KPFA - Bookwaves/Artwaves

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Peter Straub (1993-2022), in conversation with Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff, recorded April 4, 1993 while on tour for his novel, “The Throat,” third in a thematic trilogy that included “Koko” and “Mystery.”

Peter Straub, who died on September 4th, 2022 at the age of 79, was a master of horror and supernatural fiction whose work erased any distinction between genre and the literary world. Among his best known novels were Ghost Story, Shadowland, Floating Dragon, The Hellfire Club, and his collaboration with Stephen King, The Talisman.   He was also a poet and short fiction author.

Three years after the interview, Peter Straub’s novel The Hellfire Club was published to great acclaim, followed in 2001, with Black House, a sequel to The Talisman, written with Stephen King, and four later novels, the last one, A Dark Matter, published in 2010. A third book in The Talisman series was announced, but never written. A television series based on The Talisman for Netflix and created by The Duffer Brothers of Stranger Things fame, was announced in 2021 and is apparently still on track. Complete 39-minute interview.

Digitized, remastered and edited by Richard Wolinsky in September, 2022. This interview has not seen the light of day in nearly thirty years.

Stephen King, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky and Lawrence Davidson, while on tour for The Dead Zone, recorded September 8, 1979 at Dark Carnival Bookstore in Berkeley.

At the time of this recording, Stephen King had only written a handful of books — Carrie, Salem’s Lot, The Shining and the Stand preceding The Dead Zone. There were also two novels under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, which was still a secret at the time.

Since then, Stephen King has become a literary institution with over 300 credits for television and film adaptations at IMDb. He also has 64 novels, 11 collections of stories, and 5 non-fiction books.

This interview was transcribed and can be found in both Feast of Fear: Conversations with Stephen King, edited by Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller, and Stephen King and Clive Barker: Macabre II, edited by James Van Hise.

Photo: Stephen King during the era of the interview. Photo by Marty Reichenthal/AP/Shutterstock. Complete Interview

Review: “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” at BroadwaySF’s Orpheum Theater through November 6, 2022.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events still require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 and masks. Many venues will require proof of boosters. Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination status requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. All times Pacific Standard Time.

Book Stores

Live Theater Companies

Misc. Listings:

Playbill List of Streaming Theatre: Updated weekly, this is probably the best list you’ll find of national and international streaming plays and musicals. Each week has its own webpage, so scroll down.

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

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves, September 15, 2022: Peter Straub and Stephen King appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Roz Chast, New Yorker cartoonist. Recorded October 26, 2017 while she was on tour with “Going into Town: A Love Letter to New York.” Hosted by 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 started out in the National Lampoon and Village Voice but has since become a regular and familiar artist in the New Yorker.

In this interview, she talks about her start as an artist, discusses how cartoons wind up in the magazine, and focuses on her new book, a graphic guide-book to New York, originally written for her daughter but expanded into an often funny and probably helpful look at the Big Apple. Complete 33-minute interview.

Patricia Marx and Roz Chast, co-authors of the humor book, “Why Don’t You Write My Eulogy Now So I Can Correct It?: A Mother’s Suggestions,” talk about their work and life with host Richard Wolinsky.

Roz Chast is a legendary New Yorker cartoonist with several books to her credit. Patricia Marx was the first woman working at the Harvard Lampoon, and spent a year in the writers’ room of Saturday Night Live. These days she writes Talk of the Town and other pieces, along with assignments, for the New Yorker magazine.

Together they’ve created a book based upon the words of Patricia Marx’s mother, illustrated by Roz Chast. In this interview, they talk about the book; Patricia Marx discusses her career in comedy and humor writing, and the two authors take out the ukulele’s for a couple of parody songs.

Photo on program page: left to right: Roz Chast, Patricia Marx. Photo: Richard Wolinsky.

Extended 40-minute Radio Wolinsky podcast.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events still require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 and masks. Many venues will require proof of boosters. Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination status requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. All times Pacific Standard Time.

Book Stores

Live Theater Companies

Misc. Listings:

Playbill List of Streaming Theatre: Updated weekly, this is probably the best list you’ll find of national and international streaming plays and musicals. Each week has its own webpage, so scroll down.

