A podcast posted every Sunday featuring extended interviews and discussions from Bookwaves, Art-Waves, and Bookwaves Artwaves Hour programs on KPFA, and newly digitized and edited archive interviews from the pre-digital Probabilities series dating back to 1977. Literature, theater, film, the visual arts: in-depth interviews from a progressive and artistic viewpoint, with long-time KPFA/Pacifica host Richard Wolinsky.
Bill Hayes, author of “Insomniac City: New York, Oliver and Me,” and co-editor of the posthumous collection of essays, “The River of Consciousness” by Oliver Sacks, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky. Bill Hayes was partnered with the previously closeted neurologist, and in this interview talks about their life together and his love affair with New York.
Roz Chast, whose latest book is “Going into Town: A Love Letter to New York” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky. A regular cartoonist for the New Yorker since 1978, Roz Chast has developed a following for her quirky, strange and funny cartoons.. She talks about her career and about this, her most recent book.
Stephen Greenblatt, whose latest book is “The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve,” winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction for “The Swerve,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky. “The Rise and Fall” chronicles the story of one of the most enduring myths of modern civilization and the effect of its original interpretations. Stephen Greenblatt dissects many of them in his book, and in this interview.
Salman Rushdie, whose latest novel is “The Golden House,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky. The author of “The Satanic Verses” and several other novels, discusses his latest work of fiction, which focuses on a wealthy Indian family living in New York, and concerns such topics as the relationship of wealth to criminal enterprises in New York and Bombay (Mumbai), the world of the artist in New York, the recent presidential election, film images in our culture, and more.
Nancy MacLean, author of “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky. Duke University Professor Nancy MacLean, in researching the life of right-wing professor James Buchanan, discovered the philosophical underpinnings of what Hillary Clinton (almost unknowingly) called the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Funded by Charles Koch and other donors, they’ve taken over the GOP and have an agenda, she says, that ultimately will allow minority rule in the United States for the forseeable future.
Adam Gopnik, whose latest book is “At The Strangers Gate” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky. Adam Gopnik has been a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine since 1986, has written several best-sellers and currently writes the Daily Comment on-line blog for the magazine.
Susan Vreeland, who died on August 23, 2017 at the age of 71, was the best-selling author of several novels, most of them focusing on art, specifically painting. Richard Wolinsky interviewed Susan Vreeland on January 24, 2002, when she was on tour for her third novel, “The Passion of Artemisia,” about the female baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi.
Elizabeth Rosner, author of Survivor Cafe: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory, in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky. Elizabeth Rosner, the author of three novels and one poetry/prose collection, discusses her latest book, Survivor Cafe, which deals with trauma and its effects, both direct and indirect. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, she examines the effects of war and other tragedies on the psyche, and how those effects can be passed down, generation to generation.
Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, recorded April 1, 2015 at Book Passage Bookstore in Corte Madera, California, while he was on tour for his latest novel, “The Iron Giant.” Over the past two decades, Kazuo Ishiguro has come to be regarded as one of the titans of modern literature. Author of such novels as “Remains of the Day” and “Never Let Me Go,” he was born in Japan but grew up in Britain, and his sensibility as an author lies somewhere between the two cultures.
Joseph Kanon, author of the spy thriller, “Defectors,” is interviewed by Richard Wolinsky. Over the course of the last 22 years, Joseph Kanon has established himself as one of the best spy novelists around, in the vein of John Le Carre, Alan Furst, Graham Greene and Eric Ambler. His latest novel, “Defectors,” is a novel about what life was like for a defector in the early 1960s after the dust has cleared the air.
