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