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

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – September 8, 2022: Roz Chast – Patricia Marx appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Mary Roach discusses her latest book, “Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law,” out this week in trade paperback, with host Richard Wolinsky.

The author of several non-fiction works that examine specific areas of life that are rarely covered elsewhere, Mary Roach brings a sharp eye and excellent research skills to explain how things work, how they don’t work, and the various things that happen in between.

“Fuzz” deals with such issues as animals killing humans, pests in the fields, attempts to control invasive species, animal burglaries (watch out, Yogi Bear!) and even birds destroying flowers in the Vatican.

In this interview, she discusses many of these issues, plus adds some information that never found its way into her book.

Mary Roach will be a guest of the Bay Area Book Festival at Brower Center in Berkeley on September 7, 2022.

Complete 47-minute interview.

Stuart Woods (1938-2022) who died on July 22, 2022 at the at the age of 84, wrote over one hundred novels in a career spanning forty years. In this interview recorded May 10, 1993 with Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff, he discusses his recent novels L.A. Times and New York Dead, as well as his career and his dealings with Hollywood.

Best known for his first novel, Chiefs, published in 1981, most of Stuart Woods’ books featured a former NYPD detective turned attorney named Stone Barrington, a former NYPD detective turned attorney. There were other series featuring CIA operative Holly Barker, Santa Fe defense lawuer Ed Eagle, Senator, later President William Henry Lee and a 1930s detective named Rick Barron. His characters appear in the same universe and often appear in each others’ novels.

To date, IMDb just two lists the two miniseries mentioned by Stuart Woods in the interview, Chiefs and Grass Roots. A third novel, White Cargo, is said to be in pre-production. Wikipedia lists four posthumous Stone Carrington novels, the first, Distant Thunder, has a publication date of October, 2022. Both L.A. Times and New York Dead are still in print.

This interview was digitized and edited in August, 2022 by Richard Wolinsky, and has not aired in nearly thirty years. Photo: Jeanmarie Woods.

Review: “Goddess” at Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre through September 25, 2022.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events still require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 and masks. Many venues will require proof of boosters. Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination status requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. All times Pacific Standard Time.

Book Stores

Live Theater Companies

Misc. Listings:

Playbill List of Streaming Theatre: Updated weekly, this is probably the best list you’ll find of national and international streaming plays and musicals. Each week has its own webpage, so scroll down.

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

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – September 1, 2022: Mary Roach – Stuart Woods appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Joyce Carol Oates, author of “Blonde,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff, recorded May 3, 2000 in the KPFA studios.

​​​​​Joyce Carol Oates is one of American’s greatest writers, and one of its most prolific. Over a career that spans nearly sixty years, according to Wikipedia she’s written 58 novels, and according to Good Reads, has had 116 books published. She has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction five times and has been nominated and won many other literary awards. Her most recent novel is Babysitter, release date August 23, 2022.

Among her best known works, and perhaps her magnum opus, is Blonde, one of Pulitzer finalists and a nominee for the National Book Award. This epic novel from 2000 is a retelling of the life of Marilyn Monroe, and is soon to be a motion picture starring Ana De Armas.

On May 3, 2000, Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff  interviewed Joyce Carol Oates about Blonde, and about her career. This wide-ranging conversation was one of the last of the Cover to Cover (pre-Bookwaves) interviews recorded on analog tape, and has not been heard on the radio in twenty years. Digitized and edited by Richard Wolinsky in August, 2022. Complete 50-minute interview.

Artwaves: Jasson Minadakis, Artistic Director of Marin Theatre Company discusses three of the four plays of the upcoming 2022-23 season with host Richard Wolinsky.

Review: “Oklahoma!” touring company revival, at Golden Gate Theater through September 11, 2022.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events still require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 and masks. Many venues will require proof of boosters. Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination status requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. All times Pacific Standard Time.

Book Stores

Live Theater Companies

Misc. Listings:

Playbill List of Streaming Theatre: Updated weekly, this is probably the best list you’ll find of national and international streaming plays and musicals. Each week has its own webpage, so scroll down.

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

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – August 25, 2022: Joyce Carol Oates, “Blonde,” 2000 appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Salman Rushdie discusses his latest novel to date, “Quichotte,” in this interview with host Richard Wolinsky.

