KPFA - Bookwaves/Artwaves

Excerpts from an October 2023 interview with historian Heather Cox Richardson, hosted by Richard Wolinsky, with Laura Prives.

The post September 12, 2024: Fund Drive Special, Heather Cox Richardson appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Mick Herron discusses his latest novel, “The Secret Hours,” now out in trade paperback, and the Slough House series of of spy novels and stories with host Richard Wolinsky.

Mick Herron has written eight books in the Slough House series of novels about a tiny corner of MI5 for rejects and misfits, people who have screwed up but not been fired. They are known collectively as “Slow Horses,” which is the title of the television series starring Gary Oldman as their boss, Jackson Lamb. A new season of “Slow Horses” began this week on Apple+.

“The Secret Hours” is located in the same world as the series, but serves as a stand-alone novel about an inquiry into MI5’s past, set up by a conservative government out to rein in the Secret Service.

In the interview, Mick Herron discusses the origins of the book and of the Slough House series, as well as his career as a writer, and his writing process. Recorded via Zencastr September 22, 2023

Complete Interview.

Naomi Iizuka, playwright and screenwriter, “translator” of Shakespeare’s Richard II, at the Magic Theatre through September 15, 2024, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky,

While known for plays such as Good Kids and Polaroid Stories, she has also worked in the writers’ rooms of several television shows, including Bosch: Legacy, The Terror, and The Sympathizer. In this Part Two of a two part interview, she talks about her work in television, as well as her work as drama professor at UC San Diego.

Complete Interview.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination and mask requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. Some venues operate Tuesday – Sunday; others Wednesday or Thursday through Sunday. All times Pacific Time. Closing dates are sometimes extended.

Book Stores

Live Theater Companies

Misc. Listings:

Filmed Live Musicals: Searchable database of all filmed live musicals, podcast, blog.

If you’d like to add your bookstore or theater venue to this list, please write [email protected]

.

The post September 5, 2024: Mick Herron, Master of Spy Thrillers appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Josh Costello, the Artistic Director of Aurora Theatre in Berkeley since 2019, in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

Before taking on the role of Artistic Director at Aurora, Josh Costello was the founding Artistic Director of Impact Theatre and Artistic Director of Explanded Programs at Marin Theatre Company. He directed several plays at Aurora prior to becoming Artistic Director, and was Director of “Eureka Day,” which is opening on Broadway in a few months.

In this interview, he discusses the impact of the pandemic on Aurora’s finances (and the finances of all local theatres), along with a look at the upcoming season and other topics. Recorded August 22. 2024 in the KPFA studios.

Photos: Richard Wolinsky. Complete Interview.

Naomi Iizuka, playwright and screenwriter, “translator” of Shakespeare’s Richard II, at the Magic Theatre through September 15, 2024, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky,

Noted playwright Naomi Iizuka discusses her translation and adaptation of Shakespeare’s history play, Richard II, a play written in verse, into a theatrical piece in which the language is comprehensible to a modern audience while maintaining the essence of the story, the characterization, and the poetry.

While known for plays such as Good Kids and Polaroid Stories, she has also worked in the writers’ rooms of several television shows, including Bosch: Legacy, The Terror, and The Sympathizer. She teaches drama and playwrighting at UC San Diego. Complete 42 minute Interview.

Naomi Iizuka Wikipedia Page.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination and mask requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. Some venues operate Tuesday – Sunday; others Wednesday or Thursday through Sunday. All times Pacific Time. Closing dates are sometimes extended.

Book Stores

Live Theater Companies

Misc. Listings:

Filmed Live Musicals: Searchable database of all filmed live musicals, podcast, blog.

If you’d like to add your bookstore or theater venue to this list, please write [email protected]

.

The post August 29, 2024: Bay Area Theatre: Josh Costello – Naomi Iizuka appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

​​Erik Larson, author of “The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War, in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky, recorded at Book Passage Bookstre on May 31, 2024.

Erik Larson is the author of several bestsellers of non-fiction narrative, including The Devil in the White City, The Splendid and the Vile, and In The Garden of Beasts.

