KPFA - Bookwaves/Artwaves

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Dawn Porter, documentary filmmaker, in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky, recorded on Zencastr, September 11, 2023.

Dawn Porter’s work has appeared on ESPN, HBO, Netflix, PBS and other streamers. Her film Trapped, focusing on abortion clinics in the South, won a special prize at Sundance in 2016 along with a Peabody Award. Her 2013 documentary, Gideon’s Army, her first film, focusing on public defender attorneys in the South, is now part of the US Deparment of State’s American Film Showcase.

She is also the director of John Lewis: Good Trouble, which focuses on the late Congressman and activist. Her most recent projects are The Lady Bird Diaries, which was shown at SXSW Film Festival and the four part documentary series, Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court, which airs on Showtime starting September 23rd. Other recent projects include  the short film Bree Wayy, about the life of Brionna Taylor, also on Showtime Paramount Plus. Gideon’s Army is available for free on the Tubi app.

Dawn Porter will be appearing live at Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive on September 21st, 22nd and 23rd to discuss her work. On September 21st with The Lady Bird Diaries and September 23rd with Gideon’s Army. See bampfa.org for the times and details of the events. Special thanks to A.J. Fox and Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archives. Complete Interview.

Errol Morris, documentary film maker and author of “The Ashtray (Or the Man Who Denied Reality)” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

Noted film maker Errol Morris was in graduate school in philosophy when he argued with his professor, Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn threw an ashtray at Morris and had him kicked out of school. The argument was about truth. Kuhn said it was relative; Morris said it was real. All of Errol Morris’s work as a director and documentary artist focuses on truth, whether it be “The Fog of War” and Robert McNamara, or “The Thin Blue Line,” or even his latest project, the Netflix series “Wormwood.”

In this interview, he talks about his feelings regarding Kuhn, the nature of truth and its relationship to the current Washington regime, the origins of “The Thin Blue Line’ and other matters. Recorded June 4, 2017 at the Bay Area Book Fair. Special thanks to Cherilyn Parsons. Extended 33-minute Radio Wolinsky podcast.

Review of “The Hippest Trip: The Soul Train Musical at ACT Toni Rembe Geary Theater through October 8, 2023..

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 Bookwaves/Artwaves – September 14, 2023: Dawn Porter – Errol Morris appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Giovanna Sardelli, Artistic Director of TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

Before becoming Artistic Director in July 2023, Giovanna Sardelli served as Artistic Director of TheatreWorks New Works since 2014. A noted stage director, she has worked closely with Tony winner Matthew Lopez and Pulitzer finalist Rajiv Joseph, among others, and has directed at several regional and New York theaters, along with several productions at TheatreWorks. Before joining TheatreWorks she served on the faculty at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and before that had an acting career.

In this conversation, she discusses TheatreWorks’ current financial challenges, along with a look at the upcoming season. Complete 33-minute interview.

Stephen Sondheim (1930 – November 26, 2021) in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, recorded in New York, November 24, 2011.

Stephen Sondheim died at the age of 91 on November 26, 2021. A titan of American musical theater whose work both transcended and changed the genre itself, Sondheim was responsible for the lyrics for Gypsy and West Side Story — and his own shows, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, all became classics in the field. His lyrics were clever and deep – whether it be the torch song “Losing My Mind” from Follies, the history lesson, “Someone in a Tree” from Pacific Overtures, the gorgeous “Sunday” from Sunday in the Park, “Not While I’m Around” from Sweeney Todd, “Not a Day Goes By” from Merrily We Roll Along, “Send in the Clowns”… the list goes on.

In this interview recorded in November 2011 at his townhouse in New York City for “Look! I Made a Hat!”, the second volume of his collection of essays and song lyrics, he discusses his later works and his career with host Richard Wolinsky. Complete Interview

Interview for “Finishing The Hat, recorded November 6, 2010.

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 Bookwaves/Artwaves – September 7, 2023: Giovanna Sardelli – Stephen Sondheim appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Martin Amis (1949-2023), in conversation with Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff in the KPFA studios, January 27, 1998 while on tour for his novel, “Night Train,” published in 1997.

