in August, 1992, I dashed past a burly man in a suit, a surprised security guy it turned out, and into the 16th floor men's room of the CBS Building. There, at the urinal, was the Governor of New York, Mario Cuomo. As he and I stood next to each other performing our tasks, the governor turned to me, whom he recognized, saying, "We've got to stop meeting like this." From anyone else it would have been a rather lame, modestly funny, joke, but from the Governor of New York...
Cuomo had a bad back and whenever he went to CBS for an interview he sat on a board. One day he left, forgetting his board, abandoned on the seat of his chair. I phoned his flack to say the governor had forgotten his sitting-board, but the flack told me to keep it because he had several of them. On it are his signature and the great seal of New York. So I kept it. I still have the very board on which Governor Cuomo parked his ass, and upon which I now park mine. —DS
click images to enlarge
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Original song lyrics by Don Swaim from
Bright Sun Extinguished: Ode to Norman Mailer:
ON TOP OF
ROMERO
zombie lullabye
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REANIMATION
BABY RAG
don't make a zombie out of me
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Previous postings on Book Beat /Wired for Books:
ARCHIVES #7
2018
HERE
ARCHIVES #6
2017
HERE
ARCHIVES #5
2015-2016
HERE
ARCHIVES #4
2014
HERE
ARCHIVES #3
2013
HERE
ARCHIVES #2
2010-2012
HERE
ARCHIVES #1
2008-2009
HERE
SEARCH
BOOK BEAT, a daily feature about books and writers, was broadcast on WCBS-AM in New York from 1982 through 1993 and syndicated nationally by the CBS Radio Stations News Service (CBS RSNS). Not mere commentary, the broadcasts featured the actual voices of hundreds of prominent writers interviewed by Don Swaim at CBS in New York.
Don
Don at CBS
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Copyright Advice
Permission to use Don's interviews may be obtained from Bill Kimok, University Archivist and Records Manager. 740-593-2696 -- email.
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Some 3000 daily CBS Book Beat radio broadcasts are archived below in chronological order. To find a specific author type the author name in the search box below or browse the listings by year.
DON'S SECRET MUSINGS 1985
click photos to enlarge
Stanley Elkin 4/16/85
"Stan, lemme try to explain something to you about the craft of fiction."
listen
John Irving 5/24/85 "John, now if I'd written 'Garp' I would have ended it this way..."
listen
Jane Ann Phillips 5/21/85 "This gal needs a personal writing tutor, and I'm just the guy."
listen
Paul Theroux 5/27/85 "Paul, you may have gone to Timbuktu, but never to Asbury Park in January."
listen
BOOK "MARKS" TV DEMOS
Two six-minute TV pilots with Don Swaim interviewing humorist Roy Blount, Jr., and novelist Hugh Nissenson for a show taped in 1987 for Walden Books. The project went nowhere, but the demos survive. Click on images below to start the Quicktime movies.
 Roy Blount
Hugh Nissenson
Radio Dreams
A broadcast-journalist’s early career through and including Book Beat—
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