His latest book concerns the days and months preceding the start of the Civil War, focusing on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, along with what life was like in the antebellum South at the time, the march to war, the election of Abraham Lincoln, and the various triggers that led to the Civil War.

In this interview he discusses how he came to write the book, some of the more interesting facts about the time of the Civil War, and how he became an author of these best-sellling narratives.

Photos: Richard Wolinsky.

Complete Interview.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination and mask requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. Some venues operate Tuesday – Sunday; others Wednesday or Thursday through Sunday. All times Pacific Time. Closing dates are sometimes extended.

Book Stores

Live Theater Companies

Misc. Listings:

Filmed Live Musicals: Searchable database of all filmed live musicals, podcast, blog.

If you’d like to add your bookstore or theater venue to this list, please write [email protected]

.

The post August 22, 2024: Erik Larson: The Start of the Civil War appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

​​​​​The great Irish novelist and playwright Edna O’Brien died at the age of 93 on July 27, 2024 after a long illness. A controversial figure from the start, her first novel from 1960, The Country Girls, which dealt with sexual and social issues in Ireland following World War II, was banned in Ireland and denounced on the pulpit, and while she moved to London with her husband before publication, she never moved back to her native land.

This interview was conducted in the KPFA studios on April 28, 2000 while she was on tour for her novel, “Wild Decembers,” third in a thematic trilogy of novels set in the recent past in Ireland. It was later adapted for television in 2008..

Of Edna O’Brien, from Wikipedia, the novelist Andrew O’Hagan wrote, “She changed the nature of Irish fiction, she brought the woman’s experience and sex and internal lives of those people on to the page, and she did it with style, and she made those concerns international.” In her lifetime, Edna O’Brien wrote seventeen novels, several plays, eight short story collections, eight works of non-fiction, four children’s books and a collection of poems.

Edna O’Brien continued to write novels and plays well into her nineties. Her final novel, Girl, was published in 2019.

This interview was digitized, remastered and edited in August 2024 and is heard for the first time in its entirety. A second interview, recorded in 2003 while in San Francisco working on her play “Triptych” at the Magic Theatre will be posted on a later date. Complete 43-minute Interview.

John Sayles discusses his latest novel, “Jamie MacGillivray, The Renegade’s Journey,” along with his work as a writer and film-maker, with host Richard Wolinsky. Second of two parts.

John Sayles is best known for his work as a director, screenwriter and actor, though this is his sixth novel. Among the films he directed are Lone Star, Sunshine State, Eight Men Out, Matewan, The Brother from Another Planet, Baby It’s You and Passion Fish. His acting credits include small roles in several films, and he wrote the screenplay for the films he directed.

Complete Interview.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination and mask requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. Some venues operate Tuesday – Sunday; others Wednesday or Thursday through Sunday. All times Pacific Time. Closing dates are sometimes extended.

Book Stores

Live Theater Companies

Misc. Listings:

Filmed Live Musicals: Searchable database of all filmed live musicals, podcast, blog.

If you’d like to add your bookstore or theater venue to this list, please write [email protected]

.

The post August 15, 2024: Edna O’Brien, Rebel Daughter of Ireland appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

John Sayles discusses his latest novel, “Jamie MacGillivray, The Renegade’s Journey,” along with his work as a writer and film-maker, with host Richard Wolinsky.

John Sayles is best known for his work as a director, screenwriter and actor, though this is his sixth novel. Among the films he directed are Lone Star, Sunshine State, Eight Men Out, Matewan, The Brother from Another Planet, Baby It’s You and Passion Fish. His acting credits include small roles in several films, and he wrote the screenplay for the films he directed.

His novel “Jamie MacGillivray, The Renegade’s Journey” follows the characters of Jamie, a Scotsman captured by the English after the Battle of Culloden, and Jenny, another captured refugee from Scotland, as they make their way to the New World, Jamie winding up in a Native American village and Jenny moving from the Caribbean to Quebec, both of them involved in the French and Indian Wars.  Photos: Richard Wolinsky.

Recorded March 1, 2023 at Book Passage in Corte Madera, California. Special thanks to Elaine Petrocelli and the staff at the bookstore.

