KPFA - Bookwaves/Artwaves

Links to on-line and streaming local theater & book events

Larry McMurtry (1936-2021) in conversation with Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff, recorded October 13, 1994 while on tour with Diana Ossana for their collaborative novel, Pretty Boy Floyd.

Larry McMurtry, the regional novelist who became an iconic American literary figure, died of congestive heart failure at the age of 84 on March 25, 2021. The author of such classic novels as Lonesome Dove, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment and Desert Rose, he also wrote over thirty screenplays, many of them in collaboration with Diana Ossana, with whom he lived for several decades, including Brokeback Mountain, for which they won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay

Rarely one to go on a book tour, Larry McMurtry, along with Diana Ossana, showed up at the KPFA studios to publicize Pretty Boy Floyd, and it was there on, October 13, 1994, that Richard A. Lupoff and Richard Wolinsky had a chance to talk with both of them about their book, and with Larry McMurtry about his career. This program contains excerpts from Larry McMurtry’s side of the discussion and does not include Diana Ossana. The complete interview, including Diana Ossana, can be found as a Radio Wolinsky podcast.

In these excerpts from the interview, Larry McMurtry discusses the origins of Lonesome Dove, his focuses on small town Midwestern life and on the nature of family, on his feelings about film and television adaptations of his books, and about how he saw himself as a writer. This interview was digitized, remastered and edited by Richard Wolinsky in March 2021.

Nathan Englander, whose latest novel is kaddish.com, now out in trade paperback, in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

The author of two other novels, including Ministry of Special Cases, and two acclaimed short story collections, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges and What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank talks about his latest book, which deals with the intersection of religion and technology, as a religious Jew who can’t bring himself to say Kaddish for his late father every day contracts with an on-line company that will do it for him.

:The complete 41 minute version of this program can be found as a Radio Wolinsky podcast.

Announcement Links

Bay Area Book Festival May 1-9: Virtual Festival; Kazuo Ishiguro, Sunday May 2, 2 pm.

American Conservatory Theatre Act Out Loud, Virtual Play Reading Series: Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw, April 12-16, The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder, April 26 – May 2.

National, Misc:

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

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – April 8, 2021: Larry McMurtry – Nathan Englander appeared first on KPFA.

Links to on-line and streaming local theater & book events

A conversation with Paul Kantner, hosted by Richard A. Lupoff and Richard Wolinsky, recorded in Marin County, February 9, 1984.

Paul Kantner, who died on January 28, 2016 at the age of 74, was one of the founding members of the great San Francisco band, Jefferson Airplane, and later one of the founders of Jefferson Starship. A legendary vocalist and songwriter, Kantner was known for his melding of rock and roll and science fiction in his lyrics.

On February 9th, 1984, science fiction author Richard A. Lupoff was hired by Heavy Metal magazine to interview Paul about the relationship of science fiction and rock and roll, accompanied by Richard Wolinsky, his co-host for the Probabilities radio program on KPFA.

The interview was recorded in a barn, and the microphone was set on a tree stump halfway between the three. The interview was not meant for airplay, and the conversation was more free-ranging than focused.

For the remastering, the recording used noise reduction, and the flanging re-filtered if the dialogue remained audible. Levels were reformulated and filters were added using Cool Edit 2000 and Adobe Audition. Special thanks to Charlie Cockey and Dennis Wein

Frederik Pohl (1918-2013) recorded at the Octocon Science Fiction Convention, October 15-16, 1978. Interviewers: Richard Wolinsky, Richard A. Lupoff and Lawrence Davidson, for KPFA’s Probabilities radio program. Digitized, remastered and re-edited February, 2021 by Richard Wolinsky. This interview has not been heard in any form since 1978.

Frederik Pohl, who died in 2013 at the age of 93 in September, 2013, did almost everything in the world of science fiction, as a writer, an agent, and a magazine and book editor. He grew up in Brooklyn, began writing at an early age, and in his twenties was a member of a leftist group of science fiction writers known as The Futurians, publishing for pennies a word in the sf pulps of the era. In 1937, in order to make money, he became an agent, and two years later a pulp magazine editor himself, often buying his own stories along with collaborations with various other writers, all under pseudonyms. In the late 1960s, he became editor of Galaxy Magazine, and its sister publication, Worlds of If, and in the 1970s became the science fiction editor at Bantam Books which he left shortly before this interview.

