PODCAST: Manning Wolfe, Author of GREEN FEES

Austin author Manning Wolfe was interviewed live about her new legal thriller GREEN FEES on the July 29 edition of KAZI Book Review.  I was joined by BookPeople Crime Fiction Coordinator Scott Montgomery and CrimeReads Associate Editor Molly Odintz by phone for the interview.

 

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PODCAST: Interview with Austin Playwright Jeanette Hill

On September 15, Jeanette Hill’s latest play, No Ordinary Days, will be opening at the Boyd Vance Theater at the George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center.  Her play explores how a black family deals with the mental illness of two family members.  Four actors from the play, Tawanna Jackson, Sabrina Simpson, Adaryll Perry, and Robert Walker, performed two scenes from the play live in studio.  To listen to the interview and performances click the link below.

PODCAST: 2018 Interview With Dr. Daina Ramey Berry, author of THE PRICE FOR THEIR POUND OF FLESH:

THE PRICE FOR THEIR POUND OF FLESH: The Value of the Enslaved from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation  is a groundbreaking look at how slaves were valued, and more importantly, how they valued themselves  through every phase of life, from birth to death and beyond, in early America.  Dr. Berry is a Professor of History and African and African American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.  I interviewed her live in the studio for the second time in August 2018, over one year after my original interview with her.  We discussed the need for a more comprehensive teaching of slavery in the schools, Kanye West’s unfortunate  statement that slavery was a choice, and the opening of the lynching museum in Alabama.

PODCAST: Elizabeth Crook, author of THE WHICH WAY TREE

THE WHICH WAY TREE is the story of a young girl’s frightening and poignant odyssey to track down the panther that killed her mother.  To listen to my interview click here:

PODCAST: Lawrence Jackson Discusses Biography of Black Author Chester Himes

In Lawrence Jackson’s monumental biography, CHESTER B. HIMES, readers are introduced to one of the most prolific and underrated Black writers of the 20th century.   Himes, who lived from 1909-1984, was the author of 17 novels and numerous short stories.  Himes was a black literary realist who used fiction to honestly express the rage he felt at racism, despite the criticism of some of his contemporaries that his perspective was too bleak.  It was his Harlem detective novels that paved the path for enduring financial success as two of those novels were made into movies in the 1970s, Cotton Comes to Harlem and Come Back Charleston Blue.

Lawrence P. Jackson is a Professor of English and History at Johns Hopkins University and also the author of RALPH ELLISON: Emergence of Genius.

 

PODCAST: Rodrigo Hasbun Examines Bolivia in Historical Novel AFFECTIONS

Rodrigo Hasbun’s new novel, AFFECTIONS, is a historical novel loosely based on the lives of Hans Ertl, his wife and three daughters who immigrated to Bolivia from Germany shortly after world war 2.

Set against the backdrop of the both optimistic and violent 1950s and 1960s, Affections traces the Ertls’s slow and inevitable breakdown through the various erratic trajectories of each family member: Hans’s undertakings of colossal, foolhardy projects and his subsequent spectacular failures; his daughter Monika, heir to his adventurous spirit, who joins the Bolivian Marxist guerrillas and becomes known as “Che Guevara’s avenger”; and his wife and two younger sisters left to pick up the pieces in their wake.

Rodrigo Hasbún is a Bolivian novelist living and working in Houston. In 2007, he was selected by the Hay Festival as one of the best Latin American writers under the age of thirty-nine for Bogotá39, and in 2010 he was named one of Granta’s Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists. He is the author of a previous novel and a collection of short stories.

PODCAST: Vanessa Valdes Discusses Biography of Arturo Schomburg

In Vanessa K. Valdes new book, DIASPORIC BLACKNESS, she examines the life of Black Puerto Rican–born scholar, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, (1874–1938) was a well-known collector and archivist whose personal library was the basis of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. Born in 1874, Schomburg cofounded the Negro Society for Historical Research and lead the American Negro Academy, all the while collecting and assembling books, prints, pamphlets, articles, and other ephemera produced by Black men and women from across the Americas and Europe. His curated library collection at the New York Public Library emphasized the presence of African peoples and their descendants throughout the Americas and would serve as an indispensable resource for the luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.

Vanessa K. Valdés is Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the City College of New York, City University of New York. She is the editor of Let Spirit Speak! Cultural Journeys through the African Diaspora and the author of Oshun’s Daughters: The Search for Womanhood in the Americas, She currently serves as Book Review Editor of s/x salon, an online literary salon on Caribbean literature and culture.