This is the second of five interviews with Martin Amis for KPFA’s Probabilities/Bookwaves program, which were recorded over a period of 23 years. Along with Night Train, he discusses his novel which was published in 1995, The Information.

The three books he discusses at the end of the interview were a short story collection, Heavy Water and Other Stories, which came out later in 1998, a much celebrated memoir and Booker prize winner, Experience,  in published in 2000, and another long novel, Yellow Dog, a satire focusing on British ideas of masculinity and patrimony, published in 2003.

Known for such novels as London Fields, Money, Time’s Arrow, The Information and The Zone of Interest, the Booker Prize winning memoir, Experience, and his essay collection The War Against Cliché, Martin Amis was he son of novelist and essayist Kingsley Amis, He was also close friends with Christopher Hitchens, Saul Bellow and Philip Larkin, all of whom he wrote about in his final memoir disguised as a novel, Inside Story, in 2020.

This interview was digitized, remastered and edited in August 2023 by Richard Wolinsky, has not been heard since its original broadcast. Complete 33-minute Interview.

Jacqueline Woodson, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, while on tour for her novel Another Brooklyn, recorded September 20, 2016.

Jacqueline Woodson is known for her young adult novels, and won the National Book Award for Young Peoples Literature in 2014 for Brown Girl Dreaming. She was in the KPFA studios to discuss Another Brooklyn, her first adult novel in over two decades. Since that time, Jacqueline Woodson has come out with two middle school novels, Harbor Me and Before the Ever After, the adult novel Red at the Bone, and two illustrated children’s books.

Another Brooklyn tells the story of four African American girls growing up in Brooklyn during the 1970s, focusing on August, a transplant from the South with a single father, growing up during a turbulent era and struggling to find herself.

Extended 37-minute Radio Wolinsky podcast.

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 Bookwaves/Artwaves – August 31, 2023: Martin Amis – Jacqueline Woodson appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Wayne Wang, director of such films as “Chan is Missing,” “The Joy Luck Club” and “Smoke,” in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

In this hour-long conversation, the noted filmmaker discusses, in depth, several of his movies, talks about his origins as a director, his work on Hollywood films like “Anywhere But Here,” “Smoke,” and “Maid in Manhattan,” his difficulties filming in China, his view of Chinatown and Chinese families, and much more.

Special thanks to AJ Fox, Kate MacKay and Susan Oxtoby from Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive. BAMPFA Website and schedule.

Review of “A Chorus Line” at San Francisco Playhouse through September 16, 2023.

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 Bookwaves/Artwaves – August 24, 2023: Wayne Wang appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

The works of Fritz Leiber (1910-1992) seem to have fallen into some kind of unwarranted obscurity in recent years. An author of science fiction, horror and fantasy stories, during his lifetime he was considered a master of genre fiction.

It was Fritz Leiber, according to Wikipedia, who coined the term sword and sorcery to refer to fantasy stories set in medieval times involving knights and squires and castles and dragons and all sorts of magic. His own sword and sorcery duo, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser whose stories were collected in several volumes, along with characters such as Conan the Barbarian by his contemporary, Robert E. Howard, are considered among the most notable in the genre.

A stylist at a time when there were few stylists in science fiction and fantasy, his books often had social themes, including Gather Darkness, set in a future religious dystopia, The Wanderer, which explores what happens when a rogue planet comes near earth, and Our Lady of Darkness, which sets up a lovecraftian world inside modern day San Francisco.

Back in the very early days of Probabilities, the three hosts (Lawrence Davidson, Richard A. Lupoff, Richard Wolinsky) associated socially with Fritz Leiber. There were three recordings to emerge from that time. One of them, focusing on Fahfrd and the Gray Mouser, exists only as a reel to reel tape, still to be digitized. Another was recorded in Leiber’s apartment on Geary Street in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, when Leiber was more expansive than usual. In that recording, only Fritz’s voice is intelligible. The third was an interview with Richard A. Lupoff, recorded in KPFA’s studios during Science Fiction Day on the KPFA fund-raising marathon in September 1977.

