Author Author

Many people know John Mauceri from his work as conductor for the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. What is less known is that the orchestra was re-created after a forty-year gap just for him to conduct. He has conducted around the world in a variety of classical formats, and is also an academic and an author. I spoke to him at his home in New York for his latest book, For the Love of Music.

Susan Mailer is the first-born daughter of Norman Mailer and the author of In Another Place: With and Without My Father Norman Mailer. As one might suspect, this memoir is not the usual story. I found it entertaining and informative, especially since I was an admirer of her father's work. She called from Chile, the first time I have conducted an intercontinental interview.

Jarett Kobek is a Turkish-American writer living in California. He is the author of the novella ATTA (2011) and the novel I Hate the Internet (2016), an international best seller that has appeared, or is scheduled to appear, in seven languages. His current novel is Only Americans Burn in Hell, a kind of Swiftian, take no prisoners satire. I spoke with him at our studios, and he made me laugh.

I had the opportunity to see Janis Joplin perform at the Fillmore East. She was astonishing. Her untimely death was a blow to the 60s music scene, and felt personally by her fans. There has been much misinformation over the years about Janis's life, some of it her own creation. Holly George-Warren has done a brilliant and sensitive job of sifting through the life of this icon, and produced a complete and sympathetic biography. I spoke with her at our studios.

[This interview is unabashedly left progressive. Even if you consider yourself a conservative, I urge you to listen. Thom Hartmann is a scholar of American history and politics and I have not found him to get his facts wrong.] Talkers Magazine ranks Thom as the #1 progressive talk show host in America, with a cumulative audience of 6.5 million (excluding the TV audience). For 9 years he also hosted an evening TV program that was first carried by Free Speech TV and later picked up by RT TV out of Washington, DC. He separated from RT in 2017. He is also a four-time Project Censored-award-winning, New York Times best-selling author of 24 books in print. He invented the "hunters in a farmer's world" reframe for ADHD and wrote 5 books on the subject. His latest book is a history and analysis of the US Supreme Court. I learned a lot from it.

Cara Wall is a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and Stanford University. While at Iowa, Cara taught fiction writing in the undergraduate creative writing department as well as at the Iowa Young Writer’s Studio in her capacity of founder and inaugural director. She went on to teach middle school English and History and has been published by Glamour, Salon and The San Francisco Chronicle. She lives in New York City with her family. Her latest novel is The Dearly Beloved. I spoke with her at our studios.

Kira Jane Buxton's writing has appeared in The New York Times, NewYorker.com, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, Huffington Post and more. She calls the tropical utopia of Seattle home and spends her time with three cats, a dog, two crows, a charm of hummingbirds and a husband. Her latest book is Hollow Kingdom. I spoke with Kira at our studio.

Michael Benanav is an author In addition to his books, Michael writes and/or shoots for The New York Times, Lonely Planet, The Christian Science Monitor Magazine, Geographical, Afar, CNN.com, Wend and Hand/Eye among others. His photographic work has been selected to appear in the National Geographic book, Rarely Seen: Images of the Extraordinary and he's a freelance photographer known for immersing in foreign cultures and bringing compelling stories and images back from distant places. When not in some remote nook of the planet, Michael can often be found hiking in the hills behind his home in northern New Mexico. I spoke with him about his latest book, Himalaya Bound: One Family's Quest to Save Their Animals & an Ancient Way of Life.

Mona Awad was born in Montreal and has lived in the US since 2009. Her debut novel, 13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT A FAT GIRL (Penguin), won the Amazon Best First Novel Award, the Colorado Book Award and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Arab American Book Award. It was also long-listed for the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour and the International Dublin Award. Her new novel, BUNNY was released June 11, with Viking Press. I spoke with her by phone, and the call dropped about halfway through the interview. We resumed shortly. It does not do any harm to our conversation.

Erica Ferencik is a Massachusetts-based novelist, screenwriter and stand-up comic. Ferencik was born in Urbana, Illinois and later obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in painting and French from University of Massachusetts and later a Master of Arts in creative writing from Boston University. Ferencik did stand-up comedy for ten years at various comedy clubs in Boston and New York and was also a material writer for David Letterman during the early years of his national late-night show. Her novel, Into the Jungle, is a thriller about an aimless teenager who winds up living in a village in the Bolivian jungle because she has followed a man she loves back to his home. I spoke with her here in our studios.

Born in New York City, Levy was the film critic of The Oregonian newspaper in Portland, Oregon, from 1997 to 2012 and of KGW-TV, Portland's NBC affiliate, from 2009 to 2016. He is a former Senior Editor of American Film and a former Associate Editor of Box Office. His work has appeared in major newspapers and magazines in the United States and England including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, The Independent, Film Comment, Movieline, Premiere, and Sight & Sound. Levy has written biographies of film actors Paul Newman, Robert DeNiro and Jerry Lewis, and books on pop culture scenes and phenomena such as the Rat Pack, 1950s film-making in Rome, and 1960s Swinging London. He signs his work Shawn Levy and is not to be confused with the filmmaker Shawn Levy, whose full name is Shawn Adam Levy. I spoke with Shawn at our studios.

