KPFA - Bookwaves/Artwaves

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Ralph Steadman is an illustrator and artist best known for his collaborations with the late Hunter S. Thompson in the two “Fear and Loathing” books. November 12, 2021 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” in Rolling Stone magazine.

His latest work is a collection of his artwork, “Ralph Steadman: A Life in Ink,” published by Chronicle Books. He is interviewed from England by host Richard Wolinsky.

Ralph Steadman got his start using a correspondence course before moving on to art school. After his first book, when he came to America, he was enlisted to work with Hunter S. Thompson and Rolling Stone magazine, and continued to work with Thompson over several years until Thompson’s suicide. He’s also worked on album jackets, and has illustrated several works, including “Alice in Wonderland,” “”Treasure Island and even a collection of Breaking Bad portraits.

He is, of course, also known for his trenchant political cartoons, as above.

illustration copyright Ralph Steadman and used by permission.

Complete 40-minute interview.

Robert Jordan (1948-2003), author of “The Wheel of Time” series of fantasy novels, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky on January1 3, 2003 in the KPFA studios, during the tour for book ten, “Crossroads of Twilight.”

​​​​​Robert Jordan, whose real name was James Oliver Rigny, Jr.n, is today best known for his high fantasy series, “The Wheel of Time”. He got his start in the 1980s, first with a pair of historical novels and a western, and then a series of novels featuring Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian..

But it wasn’t until January, 1990, with the publication of “The Eye of the World”, first installment of “The Wheel of Time,” that his career took off. At the time of this interview on January 3, 2003 in the KPFA Studios, he’d published the first ten volumes of what was projected to be a twelve book series, and was on tour for that tenth book, “Crossroads of Twilight.”

On March 23, 2006, Robert Jordan announced he’d been struck with a fatal heart illness and had at most four years to live. He continued work on the final book, “A Memory of Light,” and revealed plot details to his family in the months before he died. That final book was split into three books, starting with “The Gathering Storm,” and was completed by fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson, who had been chosen by his wife to finish the series. He died on September 18th, 2007, one month before his 59th birthday. The entire series was completed and the last volume, “A Memory of Light,” was published in 2013. This interview has never been heard in its entirety.

On November 19, 2021, the first three episodes of the eight-episode first season of an adaptation of “The Wheel of Time” appeared on Amazon Prime, with the five episodes following one at a time over the following weeks.

Complete 43-minute interview.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 (some may allow unvaccinated audience members with recent negative Covid tests), and masks. Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for mandates or closures before arrival.

Book Stores

Live Theater Companies

National, Misc:

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 – November 18, 2021: Ralph Steadman – Robert Jordan appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Vanessa Veselka, whose latest novel is “The Great Offshore Grounds,” in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

“The Great Offshore Grounds” is an epic novel about two sisters on a quest to find themselves during the upheavals of the current era. It’s a detailed examination of feminism, of lives lived on the edge, and of life in the parts of America we hear little about.

Vanessa Veselka’s first novel, “Zazen,” has just been reissued by Vintage. Published by a small press over a decade ago, it looks at the travails of young adults set against the backdrop of an ever-increasing political violence in America.

Vanessa Veselka, the daughter of journalist Linda Ellerbee, left home at the age of fifteen and early in her life lived the life of a homeless vagabond, eventually becoming a professional musician in the Pacific Northwest, a union organizer, and a writer of fiction.

Complete 51-minute interview.

Robert B. Parker (1932-2010) is known today as one of the most important writers of detective fiction during the final quarter of the 20th Century. His wise cracking Boston private eye, Spenser, Spenser’s sidekick Hawk, and girlfriend Susan Silverman have become iconic figures. When Parker died at the age of 77 in 2010, 38 Spenser novels had been published. Two more came out posthumously, and a third was completed by his agent. Novelist Ace Atkins has now written nine more Spenser novels. The series Spenser for Hire, starring Robert Urich and Avery Brooks ran for three seasons, and Brooks had a spin-off that ran for half a season, A Man Called Hawk. Several television movies were also made from Parker’s Spenser books, the most recent, Spenser Confidential, is actually based on one of Ace Atkins’ Spenser novels.

This interview hosted by Richard Wolinaky and Lawrence Davidson, was recorded in the spring of 1981 while Robert B. Parker was on tour for his novel, Early Autumn, and marked the first Probabilities interview with a mystery writer. His career hadn’t advanced under his first publisher, Houghton-Mifflin, and he switched to Delacorte, and Parker’s audience began to grow. This was his seventh Spenser novel, and his eighth over all (Wilderness had come out late in 1980 and Looking for Rachel Wallace was his first under the new contract. At the time of the interview, his first five novels were all out of print in paperback.

Though he says in the interview his detective fiction would be limited to the Spenser series, eventually he branched out to write another series of nine books featuring Jesse Stone, a former LAPD detective who becomes the police chief in a small New Enngland town, and six novels featuring Sunny Randall, a female detective. Eventually there was some crossover between the three series. Along the way, he also wrote a handful of westerns, the Cole and Hitch series, and two books featuring Raymond Chandler’s detective, Philip Marlow. When Parker died in 2010 of a sudden heart attack, the family decided to let other writers continue the Spenser, Stone and western series, which go on to this day.

The recording was digitized, remastered and re-edited in November 2021.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 (some may allow unvaccinated audience members with recent negative Covid tests), and masks. Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for mandates or closures before arrival.

Bay Area Book Festival   Festival events streaming on-demand.

Alter Theatre. Brer Peach, an audio play by Andrew Saito, on-line October 21-December 12.