Digitized, remastered and edited in August 2023. Complete Interview

Tony Hillerman, who died in 2008 at the age of 83, was a master of the detective genre and an important writer in detailing life on the Navajo reservation. His several novels featuring Navajo police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee have been acclaimed for their accuracy and for their ability to combine Navajo history and thought into strong plot-driven novels.

There are four interviews with Tony Hillerman in the Probabilities and Bookwaves archive. This first interview, conducted by Richard A. Lupoff, the late co-host of Probabilities, was recorded on January 14, 1987 in a hotel in San Francisco while Hillerman was on tour for his novel, Skinwalkers, the seventh in the series, and the first to feature both Leaphorn and Chee. He would continue to write a total of eighteen books in the series, and his daughter, Anne Hillerman, has continued the series with eight more novels, the most recent being The Way of the Bear, which was published in April, 2023.

Tony Hillerman also wrote four novels outside the series, and several books of non-fiction and photography. The Dark Wind was adapted into a theatrical film in 1991. Three other novels were adapted as TV movies for PBS, and Dark Winds, a streaming series currently on AMC, is adapted from Hillerman’s Leaphorn and Chee novels.

Review of “Mahabharata” at Z Space through August 20, 2023.

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 Bookwaves/Artwaves – August 17, 2023: Fritz Leiber – Tony Hillerman appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Christopher Moore, author of “Razzmatazz,” “Noir,” and other novels of comic fantasy and horror, in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

Christopher Moore has eighteen novels to his credit, including Practical Demonkeeping, Bloodsucking Fiends, Fool and Secondhand Souls, many of which take place in San Francisco, where he now lives.

Razzmatazz, his latest novel, is a follow-up to Noir, and takes us back to the City by the Bay in 1946, and the world of Chinatown and North Beach, and lesbian and cross-dressing bars, gangsters both foreign and domestic, the African American community at the time, aliens, and magical dragons, with a side-trip to 1906.

Complete 49-minute interview.

Lillian Ross (1918-2017), in conversation in June, 2002 with host Richard Wolinsky. Encore podcast originally posted September 30, 2017.

Lillian Ross, who died on September 20, 2017 at the age of 99, spent seven decades as a staff writer for the New Yorker Magazine, beginning in 1945. Writing for the Talk of the Town section of the magazine, her credo was “Your attention at all times should be on your subject, not on you. Do not call attention to yourself.” In 1950, her profile of Ernest Hemingway, according to the New York Times, elevated her into the top ranks of New Yorker stylists. Using novelistic techniques for writing non-fiction, she is often credited as the primary influence of what came to be called “new journalism” as exemplified in her series of articles about the making of the John Huston film, The Red Badge of Courage, which were collected in the book, Picture, often called the best book ever written about Hollywood. She spent several years as the mistress of long-time New Yorker editor Willliam Shawn, as chronicled in her book Here But Not Here, from 1998.

This interview with Lillian Ross took place on June 4, 2002 on the publication of her book, “Reporting Back: Notes on Journalism.” Of this particular discussion she later wrote, “ It’s the first time I ever listened to any kind of broadcast on my power book, and I was amazed. It’s the first interview I’ve ever experienced that sounded interesting to me and sounded true to me. That of course is because of you, your questions, your general interest, your understanding, and your response, and then, your editing. I do thank you. I’m very grateful. With great admiration, Lillian Ross.”

Lillian Ross’s final piece, a profile of J.D. Salinger after his death, was published in 2012.

Review of “Josephine’s Feast” at the Magic Theatre through August 20, 2023.

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 Bookwaves/Artwaves – August 10, 2023: Christopher Moore – Lillian Ross appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Lisa See, whose latest novel is “Lady Tan’s Circle of Women,” is interviewed by host Richard Wolinsky. Recorded via zencastr 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.

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 Bookwaves/Artwaves – August 3, 2023: Lisa See appeared first on KPFA.