Kaatscast: the Catskills Podcast

Books Episodes

Oct. 24, 2023

Bill Abranowicz Turns His Lens on the Catskills

Bill Abranowicz is a renowned photographer who started snapping pictures 50 years ago. Bill's career has taken him around the globe many times over, taking pictures for the likes of Condé Nast Traveler , The New York Times Ma...

Episode page
June 20, 2023

Uncharted: Kim Brown Seely's Epic Adventures Sailing ... and Narratin…

Silver Hollow Audio had the honor of recording –– and this month, publishing –– the audiobook version of Kim Brown Seely's Uncharted: A Couple's Empty-Nest Adventure Sailing from One Life to Another . Faced with an empty nest...

Episode page
Jan. 31, 2023

Catskills Thrillers: Reading Along with Kelli Huggins

Washington Irving was an early author to set his fictional tale in the Catskills, but he certainly wasn't the last. If Rip Van Winkle were alive today, he'd have no shortage of contemporary Catskills suspense stories to help ...

Episode page
Dec. 20, 2022

Sea Lion Training in ... Kingston! The Tale of Sharkey and "Seal Coll…

Just off the Kingston traffic circle, you'll find a couple of gas stations, a used car dealer, and a drive-through vegetarian burger joint. But in the 1940s, this was the site of "Seal College," a training facility for some o...

Episode page
Oct. 25, 2022

Women and the Vote: an Interview with Catskills Novelist Violet Snow

Catskills writer Violet Snow is the author of To March or to Marry , an historical novel about the lengthy fight for a woman's right to vote, both here in New York, and nationally. As we prepare to cast our …

Episode page
July 19, 2022

Protecting What You Love: with Author/Angler Stephen Sautner

Stephen Sautner is a lifelong fisherman, environmental activist, and the author of several books on those topics. And while his passion for fishing has taken him to the Falkland Islands, Cuba, the Zambezi River, and even ... ...

Episode page
April 26, 2022

Post-Hibernation with Leslie T. Sharpe

In 2020, Leslie T. Sharpe came to Silver Hollow Audio to narrate The Quarry Fox: and other Critters of the Wild Catskills , available at Libro.fm or wherever you get your audiobooks. Then the pandemic hit. Two years later, sh...

Episode page
April 12, 2022

The Bluebird Chronicles: A Catskills Romance

The winter/spring 2022 issue of Appalachia , "America's longest-running journal of mountaineering and conservation," features an essay by Catskills writer Leslie T. Sharpe about our little blue harbinger of spring: the bluebi...

Episode page
Oct. 26, 2021

Reimagining a Classic Catskills Ghost Story

This week, we spoke with author Christine Wade about her retelling of a classic Catskills ghost story. In 1819 Washington Irving published his tale of Rip Van Winkle , who wanders off into the woods to escape his nagging wife...

Episode page
March 2, 2021

Writers in the Mountains

This week, we're joined by 4 Catskills writers, teachers, and board members of Writers in the Mountains , a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide a nurturing environment for the practice, appreciation and sharin...

Episode page
Jan. 5, 2021

Reservoir Year: A Walker's Book of Days

Happy New Year! This week's podcast is a celebration of our annual spin around the sun, and a book by local author Nina Shengold on her 365-day walk along the Ashokan Reservoir. On the eve of her 60th birthday, she …

Episode page
Nov. 10, 2020

Emerson's Uses of Great Men

American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century, a literary, philosophical and spiritual movement with a belief in humanity's fundamental goodness; and a reverence for self-rel...

Episode page
Oct. 13, 2020

Fall in the Catskills and Thoreau's "Autumnal Tints"

It’s fall in the Catskills, with that too-brief splash of color that draws leaf peepers near and far. In 1862, as famed naturalist Henry David Thoreau lay dying from tuberculosis, he wrote an essay entitled "Autumnal Tints," ...

Episode page
July 21, 2020

The Land of Little Rain

First published in 1903, The Land of Little Rain is Mary Austin’s classic homage to the American Southwest. Her collection of short stories and essays takes listeners on an enchanted journey through Death Valley, the High Sie...

Episode page
June 23, 2020

The Quarry Fox: and Other Critters of the Wild Catskills

In The Quarry Fox , Leslie T. Sharpe chronicles the seasons and the vibrant wildlife of a landscape she cherishes, offering her keen insights in an engaging narrative that celebrates the splendor of the natural world. From cr...

Episode page