KPFA - Bookwaves/Artwaves

Links to Announced Events

Robert Macfarlane, whose latest book is “Underland: A Deep Time Journey”, which comes out in trade paperback on August 18, 2020, is interviewed by host Richard Wolinsky.

The author of several books, including “Mountains of the Mind” and “The Old Ways,” Robert Macfarlane discusses his latest work, a travelogue through caves, glacial crevices, mines, and catacombs, as he examines the world below our feet.

Extended 43-minute Radio Wolinsky podcast. Photos: Richard Wolinsky.

Robert K. Massie, a journalist and historian whose focus was on the Russian House of Romanov, and who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 for his biography of Peter the Great, died on December 2, 2019 at the age of ninety. Along with a well-received biography of Catherine the Great, he was also known for his books about Czar Nicholas, the Tsarina Alexandra, and the final days of the Romanov dynasty in Ekaterinaberg in Siberia.

On November 4, 1995, Richard A. Lupoff and Richard Wolinsky had a chance to interview Robert K. Massie while he was on tour for his book, The Romanovs: The final Chapter, which dealt with events long after the Russian Revolution, from those claiming to be Romanov descendants to the disinterment of the Royal family’s bones after the Soviet Union fell.

Digitized, remastered and re-edited in August, 2020 by Richard Wolinsky.

Extended 38-minute Radio Wolinsky podcast.

Announcement Links

Book Passage. Conversations with authors features John Shea in conversation with Phi Cousinou on Saturday, August 15 at 4 pm Pacific, and Christine Montross in conversation with Susanna Calahan on Sunday August 16 also at 4 pm Pacific. And on Wednesday August 19, Darin Strauss in conversation with Kelly Corrigan.

.

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – August 13, 2020: Robert Macfarlane – Robert K. Massie appeared first on KPFA.

Links to announced on-line events below program description

Dave Eggers discusses his novel, “The Parade” with host Richard Wolinsky.

The author of several works of fiction and non-fiction, Dave Eggers is best known for the memoir “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is also the founder of McSweeney’s publishing house in San Francisco, and is an acclaimed journalist who writes for The Guardian and elsewhere.

“The Parade” takes place in an unnamed country as two contractors work to complete a road leading from a formerly rebellious part of the country into the capital city.

In this wide-ranging interview, he also talks about Trump rallies and their surprisingly diverse audiences, and about his career as a writer and screenwriter.

Recorded in the green room at KQED in San Francisco. Thanks to KQED and McSweeney’s. Complete 34-minute Radio Wolinsky podcast.

Suzanne Bradbeer, whose comedy “Shakespeare in Vegas” will be streamed as a Zoom reading with Broadway stars Karen Ziemba and Patrick Page, July 23, 6 pm -July 27, 2020, 6 pm on the TheatreWorks website, in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

Suzanne Bradbeer is the author of several plays, including “Confederates,” which played at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley during the 2016-2017 season, “The God Game,” and “The House That Jack Built.” She is a member of the Ensemble Theatre, a contributing writer at Speakeasy at Joe’d Pub (The Public Theatre) in New York, and a librettist for two musicals, “Cocus and Doot” from the Virtual Theatre Company and “Max and the Truffle Pig.”

“Shakespeare in Vegas” is the story of an out of work classically trained actress who is brought to Las Vegas by a shady impresario to offer Shakespearean plays to a somewhat unusual audience, and hijinks ensue. Complete 32-minute Bay Area Theater podcast.

Both photos: Jeff McMorrough

Central Works Script Club, where you read the script of a new play and send comments to the playwright. The July script is The Lady Matador’s Hotel by Christina Garcia. A podcast with the playwright, hosted by Patricial Milton, will be posted to the Central Works website on July 28.

.

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – July 23, 2020: Dave Eggers – Suzanne Bradbeer appeared first on KPFA.

Erik Larson, author of The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

Erik Larson is the author of several best-selling works of narrative non-fiction, including Dead Wake, In the Garden of Beasts and The Devil in the White City. His latest book takes us one year, from May 1940 to May 1941, a time which encompasses not only Winston Churchill’s first year as Prime Minister of England, but also the Blitz, the often daily air raids by the Germans on London, Coventry and other cities, which began at the same time and ended almost to the day one year later. We follow the Churchill family’s quotidian lives during that time, from watching to bombs to various wartime love affairs and break-ups, along with a look at how both the British and German governments worked during that year.

In the interview, Erik Larson discusses his source material, and compares some of what went on then to what’s happening today, particularly in terms of heroic and destitute patterns of leadership.

A ten-minute interview with Gore Vidal, from 1998, in which he discusses his film, theatre and stage work with Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff.

Complete 40-minute interview.

Announcements.

Central Works Script Club, where you read the script of a new play and send comments to the playwright. The July script is The Lady Matador’s Hotel by Christina Garcia. A podcast with the playwright, hosted by Patricial Milton, will be posted to the Central Works website on July 28.

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – July 16, 2020: Erik Larson, “The Splendid and the Vile” appeared first on KPFA.

Announcements.

Central Works Script Club, where you read the script of a new play and send comments to the playwright. The July script is The Lady Matador’s Hotel by Christina Garcia. A podcast with the playwright, hosted by Patricial Milton, will be posted to the Central Works website on July 28.

Barry Lopez, whose latest book is “Horizon”, now out in trade paperback, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

From Barry Lopez’s website:

From the National Book Award-winning author of the now-classic Arctic Dreams, a vivid, poetic, capacious work that recollects the travels around the world and the encounters–human, animal, and natural–that have shaped an extraordinary life.

Taking us nearly from pole to pole–from modern megacities to some of the most remote regions on the earth–and across decades of lived experience, Barry Lopez, hailed by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as “one of our finest writers,” gives us his most far-ranging yet personal work to date, in a book that moves indelibly, immersively, through his travels to six regions of the world: from Western Oregon to the High Arctic; from the Galápagos to the Kenyan desert; from Botany Bay in Australia to finally, unforgettably, the ice shelves of Antarctica. Extended 45-minute Radio Wolinsky podcast.

Special thanks to the Bay Area Book Festival and Cherilyn Parsons.

Margaret Atwood, discussing her novel “The Robber Bride,” recorded in San Francisco on November 24, 1993 with Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff, from the “Probabilities” archive.

The second of eight interviews with Margaret Atwood, author of such novels as The Handmaid’s Tale, Alias Graceand the Oryx and Crake trilogy. In this interview, she discusses her novel “The Robber Bride,” as well as what it feels like to be a Canadian author, her views on Philip K. Dick and Ursula K. LeGuin and science fiction and genres in general, and some of the thought processes behind writing her books.

The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – July 9, 2020: Barry Lopez – Margaret Atwood appeared first on KPFA.