KPFA - Bookwaves/Artwaves

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Art Spiegelman, co-editorr of the series “Little Lit,” and author of “MAUS” and “MAUS II”, in conversation with  Richard A. Lupoff, aired originally on December 7, 2000.

On the day before Holocaust Remembrance Day, the McMinn County Board of Education voted 10-0 to ban Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel memoir of his father’s experiences during the Holocaust, MAUS, from county classrooms.

One of the most important records of the Nazi extermination of Jews during World War II, MAUS, by virtue of his graphic nature — as well as its use of mice as Jews and cats as Nazis, has been a necessary history book since its publication in 1980.

In this interview aired on December 7, 2000 on Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff’s Cover to Cover program (the forerunner to Bookwaves) while Richard Wolinsky was on vacation, Spiegelman mostly discusses “Little Lit,” which translates fairy tales into comic book form. He also talks about the history of comics, about underground comics, and about MAUS. Richard A. Lupoff (1935-2020), along with co-hosting Probabilities and Cover to Cover with Richard Wolinsky, was a noted science fiction and mystery writer, and the author of a history of comic books, All In Color for A Dime.

This interview has not aired in over twenty years, and was digitized and edited in 2022 by Richard Wolinsky.

Image from Art Spiegelman’s inscription on Richard Wolinsky’s copy of MAUS II.

Complete interview.

Octavia Butler (1947-2006) in conversation with Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff, recorded in 1983.

Octavia Butler, who died in 2006 at the age of 58, was one of the giants of modern science fiction. Winner of multiple awards for her short fiction and novels, her work explored issues involving gender, race, and power and featured protagonists often at odds with their societies. At the time she began writing, there were no other African-American women writing in the field, but she was not merely a pioneer: she was a master of the genre. Her first novel, Patternmaster, was published in 1976 and was followed by a series of sequels. Along with those books, she wrote a stand-alone novel, Kindred in 1979. It’s a masterpiece, a time travel story of a modern African American woman suddenly finding herself in the racist antebellum South.

By 1983, with her handful of novels and a growing reputation within the field, she made a visit to a science fiction convention in San Jose California, where she met up with Richard Wolinsky and his co-host Richard A. Lupoff. At that time, she had yet to win her first Hugo or Nebula Award, and was still unknown outside the field. This interview was the first of two recorded with Octavia Butler.

Complete 1983 Interview.  Complete 1998 Interview.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 and masks. Many venues will require proof of boosters starting February 1, 2022. Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Other shows have already been cancelled (see below). 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 – February 3, 2022: Art Spiegelman – Octavia Butler appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Andrew Vachss (1942-December 27, 2021), author of several noir novels that focus on child abuse and child sexual abuse, in conversation for Probabilities with hosts Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff, recorded June 27, 1991 in the KPFA studios while he was on tour for his novel Sacrifice.

The nineteen eighties and nineties presented an explosion of noir and detective fiction, led by such stalwarts as Elmore Leonard, Robert B. Parker, Sue Grafton, James Ellroy, Sara Paretsky … the list goes on. Among those first rate practitioners, was Andrew Vachss, who died on December 27th, 2021 at the age of 79.

In Vachss’ early novels, which all featured a protagonist named Burke, he established not merely a unique character with a unique background and unusual associates, but a way to bring the public’s attention to child abuse, and particularly child sexual abuse.

He hit the pavement running with Flood in 1985 and followed that novel with Strega, Blue Belle, Hard Candy and Blossom, before Sacrifice and the book tour that led to this interview. This interview was digitized and edited on January 7th, 2022.

To date, none of Andrew Vacchs novels have hit film or television (though IMDDb does list a short film from 1995). At the time of his death, Andrew Vacches had written a total of eighteen Burke novels, culminating in Another Life in 2008, nine additional novels, five collections of short stories, nine more comics and graphic novels, along with three plays. A film from one of his Cross novels was in the conversation in recent years, but no new information is forthcoming. Richard A. Lupoff and Richard Wolinsky would interview him once more, in 1995, while he was on tour for his novel, Footsteps of the Hawk.

Andrew Vachss Wikipedia page.

Charles Yu, whose novel Interior Chinatown just won the 2020 National Book Award for fiction, is interviewed by host Richard Wolinsky.

Interior Chinatown takes place in a meta-world in which Hollywood’s Chinese stereotypes are portrayed by Asian immigrants and second-generation Asian Americans in films and TV shows. The book uses tropes from screenplays as well as prose fiction to illuminate these tropes, switching between narrative, entertainment history, and polemic in a highly original way.

Charles Yu is the author of two previous short-story collections and one novel, has worked as an attorney, and also has worked in the writers’ room of several television shows, most notably during the first season of HBO’s Westworld.

Complete 35-minute Radio Wolinsky podcast.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 and masks. Many venues will require proof of boosters starting February 1, 2022. Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Other shows have already been cancelled (see below). 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 – January 27, 2022: Andrew Vachss – Charles Yu appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Kathy Geritz, film curator at Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, discusses the films of Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambety with host Richard Wolinsky. A series of films by and about the director run from Friday, January 21st through Sunday February 6th.

