This week as my special guest from the arts I’m pleased to be interviewing Jane Smiley, Pulitzer-Prize-winning novelist and essayist. Praised as ‘a diverse and masterly writer’ and ‘one of the premier novelists of her generation’ Jane has written 14 novels, five non-fiction books and a series of horse books for young adults, as well as many essays and articles. Her novel A Thousand Acres won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992, and her novel The All True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton won the 1999 Spur Award for Best Novel of the West. She has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1987. Her novel Horse Heaven was short-listed for the Orange Prize in 2002, and her novel, Private Life, was chosen as one of the best books of 2010 by The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post. She received the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature in 2006. Her most recent novel SOME LUCK, the first volume of a trilogy, the story of an American farming family across a 100 years ending in 2020, has just come out. Join me Saturday 9-10 PM to find out more about the life and art of this masterly writer. And if you enjoy the interview you can meet Jane live at Bookshop Santa Cruz November 12th at 7 PM. I’ll be going so I hope to see you there! For more info and to hear previous shows visit www.itsaquestionofbalance.com
This week as her special guest from the arts Ruth Copland is pleased to be interviewing internationally best-selling writer, journalist, screenwriter, radio presenter and film-maker Jon Ronson. If you enjoy the interview you can meet Jon in person at Bookshop Santa Cruz on Friday April 10th at 7:30 PM for a talk and book-signing. Born in Wales, Jon currently lives in London and New York. Author of nine books and numerous articles, Jon’s non-fiction books, The Psychopath Test; Them: Adventures with Extremists; Lost at Sea; and The Men Who Stare At Goats have all been international and New York Times bestsellers. The Men Who Stare At Goats was adapted into a film starring George Clooney, and The Psychopath Test is to be adapted into a thriller starring Scarlett Johansson. Jon is a documentary film-maker, directing, writing and hosting by turns; his many films include Stanley Kubrick's Boxes and The Secret Rulers of the World. His first fictional screenplay, called Frank and written with Peter Straughan, won the British Independent Film Awards Best Screenplay award. Jon is currently writing and directing a silent comedy, The Dog Thrower. In the UK Jon writes regularly for The Guardian newspaper and has produced and presented radio shows including the BBC Radio 4 show Jon Ronson On… which has been nominated for a Sony Award four times. In the US he’s a regular contributor to the Public Radio International show This American Life and GQ magazine. Jon’s latest book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed has just come out.
Tune in Saturday 9-10 PM to find out more about the life and art of Jon Ronson. For more info and to hear previous shows visit www.itsaquestionofbalance.com
This week as her special guest from the arts Ruth Copland is pleased to be interviewing one of America’s most celebrated illustrators, Maira Kalman. If you enjoy the interview you can meet Maira in person at Bookshop Santa Cruz on November 14th at 7 PM. An illustrator, writer and product designer Maira has written and illustrated over 18 children’s books as well as producing award-winning books for adults and designing all kinds of objects such as fabric, bags, and clocks. Born in Tel Aviv, she moved to America at the age of four and was raised in the Bronx. She now lives in Manhattan. Maira is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker Magazine, and is well known for her collaboration with Rick Meyerowitz on the “New Yorkistan” cover in 2001 and “The New York City Sub-Culinary Map.” Maira has an amazing body of creative work which includes projects such as illustrating Strunk and White’s classic The Elements of Style; a small opera based on text composed by Nico Muhly; collaborations with designers like Isaac Mizrahi and Kate Spade; and two hugely popular monthly online columns she created for the New York Times, the first of which, The Principles of Uncertainty, was a narrative journal of her life; and the second, And The Pursuit of Happiness a year long exploration of American History and democracy. Both columns are now collected in book form. Maira has had eight exhibitions at the Julie Saul Gallery since 2003, and in 2010, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia organized a retrospective of Maira’s work entitled Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World). She has collaborated with Michael Pollan to illustrate his acclaimed Food Rules, and published Girls on Lawns, with text by Daniel Handler, which is the first of five books she will be doing with the photography department of the Museum of Modern Art. Her most recent book is Beloved Dog, a book of wise words and whimsical pictures which celebrates the sage lessons animals teach us.
Tune in Saturday 9-10 PM to find out more about the life and art of Maira Kalman. For more info and to hear previous shows visit www.itsaquestionofbalance.com
We want many of the same things yet our differences often divide us. We all want to be safe, to be happy. We want the best for our children, to feel our potential is fulfilled. We all want to be loved, to feel we matter. And yet our differences can make us feel we have nothing in common in at all. Ruth Copland features her conversations Out and About on the street asking Do we have more in common than divides us?
