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.
Simon Winchester, whose latest book is “The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World,” is interviewed by Richard Wolinsky. A master at non-fiction writing, Simon Winchester looks at the difference between precision and accuracy, and at how these two elements helped create the world we see today, from automobiles to cell phones.
Len Cariou, Tony Award winner for the original production of “Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street” and star of his one-man show, “Broadway and the Bard,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.
Steven Bach (1938-2009) author of the biography “Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl”, interviewed in 2007 by Richard Wolinsky. Leni Riefenstahl was the film maker behind the Nazi propaganda films Triumph of the Will and Olympia. Reifenstahl, who died in 2003 at the age of a hundred and one, to the end of her life denied her work was political, that she was an artist.
Tayari Jones, whose latest novel is “An American Marriage,” is interviewed by host Richard Wolinsky. “An American Marriage” deals with a marriage torn apart by the unjust arrest and imprisonment of the husband after an accusation by a white woman at a motel, and how both spouses deal with the following few years. “An American Marriage” is a 2018 Oprah’s Book Club Selection.
Norman Mailer (1923-2007) was one of the most important writers to come out of World War II. After forging a career as a novelist, he turned to narrative non-fiction with such classics as “Armies of the Night” and “Of a Fire on the Moon.” This podcast is taken from two interviews, the first on November 6, 1995, with Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff during Mailer’s tour for his biography of Pablo Picasso, and the second, a solo interview by Richard A. Lupoff, on May 19, 1998, came during Mailer’s tour for his collection “Time of our Time.”
Isaac Butler and Dan Kois, authors of “The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky. The book is an oral history of the play by Tony Kushner, looking at not only its history, but how Angels in America fits into the fabric of the American saga and theatrical history. SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers for the play and film.
Michael David Lukas, author of “The Oracle of Stamboul,” whose most recent novel is “The Last Watchman of Old Cairo,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.
Tony Kushner, playwright, “Angels in America” and other works, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, recorded in San Francisco, March 17, 2006. “Angels in America” is currently running at Berkeley Rep through July 22, 2018.
Cherilyn Parsons is the founder and director of the fourth annual Bay Area Book Festival, the weekend of April 28-29, 2018 (with a film series beginning April 25th). The Berkeley Civic Center MLK Park holds the main stage, with fifteen venues for events within walking distance. She is interviewed by Richard Wolinsky.
Andrew Sean Greer, whose latest novel is “Less,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.
Andrew Sean Greer is the author of several acclaimed novels, including “The Confessions of Max Tivoli” and “The Story of a Marriage.” His latest novel, “Less,” tells the story of a middle-aged writer turning fifty, his relationships with an older famed poet and a younger man, and a trip around the world.
