Welcome to a new season of the award-winning Hill Country Authors Podcast, sponsored by Stoney Creek Publishing. In this podcast, Hill Country resident Tom Fox visits with authors who live in and write about the Texas Hill Country. Host Tom Fox welcomes journalist and author Carol Williams to discuss her career as a foreign correspondent and her historical fiction trilogy beginning with Dispatches from Moscow.
Carol recounts reporting for the Associated Press in the 1980s as Gorbachev pursued reforms and arms control, describing a “missed opportunity” for deeper U.S.-Soviet collaboration amid debates over Reagan’s Star Wars and the INF agreement, and noting Margaret Thatcher’s early support for engaging Gorbachev. She covers subsequent assignments in West Germany before the Berlin Wall fell, the Eastern European revolutions, and the Yugoslav wars, later returning to Moscow for the LA Times. Carol explains why she chose fiction over memoir, her “pantser” writing style, and how real reporting experiences inform plot. She outlines the trilogy’s phases: Moscow reforms, Berlin’s fall (Dispatches from Berlin: Walls and Secrets), and the Balkan wars (Dispatches from Sarajevo).
Key highlights:
- Career as Foreign Correspondent
- Why Write Dispatches
- Reporting Gorbachev Era Moscow
- From History to Fiction
- Writing Process and Style
- Trilogy Structure Berlin Wall
Resources:
Carol Williams on Stoney Creek Publishing
Podcast Cover Art
Tom Fox