National, Misc:

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 – November 11, 2021: Vanessa Veselka – Robert B. Parker appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Carl Hiaasen is a novelist best known for writing humorous and satiric crime thrillers set in Florida. His latest novel, Squeeze Me, satirizes life in Palm Beach during the era of the last president, and features a thinly disguised Trump waddling through his digs at Mar a Lago, here called Casa Bellacosa. He is also a regular columnist for The Miami Herald, appearing every Sunday to discuss political and social issues. He is interviewed by host Richard Wolinsky.

In this in-depth interview, he discusses the writing of Squeeze Me and how difficult it has been to create satire during the Trump years, his views on the current Governor of Florida, and the process of writing comic thrillers.

Complete 44-minute interview.

P.D. James (1920-2014) was considered, along with Agatha Christie, Josephine Tey and Dorothy L. Sayers, one of the greatest British mystery writers. Most of her books involved a police commander and poet named Adam Dalgliesh, though she wrote several other novels, including the science fiction novel, “Children of Men,” which became a much-admired film in 2006.

Two years before that novel was published, on February 1, 1990, Richard Lupoff and Richard Wolinsky interviewed P.D. James in the KPFA studios while she was on tour for her most recent Dalgliesh novel, “Devices and Desires.”  Most of the interview centered on her career.

After the interview, she wrote several more Dalgliesh novels, and concluded her career in 2011 with a murder mystery sequel to “Pride and Prejudice, “Death Comes to Pemberley,” which is available streaming through PBS Masterpieces, Amazon and Apple TV. The Dalgliesh adaptations are not currently streaming. “Children of Men” is available to rent on several services.

Complete 44 minute interview

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 (some may allow unvaccinated audience members with recent negative Covid tests), and masks. Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors’ positive COVID tests. Check the venue for mandates or closures before arrival.

Bay Area Book Festival   Festival events streaming on-demand.

Alter Theatre. Brer Peach, an audio play by Andrew Saito, on-line October 21-December 12.

National, Misc:

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: Carl Hiaasen – P.D. James appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Richard Powers, author of “Bewilderment,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, recorded via zencastr on September 27, 2021.

Richard Powers is one of America’s most distinguished novelists. In 2006, his novel The Echo Maker, won the National Book Award and was a finmalist for the Pulitzer, and his most recent novel, The Overstory, was short-listed for the Booker Prize and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

“Bewilderment” is the story of a father and son relationship, set in a world slightly different from our own, in which a president much like Donald Trump won re-election. The father is an astrobiologist exploring planets based on spectroscopic input whose wife died before the book opens; he is dealing with his continued grief and with issues involving his brilliant son who has a host of psychological issues. Long-listed for the National Book Award, and the subject of excellent reviews, “Bewilderment” is a meditation on grief, on love, on science and on the wonders of nature.

Complete 43-minute interview.

Michael Gene Sullivan, whose play “The Great Khan” runs live and streaming at San Francisco Playhouse through November 13th, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

A principal member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe since 1988, and currently the Playwright in Residence (“The Great Khan” is co-produced with the Mime Troupe), Michael Gene Sullivan has also been an actor and director, both with the Mime Troupe and in several companies around the Bay Area, including Berkeley Rep, A.C.T., TheatreWorks and San Francisco Playhouse.

As he explains in the interview, he uses his playwrighting to further the cause of social activism, and focuses attention particularly on race and on the narratives we learn, and the narratives we can unlearn.

Complete 31-minute interview.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 (some may allow unvaccinated audience members with recent negative Covid tests), and masks. Check the venue before arrival.

Bay Area Book Festival   Festival events streaming on-demand.

Alter Theatre. Brer Peach, an audio play by Andrew Saito, on-line October 21-December 12.

National, Misc:

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 – October 28, 2021: Richard Powers – Michael Gene Sullivan appeared first on KPFA.

Links to assorted local theater & book venues

Daniel Handler, author of “Poison for Breakfast” by Lemony Snicket, in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

Daniel Handler writes young adult/children’s books under the name “Lemony Snicket,” along with novels for adults under his own name. Lemony Snicket was narrator for the 13-book “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” and “wrote” several other books as well. “A Series of Unfortunate Events” was a not so successful film and a very successful Netflix TV series.

In this in-depth interview, he talks about how he came to write “Poison for Breakfast,” his love of noir, the origins of characters in “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” his early years as a writer, and how he handled the pandemic shutdown. Recorded at his home, this is the first Radio Wolinsky in eighteen months created as an in-person interview.

Photos: Richard Wolinsky.

Complete 43-minute interview.

Tim Bond, Artistic Director of TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

Shortly after Tim Bond was hired and began working with Robert Kelley, who founded TheatreWorks in 1970 and spent the next fifty years as Artistic Director, the pandemic hit, and the company had to shut down its season.

Formerly the Associate Artistic Director at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Producing Director at Syracuse Stage and Syracuse University Department of Drama, and Professor at the University of Washington School of Drama, Tim Bond has spent a distinguished career as a director in several different venues.

In this interview recorded on October 19, 2021, he talks about his career, about taking TheatreWorks through the pandemic shutdown, the rise of streaming, and the effects of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, as well as gives a rundown of the upcoming slate of plays for the 2021 season.

Lizard Boy, a new musical, plays at Mountainview Center for the Arts through October 31. Streaming On Demand through November 7, 2021. Link for more information.

Complete 30-minute interview.

Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links

Note: Most in-person events require proof of full vaccination for all audience members over 12 (some may allow unvaccinated audience members with recent negative Covid tests), and masks. Check the venue before arrival.

Bay Area Book Festival   Festival events streaming on-demand.

Alter Theatre. Brer Peach, an audio play by Andrew Saito, on-line October 21-December 12.

National, Misc:

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 – October 21, 2021: Daniel Handler – Tim Bond appeared first on KPFA.