Djibril Diop Mambety (1945-1998) directed two features, Touki Bouki and Hyenas, and a handful of short subjects, but despite his limited output, his singular style and bold looks at Senegalese life and the divisions between wealthy and poor, and the legacy of colonialism make him a major figure in world cinema and, of course, African cinema.

These films, plus documentaries about the life and work of Mambety, are being shown on different nights at BAM/PFA.

Touki Bouki and his first short, Contras City, can be found on the Criterion app. Hyenas, two of his shorts, Le Franc and The Little Girl Who Sold The Sun, along with a documentary, A Thousand Suns, are on the free Kanopy app from local libraries. A look at the making of Touki Bouki, The Prince of Colobane, is available on YouTube.

Complete 36-minute interview

Mambety Wikipedia page.

Joan Didion (1934-2021), noted essayist, novelist, screenwriter social critic and journalist, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, recorded in the KPFA studios on October 21, 2003.

Joan Didion died on December 23, 2021 at the age of 87. A chornicler of of the American zeitgeist, she was the author of several novels, including Play It As It Lays and The Last Thing He Wanted, the brilliant book-length essay on grief, The Year of Magical Thinking, and several collections of essays including Slouching Toward Bethlehem. Her screenplays include The Panic In Needle Park, True Confessions, and the 1976 A Star Is Born, most of them co-written with her husband, John Gregory Dunne.

This interview was conducted while she was on tour for her collection of essays, Where I Was From. Sadly, due to technical difficulties, only the first part of the interview was recorded before both the computer and back-up failed.

Cover photo: Joan Didion at the Brooklyn Film Festival, 2008. Creative Commons.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 and masks; San Francisco Symphony and BroadwaySF will require proof of boosters starting February 1, 2022. Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Other shows have already been cancelled (see below). 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 – January 20, 2022: Kathy Geritz – Joan Didion appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Itamar Moses, playwright and librettist for “The Band’s Visit,” in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky, recorded January 10, 2022.

Itamar Moses has written several plays, including “Yellowjackets,” which was performed in 2008 at Berkeley Rep, and the books for three musicals. He won a Tony Award for “The Band’s Visit,” which plays at BroadwaySF‘s Golden Gate Theater through February 6, 2021.

Raised in Berkeley (and his parents kept the radio tuned to KPFA), Itamar Moses attended Yale and the Tisch School at NYU. Along with his work as a playwright, he served in the writing room for Men of a Certain Age, Boardwalk Empire and The Affair. In this interview, he discusses, in depth, the creation of “The Band’s Visit,” and takes us to the writing room of Boardwalk Empire. He also discusses his other work and his career path as a playwright. The interview concludes with his views on diversity in theater and his own work through the pandemic.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 and masks; San Francisco Symphony and BroadwaySF will require proof of boosters starting February 1, 2022. Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Club Fugazi‘s new show, Dear San Francisco, is closed until January 7, 2022 due to a breakthrough case in the cast. Other shows have already been cancelled (see below). 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 – January 13, 2022: Itamar Moses, “The Band’s Visit,” 2022 appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Anne Rice died of a stroke on December 11, 2021. This career-ranging interview was recorded on December 2, 2016 at Books Inc. in Opera Plaza in San Francisco, while she was on tour for her latest novel, “Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis.”

Anne Rice achieved success in 1976 with her novel “Interview with the Vampire,” which spawned a series of novels titled “The Vampire Chronicles” and became a world-wide phenomenon. Along the way, she also wrote several other novels including the Mayfair Witches trilogy, Cry to Heaven, a series of books under pseudonyms, and the screenplay for “Interview with the Vampire” was turned into a successful film starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.

By 2003, she’d written ten novels in the Vampire Chronicles and took a break, writing novels on the life of Jesus, on angels, and on werewolves. In 2014, she returned to her vampire hero, Lestat, with Prince Lestat. Prince Lestat and the Realm of Atlantis was the second in this latest series.

Since the interview was recorded, Anne Rice published one more Lestat novel, Blood Communion: A Tale of Prince Lestat in 2018, which is her last solo novel to date, though it’s possible there are more to come. There are two novels written in collaboration with her son, novelist Christopher Rice, sequels to her 1989 novel Ramses the Damned. The Passion of Cleopatra was released in 2017 and The Reign of Osiris is scheduled for 2022. In gestation since the time of this 2016  interview, new television series based on the Mayfair Witches and The Vampire Chronicles have passed through several hands, and are now being developed by AMC.

Complete Interview.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 and masks; San Francisco Symphony and BroadwaySF will require proof of boosters starting February 1, 2022. Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Club Fugazi‘s new show, Dear San Francisco, is closed until January 7, 2022 due to a breakthrough case in the cast. Other shows have already been cancelled (see below). 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 – January 6, 2022: Anne Rice (1941-2021) appeared first on KPFA.