KPFA - Radio Wolinsky

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.

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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 podcast is the first airing of the complete discussion, and 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

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Jan Morris (1926-November 20, 2020), in conversation with Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff, recorded November 16, 2001 while she was on tour for “Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere.”

Jan Morris was a noted travel writer and historian, and a leading figure in the trans world. As James Morris, she accompanied Edmund Hillary on the first expedition to the summit of Mount Everest. Before and after her transition in 1964 to the time of her death, Jan Morris had published 18 travel books, six history books including a three volume history of the British Empire, eight memoirs including the best-selling Conundrum, two novels and twelve collections of essays.

True to her word in the interview, “Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere” was the last full-length book Jan Morris would write. Collections of new and old essays were published in 2004 and 2010, an illustrated essay on the Battleship Yamoto in 2018, and two volumes of late in life diaries were published, the first in 2018, “In My Mind’s Eye,” and posthumously in 2021, “Thinking Again.”

Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff interviewed her twice; the first time on August 8, 1999 while she was in San Francisco for a conference, and here now, a second time on November 16, 2001 while on tour for “Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere.” This interview was digitized, remastered and edited in November, 2020 by Richard Wolinsky. The complete interview has never been published or aired until now.

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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.

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

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Susan Hill, author of “The Woman in Black” and other novels, in conversation by phone with host Richard Wolinsky.

The Woman in Black, a play by Stephen Mallatrat and directed by Robin Herford is playing in San Francisco at ACT’s Strand Theater through January 16th, and for more information you can go to act-sf.org, in New York through March 13, and in an open-ended run on the West End in London.

Susan Hill has written over thirty novels, most of them stand-alones in the gothic ghost story genre, and eleven crime novels featuring her detective Simon Serrailer, the most recent being The Benefit of Hindsight, published in 2020, with A Change of Circumstance to be published in March, 2022. She’s also written six collections of short stories, an autobiography among nine non-fiction works, five plays, and 13 Children’s Books. She became a Dame of the British Empire in 2020.

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