Ruth also talks about world-renowned doctor Deepak Chopra and his new book Metahuman: Unleashing Your Inifinite Potential. In conjunction with his medical achievements, Chopra is recognized as a prolific author of over 86 books translated into over forty-three languages, with twenty-six books reaching the status of New York Times Bestsellers. His latest national bestseller, The Healing Self, co-authored with leading geneticist Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi, discusses the importance of our immune system to lifelong health. Dr Chopra is coming to Santa Cruz on October 17th. More info here Dr Deepak Chopra
This week as my special guest from the arts I’m pleased to be interviewing Santa Cruz local Tandy Beal, internationally regarded dancer, choreographer, and artistic director celebrating 40 years of Tandy Beal and Company this year. Tandy's creative work springs from a sense of the great mystery of being here on this strange planet. Joy, wonder, and celebration balance her interest in the ineffable. She weaves these varied emotions into exuberant theatrical mosaics. Her solos have multi-media, storytelling, dance, humor and original music by Jon Scoville. Tandy began her career at age 16 touring world-wide with Alwin Nikolais Dance Theatre, performing off-Broadway, appearing as a guest with Atlanta Ballet, Momix, Remy Charlip, Murray Louis, Oakland Ballet, Carolyn Carlson in France and Bobby McFerrin, with whom she has worked for over 30 years. She has made 100+ works for her own company touring four continents. Her diverse career has led her to opera, circus, music videos, corporate events, solo shows, animation, horse spectacles, commercials, and fundraising extravaganzas. In addition, Tandy served as Artistic Director for the Moscow Circus in Japan for 2 years and for the Pickle Family Circus for 10 years.
Tandy has worked with many composers, including Art Lande, Lou Harrison, John Adams, SoVoSó and for 40 astonishing years with her co-conspirator, Jon Scoville. She was the choreographer for Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, MTV and the Emmy award-winning PBS special, Voice/Dance. She received awards from the American Film Institute to make a film on Hildegard von Bingen, and the San Francisco Museum of Performance and Design chose Beal for their video project Four Dance Icons of the West. Tandy has also taught at the Centre National de la Danse Contemporaine (France), 30 years at the University of Utah as an annual guest artist, UC Santa Cruz and chaired the Cabrillo College Dance Dept.
This week as her special guest from the arts Ruth Copland is pleased to be interviewing Tom Killion, woodcut and letterpress artist and founder of Quail Press. If you enjoy the interview you can meet Tom in person at Bookshop Santa Cruz on Monday July 13th at 7:30 PM. Born and raised in Mill Valley, California, on the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais, Tom was inspired from an early age to create landscape prints using linoleum and wood, strongly influenced by the traditional Japanese Ukiyo-ë style of Hokusai and Hiroshige. He studied History at UC Santa Cruz, where he was introduced to fine book printing by William Everson and Jack Stauffacher, and in 1975, he produced his first illustrated book on UCSC's Cowell Press. After traveling extensively in Europe and Africa, Killion returned to Santa Cruz, California in 1977 and founded his own Quail Press, where he published his second book, "Fortress Marin". Since his first illustrated book in 1975, Tom has continued producing extensively illustrated books including 28 Views of Mount Tamalpais, The Coast of California, and Walls: A Journey Across Three Continents, which draws on his experiences working as administrator of a medical relief program in a camp for Ethiopian refugees in Sudan, and traveling with nationalist rebels in war-torn Eritrea. Along with publishing fine art letterpress books, Tom holds a PhD in African history from Stanford University and has taught at Bowdoin College, Maine and San Francisco State University, in addition to being a Fulbright scholar at Asmara University in Eritrea. He has collaborated with Pulitzer-prize-winning poet Gary Snyder on three books - The High Sierra of California, Tamalpais Walking and the recently released California’s Wild Edge: The Coast in Poetry, History and Prints. Tom is currently working on landscape prints including treescapes, coastal and mountain views at his studio located on Inverness Ridge near Point Reyes, California.
This week as her special guest from the arts Ruth Copland is pleased to be interviewing William Finnegan award-winning literary journalist and narrative non-fiction author. If you enjoy the interview William will be appearing at Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing on July 28th at 7 PM as part of Bookshop Santa Cruz’s Books and Brews series. After acquiring a BA Degree in literature at the University of California Santa Cruz and studying for an MFA in creative writing at the University of Montana, William spent four years abroad, traveling in Asia, Australia, and Africa. His experiences led to his first book Crossing the Line: A Year in the Land of Apartheid, published in 1986 and selected by the New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best nonfiction books of the year. This whet his appetite for political journalism. A highly regarded war reporter and literary journalist William has written for many publications including Mother Jones, and Harper’s, and has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1987. He has written four books in addition to his debut: Dateline Soweto: Travels with Black South African Reporters; A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique; Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder Country, which deals with the bleak lives of American teenagers in spite of the United States’s economic affluence; and the newly published Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, a memoir which is described by the reviewer at the Los Angeles Times as “a book about ‘A Surfing Life’…also about a writer’s life and, even more generally, a quester’s life, more carefully observed and precisely rendered than any I’ve read in a long time.” He has received many journalism awards including twice receiving the John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism; the Edward M. Brecher Award for Achievement in the Field of Journalism the Drug Policy Foundation for his article "Deep East Texas"; a Citation for Excellence issued by the Overseas Press Club for his report on Sudan, "The Invisible War" in 200; and the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism for his article "Leasing the Rain" on the fight to control fresh water. In addition, he has received two Overseas Press Club Awards since 2009.
Tune in Saturday 9-10 PM to find out more about the life and art of William Finnegan. For more info and to hear previous shows visit www.itsaquestionofbalance.com
