Journalist Katherine Seligman Tackles Homelessness in Debut Novel, 'At The Edge Of The Haight'

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KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 17 February 2021

⏱️ 21 minutes

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Summary

Katherine Seligman's debut novel, "At the Edge of the Haight" tells the story of Maddy, a young homeless woman living in San Francisco who is caught up in a murder mystery. As a journalist and a long-time resident of Haight-Ashbury, Seligman has witnessed the dehumanizing effects of homelessness up close. Her book, which is the winner of the PEN/Bellwether prize, has been praised as a work that "makes alive and visible the lives of people we often walk past, sometimes as quickly as we can." Seligman joins us to talk about her new novel, her transition from reporter to fiction writer, and what it takes to tell the stories of people who often feel invisible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Support for Forum comes from Rancho LaPuerta, a health resort with 85 years of wellness experience, providing summer vacations centered on well-being. Special rates on three-and-four-night August vacations include sunrise hikes, water classes, yoga, and spa therapies, all set in a backdrop of a dreamy summer sky. A six-acre organic garden provides fresh fruits and vegetables daily.
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0:42.7	From KQED.
0:45.3	And welcome back to Forum.
0:46.5	I'm Scott Schaefer.
0:47.4	And for the rest of the hour, we're moving from the reality of homelessness to a fictional
0:51.5	account of it.
0:53.0	In her new novel, Living on the Edge of the Hate,
0:55.6	writer Catherine Seligman takes readers deep into the world of homelessness, told to the eyes
1:00.5	of a group of mostly young street people, including the book's narrator Maddie Dinaldo,
1:05.3	who by chance witnesses the murder of a homeless young man in Golden Gate Park. The book won
1:10.5	the Penn Bellwether Prize
1:12.0	for socially engaged fiction.
1:14.2	And Catherine Sullivan joins us now to talk about it.
	...

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