In the mid 1970s, Fred Pohl  emerged as one of science fictions preeminent novelists with Man Plus in 1976 and Gateway in 1977. In 1978, on the heels of novelist Damon Knight’s memoir, The Futurians, he came out with his own memoir, The Way the Future Was.

And that was where his career stood when the three of us interviewed him. We were all still new at interviewing, particularly in placement of the microphone.

Fred Pohl’s success continued for many years after this interview. Jem, published in 1979, won the National Book Award the only year there was an award for science fiction. The sequel to Gateway, Beyond the Blue Event Horizon was a finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1980. In all, there eventually were seven novels in the Gateway  (Heechee) series, and after 1979, all told, he wrote 17 more novels, the last being The Lives He Led, published in 2011, along with several collections, even more collaborations, and some non-fiction as well. At the time of his death at 93 in 2013, he was working on a second memoir, which has to date not been published.

NOTES. Judy Lynn Del Rey was the sf editor at Ballantine Books starting in the early 1970s and soon had her own imprint, Del Rey Books (in collaboration with her husband, writer Lester Del Rey). Judith Merrill was a writer and anthologist, noted for her Year’s Best SF Stories collections, which she edited from 1956 to 1968. John Michel was a key member of the Futurians who never fulfilled his promise. John W. Campbell was the editor of Astounding Stories, later Analog, from 1937 into the 1970s, and is credited with discovering such writers as Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. His influence on science fiction was all-encompassing, even as his politics were, as Isaac Asimov quipped, somewhere to the right of Hitler. Horace Gold was the first editor of Galaxy, before Fred Pohl. It was the magazine that brought literary style into science fiction. Other names mentioned are Anthony Boucher and F. Francis McComas, the first editors of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, F&SF.

:The complete 40 minute version of this program can be found as a Radio Wolinsky podcast.

NOTE ON THIS ARCHIVE: The program that aired on April 1, 2021 was a repeat of the previous week’s program, due to a technical error. This particular program has never aired.

Announcement Links

Bay Area Book Festival May 1-9: Virtual Festival; Kazuo Ishiguro, Sunday May 2, 2 pm.

American Conservatory Theatre Act Out Loud, Virtual Play Reading Series: Trouble in Mind by Alice Childress, March 29 – April 4; Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw, April 12-16, The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder, April 26 – May 2.

National, Misc:

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

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – April 1, 2021: Paul Kantner – Frederik Pohl appeared first on KPFA.

Links to on-line and streaming local theater & book events

Margaret Maron (1938-2021) in conversation with Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff on the Probabilities radio program on KPFA, recorded June 6, 1994 while she was on tour for the third Deborah Knott mystery, Shooting at Loons.

Margaret Maron died of a stroke on February 23, 2021 at the age of 82. At the time of her death she’d written twenty Judge Deborah Knott mysteries, nine Sigrid Harald mysteries, two other novels, and two collections of short stories. Along with writing about complex women characters, her books also focused on her native North Carolina, its life and its politics.

Following the interview, her next book was in the Sigrid Harald series, Fugitive Colors, published in 1995. She stayed away from that series until 2017, when she wrote Take Out, which turned out to be her last novel. She won an Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1993 and for Best Short Story in 2002 and was named a Grandmaster by the Mystery Writers of America in 2013.

After Shooting at Loons, she wrote seventeen more Deborah Knott novels. Also, over the course of her career, she became a major spokeswoman and advocate for the organization Sisters in Crime, and served as its first Vice President, and later its President.  Despite the success of her novels, to date none of her books or stories have been adapted for film or television, according to IMDb.

This interview was digitized and re-edited in March, 2021 and represents the first time it has been heard in over a quarter century. Extended 40-minute Radio Wolinsky podcast.

Sue Grafton died on December 28, 2017 at the age of seventy-seven. Best known as the author of a series of mysteries featuring the detective Kinsey Millhone, Sue Grafton was at the forefront of the Sisters in Crime movement — women authors who wrote crime fiction – starting with her first mystery, A is for Alibi in 1982, and continuing the alphabet through Y is for Yesterday. The final book in the series, Z is for Zero, was never written.

On April 17, 1989, on a book tour for F is for Fugitive, and again on April 13, 1992, for I Is for Innocent, Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff  spoke with Sue Grafton about the history of her career and her writing process. This program is taken from those two interviews.

