Kathleen Holt
Coordinator, HPPR Radio Readers Book ClubKathleen Holt has served High Plains Public Radio—in one way or another—since its inception in 1979. Currently “quasi-retired,” she volunteers as Coordinator of the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club. As a former HPPR staff member, Holt worked with a board committee to establish Legacy and Endowed Funds to provide for public radio into the future. Holt’s community development projects have upgraded the signals for many of HPPR’s translators, including KCSE (Prowers County, Colorado) and KONQ established with a partnership with Dodge City Community College to bring full time public radio to the area. “The thing I love best about the book club is re-connecting with many HPPR supporters across the High Plains, while also meeting new public radio friends across the five-state region," Holt says. "It’s not only about friends, but those friends are readers ready to explore the issues we all face living and working in our region.”
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Route 66: Then and Now is included this season as a bonus selection, inviting participation from the Radio Readers community rather than a single guided discussion. Because Route 66 is such an iconic road, many listeners carry their own memories—of family trips, roadside stops, relocations, or return journeys made decades apart. -
Humorist, actor, and social commentator Will Rogers was one of the most recognizable voices of early 20th-century America. A native of Oklahoma and a keen observer of American life, Rogers often traveled Route 66 as it emerged as a national artery. -
Route 66 has legendary status in my family. I’m Kathleen Holt, born, raised and still living in Cimarron, Kansas, but my father’s family made their way from his birthplace in Oklahoma building parts of Route 66 during and after the Dust Bowl, sprinkling aunts, uncles and cousins from the Midwest to California where they made their fortunes building roads. -
In this graphic memoir, artist and writer Shing Yin Khor sets out on a deeply personal journey along Route 66, interrogating what the “American Dream” means for those who have historically been excluded from it. Blending travelogue, history, and memoir, Khor explores roadside attractions, ghost towns, and personal memories while reckoning with identity, racism, and representation. -
In 1926, U.S. Route 66 stitched together small towns, big cities, farms, deserts, dreams, and desperation. Over the next century, the Mother Road became more than pavement—it became a symbol of movement and reinvention, of loss and possibility, of who gets to travel freely and who is pushed to the margins. -
First published in 1939, The Grapes of Wrath remains one of the most enduring novels of the American experience. Steinbeck follows the Joad family as they travel Route 66 from Oklahoma to California, driven west by economic collapse and environmental disaster. -
It's Christmas, and Carol Dickens's life is in major transition. Tune into the two-hour broadcast at one of the two times it'll air during the 2025 holiday season: Sunday, December 21st at 1pm CT, and Thursday, December 25th at 1pm CT -
On Sunday, November 9, 2025, book leaders and contributors from the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club came together in Garden City, KS, for a two-hour, live on-air discussion of the novel, two memoirs, and poetry pop-ups covered with an impressive array of Radio Reader BookBytes this season. -
Gorgeously illustrated by the author’s brother, Billyl, Renkl offers observations on the world surrounding her suburban Nashville home. Ringing with rapture and heartache, these essays convey the dignity of bluebirds and rat snakes, monarch butterflies and native bees. -
This book focuses on Diane Foley's experience as the mother of James Foley, a journalist held captive and murdered by ISIS.
