KPFA - Radio Wolinsky

John Irving in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky, recorded in November 2009 while on tour for the novel “Last Night in Twisted River.”

John Irving is one of America’s most successful novelists. His first novel, “Setting Free The Bears,” was published in 1968. His novel, “The World According to Garp,” published in 1978, was an international best seller and made John Irving a household name. He solidified his reputation with “The Hotel New Hampshire”, “Cider House Rules”,” A Prayer for Owen Meaney” and “A Son of the Circus.”

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Ray Bradbury, the legendary author who passed away in 2012, sat down for an interview with Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff in 1992 at his home in Los Angeles.

Though called a science fiction or fantasy writer, Ray Bradbury spanned all genres, from poetry to mystery to mainstream fiction. Among his works include The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Farenheit 451 and The Illustrated Man.

This interview has been digitized and re-edited by Richard Wolinsky.

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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.

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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 seven 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.

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Carlos Ruiz Zafon, who died on June 19, 2020 in Los Angeles of colorectal cancer at the age of 55, burst onto the literary scene in 2001 with his novel, The Shadow of the Wind, first of an interrelated group of four novels titled The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, set in Barcelona, Spain, his birthplace. This interview, recorded in May, 2009, focuses on the second novel in the series, The Angel’s Game.  The next book in the series, The Prisoner of Heaven, came out in 2012, and the final book, The Labyrinth of Spirits, was published in 2018. Hosted by Richard Wolinsky.

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Ayana Mathis, author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky. Recorded in January 2013.

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie revolves around the matriarch of a black family of the Great Migration and her children and grandchildren, and was an Oprah Book Club selection. From the New York Times review: “Hattie Shepherd, the title character of Ayana Mathis’s piercing debut novel, is at once a tragic heroine with mythic dimensions and an entirely recognizable mother and wife trying to make ends meet. Her story, set in 20th-century Philadelphia, is one of terrible loss and grief and survival, a story of endurance in the face of disappointment, heartbreak and harrowing adversity.” This was a debut novel.

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