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.
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.
Lillian Ross (1918-2017), interviewed in June, 2002 by host Richard Wolinsky. Lillian Ross spent seven decades as a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, known for her extended profiles of politicians and celebrities. Her book “Picture,” about the making of John Huston’s “The Red Badge of Courage” is seen as the prototype today of the “new journalism,” using fictional tropes to fully create non-fictional reportage.
Tom Perrotta, whose latest novel is “Mrs. Fletcher,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky. The author of several best-sellers, Tom Perrotta is perhaps best known these days as the author of the novel “The Leftovers,” and one of the writers of the highly praised HBO show of the same name. He is also the author of other novels, including “Election” and “Little Children,” both of which became Oscar-nominated films. In this broad-ranging interview, he talks in depth about his newest novel, which deals with the problems of a divorced mother faced with empty-nest syndrome,
Hari Kunzru, whose latest novel is “White Tears,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky. The author of several novels dealing with race and music, Hari Kunzru uses techniques of magic realism and fantasy to explore critical issues of our time. Born in London in 1969 of an Indian father and Englsh mother, he grew up in the suburb of Essex and went to university in Oxford and Warwick. He later worked as a travel journalist before turning to fiction.
Gore Vidal, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff, recorded on October 5, 2000 in San Francisco, California. Over a period of sixteen years from 1990 to 2006, Richard Wolinsky conducted four interviews with Gore Vidal, two of which involved co-host Richard A. Lupoff. This is the third chronologically of those interviews, conducted on October 5, 2000 while Gore Vidal was on tour for his novel The Golden Age, the final in his series of seven novels exploring American history and titled “Narratives of Empire.”
Encore podcast: Broadway legend Barbara Cook, who died on August 8, 2017, talks with host Richard Wolinsky about her memoir, Then & Now in an extended interview in which she discusses all of her major shows, her difficulty with alcoholism, and her triumph as a concert and cabaret performer.
Edward Abbey, who died at the age of 62 back in 1989 was a novelist, short story writer and non-fiction essayist who is now known as the father of the radical environmentalist movement and one of the great voices of America’s unfettered west. This podcast is drawn from a 1985 interview co-hosted by Richard Wolinsky and Lawrence Davidson. Written, hosted and produced by Richard Wolinsky.
