Calling Crane Publishing | Author Joe McHugh

At Calling Crane Publishing you will find the collective works of Joe and Paula McHugh author, illustrator, husband, and wife. They are dedicated to nourishing the imagination, provoking meaningful dialogue about the complex and often daunting issues of our times, and engendering a spirit of hope and cooperation.

Joe McHugh is a storyteller in the tradition of Mark Twain and Will Rogers. He is also a public radio journalist/producer and a cultural historian with more than thirty-five years of experience helping organizations and communities discover and more effectively tell their own authentic stories.

Paula McHugh is an artist, musician, and designer she has illustrated and designed several books. She also has a series of paintings that explores music, art, and history.

Kilowatt

Set during the final years of the Bush administration, Kilowatt tells the story of Reb Morgan and Alice Carpenter, journalists from a small community radio station in the mountains of northern California, who embark upon a perilous journey into the very heart of corporate America. EnerTex, a Texas-based energy company with close ties to the White House, claims to have discovered a revolutionary process for generating electricity that is both environmentally “clean” and affordable. But they refuse to reveal the details of this new technology under the pretense that to do so would threaten national security.

Coins in the Ashes

In 2002, Joe McHugh, a writer, musician, and award-winning public radio journalist, set out to find the family of an African-American woman named Helen who cared for him when he was a child and who helped his family survive a terrible tragedy. No one remaining in his family, however, knew Helen’s last name or where she had moved after leaving his home when Joe was five. His only clue was a passing reference to a house fire in a letter written in 1952

Slaying the Gorgon

In Slaying the Gorgon – The Rise of the Storytelling Industrial Complex, traditional storyteller and public radio producer Joe McHugh offers a fascinating and provocative look at how we tell stories in the modern age given the dynamic and transforming influence of new technologies. From the venerated saints and cathedrals of the Middle Ages to the pop stars and cineplexes of today, he explains why images and sound are increasingly supplanting the authority of the printed word, and by so doing radically altering the cultural, economic, and political landscape of the United States and the rest of the world.

The Flying Santa - A True Story

Each Christmas season a group of pilots and volunteers visit lighthouses and coast guard facilities up and down the coast of New England bringing gifts to the children. This “Flying Santa” tradition began in 1929 when pilot Bill Wincapaw of Rockport, Maine, the pilot of a float plane that delivered mail, medicine, and other essentials to remote coastal communities became lost in a fierce winter storm. With his compass malfunctioning and running desperately low on fuel, he was eventually guided home by a series of lighthouses along Pennobscott Bay. To show his gratitude, he and his ten-year-old son dropped floatable bundles full of presents to the families of the lighthouse keepers on Christmas Day. The keepers were so appreciative that The Wincapaws decided to make it an annual tradition adding new lighthouses each year. And that tradition lives on today, ninety years later.

The Phantom Fiddler

Noted storyteller and old-time fiddler Joe McHugh has put down his bow and picked up the pen to entertain us with a collection of supernatural tales about violins and fiddlers. A hotel haunted at midnight by the eerie sound of a fiddle, a dancing skeleton and a pirate’s buried treasure, a romantic rivalry between sisters that leads to foul murder, an ill-advised bargain with the Devil during the rough and tumble days of the California Gold Rush, these are just a few of the unexpected delights to be found within these pages. Each is an original tale, inspired by ancient myths and folk beliefs, and told with reverence for this most mysterious and seductive of all musical instruments—the violin.

Ruff Tales

In Ruff Tales, High Octane Stories from the Ruff Creek General Store, storyteller Joe McHugh has gleaned the best of the humorous anecdotes, outlandish tall tales, and eerie ghost stories he has come across in his travels around the country in this delightful collection for young and old..