Episode 16: A Walk in the Park and the Small Matter of Trying to Change the World - Dr Denny Taylor

New York Welsh

Dr Denny Taylor is an author, researcher and educator living in New York City. She has published 19 books—fiction and nonfiction—and is a co-founder of Garn Press, a publishing house with a focus on social conscience. Denny is widely credited with giving rise to family literacy, a concept UNESCO uses today as an organizing principle for supporting vulnerable populations all over the world.
In 2004, she was elected Member of the International Reading Association’s Reading Hall of Fame and has been nominated for a number of prestigious awards, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1997 and, most recently, the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize.
On this episode, Gideon and Richard talk to Denny about her work in Family Literacy, her involvement with UN, and a number of the major issues facing society today relating to education, technology, and climate change. They also discuss two of Denny’s books; ‘Rosie’s Umbrella’, a book inspired by Denny and her mother’s own experiences of life in the Welsh mining towns of the early 20th century, and ‘Split Second Solution’, a dystopian tale set in NYC in 2022 that foreshadows the rise of Trump, the 'me-too' movement, and the wide mis-application of artificial intelligence.