Alafair Burke received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Reed College, in Portland, Oregon, completing the Senior Thesis Emotion's effects on memory: spatial narrowing of attention. She went on to Stanford Law School in California, graduating as a member of Order of the Coif. After law school, she served as a judicial clerk to Betty Binns Fletcher of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then as a Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney in Portland, where she prosecuted domestic violence offenses and served as an in-precinct adviser to the police department. She currently lives in New York City and is a Professor of Law at Hofstra University School of Law. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Mystery Writers of America and as President of its New York chapter. In 2017, she was elected as a member of the American Law Institute. I have read several of her books, and enjoyed not just the good writing, but the perspective of someone deep into the law who does not make that the focus of the book. She came to our studios to discuss her latest novel, The Better Sister.

Greg Iles was born in 1960 in Stuttgart,Germany, where his physician father ran the  U.S. Embassy Medical Clinic. He was raised in Natchez, MS, the setting of many of his novels. He graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1983. He has been a prolific writer of fiction, non-fiction and screenplays.  I have read his last four books, and interviewed him about them.  The coolest thing about him is that he is a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock band comprising several best-selling authors, including Stephen King, Dave Barry and Amy Tan. I spoke with him by phone about his latest novel, Cemetery Road.

Benjamin Dreyer is vice president, executive managing editor and copy chief, of Random House. He began his publishing career as a freelance proofreader and copy editor. In 1993, he became a production editor at Random House, overseeing books by writers including Michael Chabon, Edmund Morris, Suzan-Lori Parks, Michael Pollan, Peter Straub and Calvin Trillin. He has copyedited books by authors including E. L. Doctorow, David Ebershoff, Frank Rich and Elizabeth Strout, as well as Let Me Tell You, a volume of previously uncollected work by Shirley Jackson. A graduate of Northwestern University, he lives in New York City. I spoke with him by phone, and please bear with the sound of a cellphone.

Helen Zia is a Chinese-American journalist and activist for Asian American and LGBTQ rights. Zia was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1952 to first generation immigrants from Shanghai. At five years old, she began working in her parent's floral novelty business. She entered Princeton University in the early 1970s as a student in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She was a member of its first graduating class of women. As a student, Zia was among the founders of the Asian American Students Association. She was also a vocal anti-war activist, voicing her Opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, a firm believer in feminism and active in movements creating cross racial unity among low income people of color. Zia entered medical school at Tufts University in 1974, but quit in 1976. She eventually moved to Detroit, Michigan, working as a construction laborer, an autoworker and a community organizer, after which she discovered her life's work as a journalist and writer. She is also a warm and engaging person and a great interview. I spoke with her about Last Boat Out of Shanghai, the dramatic real life stories of four young people caught up in the mass exodus of Shanghai in the wake of China’s 1949 Communist revolution—a heartrending precursor to the struggles faced by immigrants today.

Lydia Kiesling’s debut novel, The Golden State, wherein Daphne, a young woman in a stressed life, flees the Bay Area with her toddler for rural California and a mobile home left to her by her grandparents. But, the bucolic life is not to be. She finds small comfort with two women she meets but is swept up in events beyond her control. Dark humor and recent events are notable in this book.

This is the first book of a projected trilogy by Charlaine Harris, whose Southern vampire stories have become very popular, especially in TV adaptations. The newest book is An Easy Death, an alternative-history tale of a young woman in a re-imagined America whose job is to safeguard travelers on dangerous journeys. Lizbeth is a “gunnie,” adept at the use of weapons. She is hired by two people from the Holy Russian Empire, situated in San Diego, to guard them on a quest.

Rhonda Rizzo is a classical pianist and a writer. A specialist in the music of living composers, she has released four CDs and appears regularly as a soloist and a collaborative artist. Her numerous articles have been published in national and international music magazines. She has published a novel entitled The Waco Variations, about a young woman who managed to leave the Branch Davidian compound before "Armageddon." Her life is saved by her grandmothers, and the piano, especially the music of Bach.

Signe Pike was born in born in Ithaca, NY, and graduated from Cornell University with her Bachelor of Science in Communication. She worked as an acquisitions editor at Random House and then Penguin, before leaving to write her first book, Faery Tale: One Woman's Search for Enchantment in a Modern World. Pike has spent the past ten years researching and writing about Celtic history, myth, folklore and tradition. Her love of history, the great outdoors, early medieval and ancient archaeology, and her dedication to historical accuracy has made her social media feeds an informative delight to her readers. Signe teaches seminars and workshops internationally on writing and publishing, as well as on folklore and tradition. Her writing has been published by Salon, Charleston City Paper, Book Riot and NPR.org. She currently lives in Charleston, South Carolina, where she writes full-time.

Paula Friedman's honors include Pushcart Prize nominations and New Millenium Writings, OSPA, and other awards and honors, as well as Centrum and Soapstone residencies and fellowships. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous print and online literary magazines and anthologies. Ursula K. Le Guin called Friedman's debut novel, The Rescuer’s Path (2012, 2018) "exciting, physically vivid, and romantic." I spoke with Paula at our studios for her latest novel. Publisher info: Lillicat Publishers 2018