KPFA - Radio Wolinsky

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.

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Nancy Opel, Broadway veteran performer, in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky, recorded November 22, 2021.

Nancy Opel performs as the Ghost of Christmas Past in the touring production of A Christmas Carol, playing at the BroadwaySF Golden Gate Theatre through December 26, 2021.

Nancy Opel has appeared in several Broadway shows, starting with the original productions of Evita and Sunday in the Park with George, and later Wicked, Beautiful, Honeymoon in Vegas, Memphis, revivals of Fiddler on the Roof and Gypsy, and most recently, Urinetown. On television, she’s appeared in The Big C, and Law and Order.

In this interview she talks about preparing for her roles, singing in musicals, her work in Sunday in the Park and her current role in A Christmas Carol.

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Stephen Sondheim (1930 – November 26, 2021) in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, recorded in San Francisco, November 6, 2010.

Stephen Sondheim died at the age of 91 on November 26, 2021. A titan of American musical theater whose work both transcended and changed the genre itself, Sondheim was responsible for the lyrics for Gypsy and West Side Story — and his own shows, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, all became classics in the field. His lyrics were clever and deep – whether it be the torch song “Losing My Mind” from Follies, the history lesson, “Someone in a Tree” from Pacific Overtures, the gorgeous “Sunday” from Sunday in the Park, “Not While I’m Around” from Sweeney Todd, “Not a Day Goes By” from Merrily We Roll Along, “Send in the Clowns”… the list goes on.

In this interview recorded following the publication of Finishing The Hat, first of his two-volume autobiography/collected lyrics, he discusses elements of musical theater, his view on “Mary Poppins” as a musical, how he crafts lyrics, what’s important in acting in his shows, his experiences writing for the TV show “Topper,” and spending time on the set of “Beat the Devil” with John Huston and Humphrey Bogart, and more.

This interview will air on KPFA-FM in its entirety on Thursday, December 30, 2021 at 1 pm. A shorter version airs in syndication.

Stephen Sondheim interview, for Look, I Made a Hat, the second volume of his autobiography/collected lyrics, recorded November 29, 2011 in his townhouse in New York City.

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Robert Jordan (1948-2003), author of “The Wheel of Time” series of fantasy novels, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky on January 13, 2003 in the KPFA studios, during the tour for book X, “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.

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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.

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