By the time this interview was conducted, on September 20, 2019, it felt as if the fatwa and the years of hiding due to the publication of The Satanic Verses were all in the past. Salman Rushdie was in San Francisco that day and was scheduled to come to the KPFA studios, but heavy traffic intervened and the interview was conducted instead by phone. Little did we know that nearly three years later, the fatwa would rear its ugly head and the acclaimed author would be in hospital, recovering from an assailant’s attack.

The acclaimed author of several novels, including Midnight’s Children, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, and more recently The Golden House, Salman Rushdie also appeared as a political commentator on several television shows, and has appeared in films, and as a fictional version of himself on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Complete 43-minute interview.

Hershey Felder discusses his stage show, “Chopin in Paris,” playing at TheatreWorks Mountain View August 19 through September 11, 2022 with host Richard Wolinsky.

Over the past 29  years, Hershey Felder has been performing one-person plays with his piano accompaniment, focusing on a variety of different composers, including George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Tschaikovsky, Beethoven and others. He has also created film versions of these and others, which can be found at his website, hersheyfelder.net.

“Chopin in Paris,” a variation of “M. Chopin,” which was shown as a film supporting various theatre companies during the pandemic, focuses on the composer in 1848, a year before he died, giving a piano lesson and talking about his life.

Complete 30-minute interview.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events still require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 and masks. Many venues will require proof of boosters. Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination status requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. All times Pacific Standard Time.

Book Stores

Live Theater Companies

Misc. Listings:

Playbill List of Streaming Theatre: Updated weekly, this is probably the best list you’ll find of national and international streaming plays and musicals. Each week has its own webpage, so scroll down.

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

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – August 18, 2022: Salman Rushdie – Hershey Felder appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Paul Rudnick, author of the novel “Playing the Palace,” and the teleplay for the HBO film “Coastal Elites,” in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

Playwright, screenwriter and novelist Paul Rudnick’s latest novel, “Playing the Palace,” is the story of a gay man living in New York who falls in love with a gay Prince of Wales, and what ensues. His recent film, “Coastal Elites,” with Bette Midler, Dan Levy and others, is a contemporary account of life during the first half of 2020 when the awfulness of Donald Trump met the awfulness of the Covid-19 pandemic, seen as five separate monologues.

Paul Rudnick has a long career as a playwright, with such plays as “Jeffrey,” his view of the AIDS epidemic and how an HIV-negative man deals with the crisis, “I Hate Hamlet,” and “The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told.” His screenplays include “Addams Family Values,” “In and Out,” and “Sister Act.” He is currently working on a musical version of “The Devil Wears Prada,” based on the screenplay, for which he was one of several script doctors.

Paul Rudnick is also the author of film reviews by Libby Waxman-Gellmer, which have appeared in both Premiere Magazine and The New Yorker.

Complete 67 minute podcast.

Review: “Follies” by James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim, at San Francisco Playhouse through September 10, 2022.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events still require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 and masks. Many venues will require proof of boosters. Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination status requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. All times Pacific Standard Time.

Book Stores

Live Theater Companies

Misc. Listings:

Playbill List of Streaming Theatre: Updated weekly, this is probably the best list you’ll find of national and international streaming plays and musicals. Each week has its own webpage, so scroll down.

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

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – August 11, 2022: Paul Rudnick 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.

In the interview, he discusses all of that, plus his views on satire, on current politics, and on researching during the pandemic.

Complete interview.

Martin Amis. In this four-minute excerpt from an interview recorded on October 29, 2014 while he was on tour for his book, “The Zone of Interest,” novelist and historian Martin Amis discusses ISIS and fascism, his old friend Christopher Hitchens, and conspiracy theorists.

Review: “Sanctuary City” at Berkeley Rep Peets Theatre through August 14, 2022.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events still require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 and masks. Many venues will require proof of boosters. Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination status requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. All times Pacific Standard Time.

Book Stores

Live Theater Companies

Misc. Listings:

Playbill List of Streaming Theatre: Updated weekly, this is probably the best list you’ll find of national and international streaming plays and musicals. Each week has its own webpage, so scroll down.

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

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – August 4, 2022: Christopher Moore appeared first on KPFA.