KPFA - Radio Wolinsky

Katya Cengel, whose latest book is “Exiled: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to California and Back” is interviewed by host Richard Wolinsky. She discusses the plight of Southeast Asian refugees, from their lives under the genocidal watch of the Khmer Rouge to their difficult times in the United States, to the fear and possibility of deportation under ICE.

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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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Justine Bateman, actress and director, author of “Fame: The Hijacking of Reality,” in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

Justine Bateman jump-started her career at the age of sixteen with the role of Mallory in the hit television show “Family Ties.” She went on to other television shows, films and stage presentations before turning to directing and getting university degrees after she turned forty. Her book “Fame” details, from personal experience, what it’s like to be famous at an early age, how one deals with fame, and how a member of the public deals with a famous person. She details the ups and downs of fame, from the first time fans take notice to the later times, when nobody takes notice. Her latest projects involve film direction and creating content in new forms of media.

Special thanks to Green Apple Books in San Francisco, where the interview was recorded.

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Frank Bonham (1914-1988), author of stories and novels in the western genre from the pulp magazine era to the 1980s, author of young adult novels from the early sixties to his death, also author of stories in other fields, including mysteries and science fiction, interviewed in the fall of 1986 by KPFA’s Lawrence Davidson, assisted by author Bill Pronzini for the Probabilities radio program. Digitized, remastered and re-edited in December 2018 by Richard Wolinsky.

Richard Wolinsky:

In late November 2018, I attended John Fisher’s one-man show, “A History of World War II” at the Marsh in San Francisco, (the show runs on Thursdays and Saturdays through February 2, 2019. For more information: and tickets).  During his monologue, John mentioned a book written for juveniles that started his obsession with the Second World War by a writer named Frank Bonham.

I remembered that years ago, my former co-host, the late Lawrence Davidson of Cody’s Books, had interviewed Bonham, whom he’d known primarily as a writer of western novels and pulp magazine stories. This was one of many interviews with former pulp magazine writers that were heard on the Probabilities radio program on KPFA in the 1970s and 1980s. After pulling out the undated tape, recorded in the fall of 1986 and not heard since its initial airing in January, 1987, I discovered that Lawrence’s co-host was Bill Pronzini, the prolific author as of now of more than 80 mystery and historical novels, and some 350 short stories. I’d assumed as I digitized and edited the original 2-part program that Bonham was forgotten today. Not so: a quick look on Amazon reveals that over a dozen of his books are still in print at the end of  2018, including his one best-seller, a young adult novel called Durango Street.

From the Goodreads website:

<< Frank Bonham (February 25, 1914 – 1988) was an author of Westerns and young adult novels. Bonham wrote 48 novels, as well as TV scripts. Bonham was born in Los Angeles. He was a UCLA graduate. Bonham was known for his works for young adults written in the 1960s, with tough, realistic urban settings, including The Nitty Gritty and Durango Street, as well as for his westerns. Several of his works have been published posthumously, many of which were drawn from his pulp magazine stories, originally published between 1941 and 1952. Durango Street was an ALA Notable Book.>>

The mystery novel he had just completed and discusses at the end of the interview appears never to have been published.

Bill Pronzini’s latest novels are The Violated, a psychological suspense novel and Give A Damn Jones, an off-beat westers, and coming up The Flim Flam Affair, number eight in the Carpenter & Quincannon series of historical mysteries set in San Francisco in the 1890s.

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Octavia Butler died at the age of 58 in 2006. At the time of her death, she’d published 16 books, with another volume of uncollected stories published posthumously. The author of several acclaimed science fiction and fantasy novels, most notably Kindred and The Parable of the Sower, her reputation has only grown in the twelve years since her death.

While a collection of interviews was published in 2009, very few audio conversations exist today. Richard Lupoff and Richard Wolinsky conducted two of those conversations. The first, early in her career in 1983, was uploaded as a Radio Wolinsky podcast in May, 2017. The interview, recorded in November 1998, came on the heels of the publication of “Parable of the Talents,” a sequel to “Parable of the Sower.”   There’s little question from this interview that not only was she a great writer, but she also predicted the politics of today in a way that seems utterly uncanny. There’s a reason people are going back to her books, and her reputation continues to soar.

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