Complete 1989 interview

Complete 1992 interview

:The complete 39 minute version of this program can be found as a Radio Wolinsky podcast.

Announcement Links

Bay Area Book Festival May 1-9: Virtual Festival; Kazuo Ishiguro, Sunday May 2, 2 pm.

American Conservatory Theatre Act Out Loud, Virtual Play Reading Series: Trouble in Mind by Alice Childress, March 29 – April 4; Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw, April 12-16, The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder, April 26 – May 2.

National, Misc:

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

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – March 25, 2021: Margaret Maron – Sue Grafton appeared first on KPFA.

Links to on-line and streaming local theater & book events

Lauren Gunderson, whose play The Catastrophist is currently being streamed on the Marin Theatre Company website through July 24, 2021, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky. Recorded March 10, 2021.

Lauren Gunderson is the most produced living American playwright, and currently several of her works can be streamed on-line.

The Flats, which was co-written with Cleavon Smith and Jonathan Spector, can be streamed at the Aurora Theatre website.

Her one person play, Natural Shocks, can also be streamed through the Marin Theatre website or directly through Soundcloud.

You can listen to Audible Theater’s production of The Half Life of Marie Curie starring Kate Mulgrew on audible.com at this address. A filmed version of Marie Curie was available at Theatre squared, and may have extended past March 14, 2021. Check the website for details.

Katya Cengel, whose latest book is a memoir, “From Chernobyl with Love: Reporting from the Ruins of the Soviet Union,” is interviewed by host Richard Wolinsky.

“From Chernobyl with Love” tells the story of Katya Cengel’s years, around the turn of this century, as a reporter in Latvia and Ukraine — what life was like for a young American journalist dealing with countries on the brink of ruin, halfway between what they were as republics inside the Soviet Union, and halfway toward what they will become as independent countries. It also includes stories about her health issues while in the Ukraine, bribery, visits to other countries including Moldova, and about her reportage on Chernobyl, years after the meltdown.

:The complete 47 minute version of this interview can be found as a Radio Wolinsky podcast.

Announcement Links

Bay Area Book Festival May 1-9: Virtual Festival; Kazuo Ishiguro, Sunday May 2, 2 pm.

American Conservatory Theatre Act Out Loud, Virtual Play Reading Series: Trouble in Mind by Alice Childress, March 29 – April 4; Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw, April 12-16, The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder, April 26 – May 2.

National, Misc:

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

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – March 18, 2021: Lauren Gunderson – Katya Cengel appeared first on KPFA.

Links to on-line and streaming local theater & book events

Jane Smiley, whose latest novel is “Perestroika in Paris,” in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

The author of sixteen adult fiction novels, two short story collections, five non-fiction works plus several young adult novels, Jane Smiley is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of “A Thousand Acres,” and more recently The Last Hundred Years Trilogy. She current teaches creative writing.

“Perestroika in Paris” is a departure from her other works. Clearly an adult novel, it focuses on several animals on the loose in Paris in 2008, including a horse named Perestroika (Paras), based in part on Jane Smiley’s own horse of the same name, a dog named Frida (based in part on Jane Smiley’s own German short-haired pointer) and an array of other creatures, all of whom communicate with one another, and create a bond with a young orphan named Etienne, who lives with his elderly grandmother near the Eiffel Tower.

As Jane points out in the interview, in an era when we are overwhelmed with angst in politics and during the pandemic, a book that takes us far away can often seem like a necessary relief.

Extended 39-minute Radio Wolinsky podcast.

Jeanette Winterson discusses her latest novel, “Frankissstein: A Love Story” which concerns Mary Shelley, modern A.I., Alcor life extension and gender issues. Hosted by Richard Wolinsky.

Jeanette Winterson is the author of several novels, including Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and the memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? This interview was recorded in December, 2019.

:The complete 43-minute interview can be found as a Radio Wolinsky podcast.

Announcement Links

Bay Area Book Festival Following the Joy with LaRayia Gaston, Tuesday March 16, 7 pm; May 1-9: Virtual Festival; Kazuo Ishiguro, Sunday May 2, 2 pm.

American Conservatory Theatre Act Out Loud, Virtual Play Reading Series: Trouble in Mind by Alice Childress, March 29 – April 4; Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw, April 12-16, The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder, April 26 – May 2.

National, Misc:

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

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – March 11, 2021: Jane Smiley – Jeanette Winterson appeared first on KPFA.