Kathy Gilsinan Author Interview - "The Helpers: Profiles from the Front Lines of the Pandemic"

For my 7th author interview for HEC Media and the St. Louis County Library, I sat down in-studio with writer/journalist for “The Atlantic” and “Politico”, St. Louis based Kathy Gilsinan to talk about her first book “The Helpers: Profiles from the Front Lines of the Pandemic” by W.W. Norton Books.

Her book tells that story via the accounts of six people that she feels went above and beyond the call of duty to try to aid their neighbors, the country and the world during an unprecedentedly difficult time in the nation’s history. She weaves together the stories of a CEO of a small ventilator manufacturer (Chris Kiple), a country crossing paramedic (Paul Cary), a devoted son (Huy Le), a chef and culinary teacher (Nikkia Rhodes), a vaccine researcher (Hamilton Bennett), and an ICU nurse (Michelle Gonzalez) that take place from early 2020 until the first inoculations were being distributed to the whole country and ready to be injected into arms.

While we talked for around one hour in total, I had to whittle the conversation down to fit the 30 minute format. So in this half hour video, you’ll hear in depth about two of the people, find out how the Kathy was able to get the stories, still in the middle of the pandemic, and how her regular reporting beat of international affairs and politics turned into a search for hope and the best in Americans during a very trying time.

What you won’t get to hear is everything about the other four main characters and a few more anecdotes on how she sourced the information. Also left on the cutting room floor is us just talking about how we’re both from St. Louis and have both lived and worked in New York City (and other places around the world) and how that effects how we see and report things.

These cuts happen to EVERY one that’s a writer, radio or TV journalist/reporter, or filmmaker. I always wish I could leave a lot more in, but it’s just not possible. Who knows, I still have the raw footage. I could turn the audio from this and all of my other author interviews into a podcast and then leave in much more than got presented at first for a more time constrained video format. Vamos a ver….

Anyway, as I say in the video, I found it very interesting reading her book and going back in time to an almost forgotten section of the pandemic that we’re all still very much in. Some people might not be ready for a book about the pandemic yet. But if you are, I think you’ll be surprised by how much you’ve forgotten already too.