Complete 45-minute Interview.

Nora Ephron (1941-2012) in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, recorded November 21, 2010 in the KPFA studios, while on tour for her book, “I Remember Nothing.”

Known as one of the finest screenplay writers Hollywood ever saw, she is best known for such films as Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle. Her final film was Julie & Julia. A playwright and essayist, her influence is still felt in the entertainment business. Complete Interview.

Review of “Girl from the North Country” at BroadwaySF Golden Gate Theatre through August 18, 2024.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination and mask requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. Some venues operate Tuesday – Sunday; others Wednesday or Thursday through Sunday. All times Pacific Time. Closing dates are sometimes extended.

Book Stores

Live Theater Companies

Misc. Listings:

Filmed Live Musicals: Searchable database of all filmed live musicals, podcast, blog.

If you’d like to add your bookstore or theater venue to this list, please write [email protected]

The post John Sayles / Nora Ephron appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

John Barth (1930-2024), who died on April 2, 2024 at the age of 93, was America’s leading writer of metafictional and post-modern fiction. This interview was conducted by Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff on November 12, 2001 in the KPFA studios, while on the book tour for the novel Coming Soon.

John Barth began to receive notice for his two earliest novels, The Floating Opera and End of the Road in the late 1950s, but burst on the scene with his epic comic novel about colonial life in Maryland, The Sot-Weed Factor, and his allegory of the Cold War, set on a university campus, Giles Goat-Boy. His short story collection, Lost in the Funhouse and novella collection Chimera cemented his reputation as a writer of meta-fiction, as the stories zoom back on themselves and on the writing of those stories.

From Wikipedia: “In his epistolary novel LETTERS (1979), Barth corresponds with characters from his other books. Later novels such as The Tidewater Tales (1987) and The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (1991) continue in the metafictional vein, using writers as protagonists who interact with their own and other stories in elaborate ways. His 1994 Once Upon a Time: A Floating Opera casts Barth himself as the protagonist who on a sailing trip encounters characters and situations from previous works.”

After the 2001 interview, he continued to work in the same vein with a triptych of novellas, Where Three Roads Meet in 2005, interrelated short stories set in a retirement community, The Development: Nine Stories in 2008, and Every Third Thought: A Novel in Five Seasons in 2011. A, book of collected stories was released in 2015 and Postscripts (or Just Desserts): Some Final Scribbling came out in 2022.

This interview was both the last interview conducted with Richard Lupoff as co-host, and the final interview recorded and edited on analog tape. This program was digitized and edited in July 2024 by Richard Wolinsky, and is heard in full for the first time. Complete 46-minute Interview

Lorrie Moore is a celebrated short story writer and novelist. In this excerpt from an interview recorded April 8, 2014 while on tour for her collection, Bark, she discusses her writing and research process. Complete 40-minute Interview.

Review of “Collective Rage: A Play in 4 Betties” at Shotgun Players Ashby Stage through August 18, 2024.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination and mask requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. Some venues operate Tuesday – Sunday; others Wednesday or Thursday through Sunday. All times Pacific Time. Closing dates are sometimes extended.

Book Stores

Live Theater Companies

Misc. Listings:

Filmed Live Musicals: Searchable database of all filmed live musicals, podcast, blog.

If you’d like to add your bookstore or theater venue to this list, please write [email protected]

The post August 1, 2024: John Barth (1930-2024), Master of Metafiction appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Lisa See, whose latest novel is “Lady Tan’s Circle of Women,” now out in trade paperback, is interviewed by host Richard Wolinsky. Recorded  on July 14, 2023.

Lisa See’s best-selling books include Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Peony in Love, China Dolls, and most recently, The Island of Sea Women. Each novel, thus far, focuses on the role and lives of women of East Asian descent in various countries, including Korea, Japan, China and the United States. Some of the novels focus on a mystery, others take place within the context of historical events.

Her latest novel, “Lady Tan’s Circle of Women” looks at the life of an historical figure, a female doctor of upper class birth living in China in the 15th Century. As Lisa notes in the interview, the circumscribed life of Tan Yuxian bears a startling resemblance to the isolation we all felt during the Covid lockdown. Complete Interview. Complete 60-minute Interview.

