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26 episodes
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Writers and Company CBC Arts & Entertainment
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- Arts
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4.7 • 211 Ratings
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CBC Radio's Writers and Company offers an opportunity to explore in depth the lives, thoughts and works of remarkable writers from around the world. Hosted by Eleanor Wachtel.
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Amitava Kumar on India, the U.S. and the indelible imprint of the immigrant experience
The Indian journalist and novelist writes stories that are autobiographical and revealing. Kumar joined Eleanor Wachtel in 2018 to talk about his book Immigrant, Montana - a mix of fiction, memory, politics and the pursuit of romance. Kumar's new novel is called My Beloved Life.
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Edna O'Brien: from Ireland's outcast to celebrated icon
Even though Edna O’Brien left Ireland more than 50 years ago, the texture and atmosphere of the country continue to permeate her work. Her first seven books were banned or suppressed in Ireland. In fact her debut novel, The Country Girls, was burned in her home parish for depicting the ambitions and sexual desires of young women. Today, O'Brien is celebrated as one of Ireland's greatest living writers.
In this conversation with Eleanor Wachtel from 2009, Edna O'Brien talks about her scandalous early success, her mother's enduring influence, and her portrait of Romantic poet Lord Byron, the world's first global celebrity. 2024 marks the 200th anniversary of Byron's death, when he was just 36 years old. -
Laurie Anderson on language, story and losing her archives to Hurricane Sandy
In 2018, Eleanor Wachtel went to New York City to interview one of North America's most renowned and daring creative pioneers, Laurie Anderson. The multimedia artist and musician had just published her retrospective book, All the Things I Lost in the Flood, inspired by the devastation of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which destroyed Anderson's archive of work and memorabilia. In this career-spanning and deeply personal conversation, she talks about the connection between story and memory, growing up in the Midwest with seven brothers and sisters, her relationship with Lou Reed, her partner of 21 years, and becoming unlikely pen pals with John F. Kennedy.
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Tony Kushner on his evolution as a storyteller, from Angels in America to The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide
This week, for Pride season, the Oscar-nominated playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner. Known most recently for his movie collaborations with Steven Spielberg, including Lincoln, Westside Story and The Fablemans, Kushner's breakout hit was his epic play Angels in America, the winner of multiple Tonys and a Pulitzer Prize, among many other awards. Fuelled by the AIDS crisis and Reaganism in the 1980s, the play was made into an opera and an HBO miniseries starring Meryl Streep, Al Pacino and Emma Thompson. In this conversation with Eleanor Wachtel from 2011, Kushner also talks about his later work, The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, a family drama that evokes George Bernard Shaw and Mary Baker Eddy.
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Claire Messud on the stories and secrets of a French Algerian family in The Last Life
This week, American Canadian novelist Claire Messud. Throughout her career and in her new book, This Strange Eventful History, one of TIME’s most anticipated of 2024, Messud draws on her own family's history, especially that of her French Algerian father. In 2001 she spoke with Eleanor about her novel The Last Life, which traces three generations of a French Algerian family from the perspective of a teenage girl. To conclude the program, Messud reads a chapter from the novel.
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Biographer Nicholas Murray reflects on Kafka's life — this month is the 100th anniversary of his death
In honour of the centenary of the death of Franz Kafka, one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, Eleanor Wachtel revisits her 2005 conversation with one of his biographers, Nicholas Murray.
Customer Reviews
BEST PODCAST EVER
Dear Ms. Wachtel,
It was upsetting to hear you are ending your podcast—-selfishly I wish you would continue doing it forever. There is no podcast I look forward to more—-I know it will be the most interesting, intelligent and enlightening hour of the week, without equal. As I am not a writer I do not have the words to adequately and appropriately thank you—-for an hour of bliss each week, for introducing me to authors I would otherwise never have known of—-many many thanks. You will be greatly missed. I can hope you write several volumes of memoirs !
No equal among author interviewers
An incredibly prepared and thoughtful interviewer of authors . Superior to all other book podcasts
The best
Eleanor Wachtel is one of the best interviewers in the world.