Lisa See website

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination and mask requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. Some venues operate Tuesday – Sunday; others Wednesday or Thursday through Sunday. All times Pacific Time. Closing dates are sometimes extended.

Book Stores

Live Theater Companies

Misc. Listings:

Filmed Live Musicals: Searchable database of all filmed live musicals, podcast, blog.

If you’d like to add your bookstore or theater venue to this list, please write [email protected]

The post July 25, 2024: Lisa See, “Lady Tan’s Circle of Women” appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues 

Aya de Leon in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

Aya de Leon is the Poet Laureate of the City of Berkeley. She is a novelist and poet who currently teaches creative writing at U.C. Berkeley. She is the author of ten books, the most recent of which are the adult novel, “That Dangerous Energy,” and the young adult novel, “Untraceable.”

Originally a hip hop artist, Aya de Leon is also a noted local activist, and the acquiring editor of Fighting Chance Books, the climate justice fiction imprint of She Writes Press. She organizes with the Black Hive, the climate and environmental justice formation of the Movement for Black Lives. Complete Interview

Stuart Klawans, author of “Crooked but Never Common: The Films of Preston Sturges,” in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

Stuart Klawans was film critic for the Nation  from 1988 to 2021, and before that wrote a small press and poetry column for the magazine. His previous books were Film Follies: The Cinema Out of Order, and a collection of his reviews and essays from 1988 to 2001, Left in the Dark.

Preston Sturges was the first in the Hollywood sound era to write and direct his own films, creating a series of movies, from The Great McGinty in 1940, through The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek and other classics to Unfaithfully Yours in 1948, that still resonate today.

All the films mentioned in the interview are available streaming either for rental via Amazon or Apple, or in the case of Unfaithfully Yours, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock and The Great Moment, free on YouTube.

Complete 52-minute interview.

Review of “Evita” at San Francisco Playhouse through September 7, 2024.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination and mask requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. Some venues operate Tuesday – Sunday; others Wednesday or Thursday through Sunday. All times Pacific Time. Closing dates are sometimes extended.

B

ook Stores

Live Theater Companies

Misc. Listings:

Filmed Live Musicals: Searchable database of all filmed live musicals, podcast, blog.

If you’d like to add your bookstore or theater venue to this list, please write [email protected]

The post July 18, 2024: Aya de Leon – Stuart Klawans appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues 

Nancy MacLean, author of “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, recorded in the KPFA studios, October 20, 2017..

Nancy MacLean’s 2017 book, “Democracy in Chains,” deals with the long game of the Koch brothers and their ilk, which may now have finally come to fruition with the Supreme Court legalizing bribery as “gratuities,” the overthrow of administrative protections in the areas of safety and the environment, and legalizing crimes by the President. The idea was to create a constitutional convention, which would codify laws in such a way that progressive regimes would be unable to move their programs forward, thanks to the courts, and based on how the Pinochet regime was able to control Chile after giving up power. That convention idea didn’t work in this country, but thanks to Mitch McConnell and his refusal to bring Obama nominees to a vote, followed by the Trump Administration’s packing of all the courts, the Koch plan wound up working anyway. In this interview, Nancy MacLean goes back to the origins of the plan, and brings us forward.

Duke University Professor Nancy MacLean, in researching the life of libertarian 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.

In this interview, she discusses the role of Buchanan and the Mont Pelerin Society in the underpinnings of this gradual take-over of the state and federal government, and what the goals are, according to her research.

Complete Interview.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination and mask requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. Some venues operate Tuesday – Sunday; others Wednesday or Thursday through Sunday. All times Pacific Time. Closing dates are sometimes extended.

Book Stores

Live Theater Companies

Misc. Listings:

Filmed Live Musicals: Searchable database of all filmed live musicals, podcast, blog.

If you’d like to add your bookstore or theater venue to this list, please write [email protected]

The post July 11, 2024: Nancy MacLean, 2017: How the Right-Wing Took Over the Courts appeared first on KPFA.