Quarantine Island Discs: Recent Episodes
Laurence Peters
Celebrities select their six favorite media selections (a movie, song, a book, poem, TV show, podcast) to get them through the pandemic and whatever else is to come.
In this episode Stella talks about her tastes in TV, Cinema, Arts, Podcasts ans Music
TV: Hill Street Blues: One of the first ensemble productions. Innovative and highly diverse cast. Came out in 1981. Great scripts. Runner Up: West Wing.
Movies: Moana, Reminds her of growing up in New Zealand, Runner Up All about Eve–some of the best lines in cinema.
Novels:
Russell Hoban, Ridley Walker
Pedra Chodron, When Things Fall Apart
Poems: Emily Dickinson, Because I Could not Stop for Death,
Album:
David Bowie, Honky Dory, particularly Is there Life on Mars?
Comforting tunes, Fleetwood Mac, Rumors, particularly Don’t Stop Thinking about Tomorrow, Regina Spektor, Eva Cassidy.
Performances:
All female production of A Merchant of Venice
Mathew Bourne, New Adventures, production of Red Shoes.
Podcasts:
The Jungian Life, Podcast
On Being, Krista Tippett
Classic Myth
Orpheus
Welcome back to the first part of a two part conversation with Novelist, Short story writer, Director, Actor, all round creative Stella Duffy. In the first part we talk generally about her experiences of lock down and her speculations about the future of the arts. We also discuss her Fun Palaces project. In the second part we explore her tastes in media at this current time. I look forward to you all enjoying this marvelous conversation with a fully engaged artist.
Stella Duffy is a writer and performer born in London who spent her childhood in New Zealand before returning to the UK. She has written plays, and novels and directs.
Stella Duffy has written fourteen novels including her latest, London Lies Beneath which Virago will publish in November 2015. The Room of Lost Things and State of Happinesswere both long-listed for the Orange Prize. She has written ten plays and over fifty short stories, including several for BBC Radio 4. Her collected stories are published by Salt inEverything is Moving, Everything is Joined. She won the CWA Short Story Dagger in 2002 (Martha Grace) and 2013 (Come Away With Me), and Stonewall Writer of the Year in 2008 (The Room of Lost Things) and 2010 (Theodora). HBO have optioned her two Theodora novels for a TV series. She wrote and presented the BBC4 documentary How to Write a Mills and Boon and has reviewed for The Review Show (BBC2), Front Row(BBCRadio4) and written articles for most major newspapers in the UK. In addition to her writing work she is a theatre director and performer.
Stella is also the co-founder of Fun Palaces -- an annual, free, nationwide celebration of culture at the heart of community, using arts, science, craft, tech, digital, heritage and sports activities as a catalyst for community engagement. This takes place over the first weekend in October every year. Fun Palaces are community events, created by and for local people. They are held in a variety of locations, ranging from libraries, shopping centres, schools, parks, village squares, community halls, swimming pools, etc. The original (never built) Fun Palace was the brainchild of celebrated theatre director Joan Littlewood and architect Cedric Price. Their never-realized vision was re-interpreted for the 21st century with the Fun Palaces campaign for cultural democracy, with community-led events in many locations. The first weekend of action took place in 2014, with 138 Fun Palaces taking place across the UK and internationally and in 2015 the number rose to 142, 292 Fun Palaces in 2016, and 362 in 2017.
Joan Wickersham's most recent book of fiction is The News from Spain (Knopf). Her memoir The Suicide Index (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) was a National Book Award Finalist. She is also the author of a novel, The Paper Anniversary (Viking).
Her fiction has appeared in magazines including Agni, One Story, Glimmer Train, The Hudson Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, and Story, and has been published in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. Her op-ed column runs regularly in The Boston Globe. She has published essays and reviews in The Los Angeles Times and The International Herald Tribune; and has read her work on National Public Radio’s “On Point” and “Morning Edition.” She also writes frequently about architecture, including “The Lurker,” a column she created for Architecture Boston magazine.
She has received the Ploughshares Cohen Award for Best Short Story and has been awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Arts, The American-Scandinavian Foundation, The Massachusetts Cultural Council, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. She has taught at Harvard, Emerson, the University of Massachusetts (Boston), and the Bennington Writing Seminars. Joan graduated from Yale with a degree in art history. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Boris Fishman was born in Minsk, Belarus. He is the author of the novels A Replacement Life(winner of the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the American Library Association’s Sophie Brody Medal) and Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo.Both were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Savage Feast, a family memoir told through recipes, will be out in paperback in early 2020. His journalism has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and many other publications. He lives in New York and teaches creative writing at Princeton University.
Boris's choices include:
Books
Sophie's Choice, William Styron
King of the Jews, Leslie Epstein
Netflix etc
Give Me Liberty
Two Lovers, James Gray
Better Call Saul
Music
Def Leppard, Stand up, Kick Life into Motion
Podcast
I'll Drink to That
Poetry
Lucky, Tony Hoagland
Michael's Choices:
Streaming
Better Call Saul
Babylon Berlin
Ozark
Novel
Joseph Karon: The Defectors
Michael's Podcast--First Rough Draft of History (FRDH)
___________
Remember to Listen to Four Dead in Ohio
Archive on 4
May 4th 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of the Kent State massacre. Through archive and personal memory, Michael Goldfarb explores what America was like on that terrible weekend.
In November 1985, Goldfarb moved to London to pursue a career in journalism. He has reported from 25 countries on five continents.
He reported on the arts for British and American newspapers, particularly The Guardian and Newsday. He became a critic for BBC Radio 4 and this work led him into broadcast journalism with National Public Radio (NPR).
From 1990 to 1998, Goldfarb worked for NPR, from 1996 to 1998 as its London Bureau Chief. He covered British politics, the Royal Family and the five-year-long peace process in Northern Ireland for, but also reported from Bosnia and Iraq. Throughout this period he also worked with the BBC and in 1994 won British radio's highest honor, the Sony Award, for his essays on the American Midwest, titled Homeward Bound.
In 1999 he was a fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
In 2016, he launched the FRDH podcast. He frames his storytelling through the idea that journalism is the First Rough Draft of History and draws on the history he has reported and lived and written about.
He continues to make documentaries for BBC Radio 3, Radio 4, the World Service and Radio 5 and is a regular panelist on the BBC News program Dateline London. He writes op-eds for The New York Times and contributes occasionally to The Guardian.[3Michael's choices include Hillary Mantel, The Mirror and the Lamp
Four Dead in Ohio, covered by Isely Brothers, Ben Harper, Hannah Wicklund --more choices in Part 2 of the Interview
Preti Taneja I had a delightful conversation with Preti whose recent novel We That are Young has received many rave reviews and prizes.
She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle and teaches Creative Writing in prisons for LEARNING TOGETHER, Cambridge Universty.
Preti is also a New Generation Thinker and broadcasts for Radio 3 and 4 on world literature and culture.
Podcast with Preti Taneja PRETI’S QUARANTINE ISLAND CHOICES:
Music
Alice Coltrane : Journey in Satchidananda
British Grime
Dave
Stormzy
Nick Cave: The Boatman’s Call
Live Concerts
Gil Scott Heron
Poetry
Adrienne Rich, Collected Poems
Claudia Rankine: Citizen: An American Lyric
Novels
Mark Haddon: The Porpoise: A Novel
Films
Mood for Love
2046
Both directed by Wong Kar-wai
Podcast
This American Life
Preti Taneja I had a delightful conversation with Preti whose recent novel We That are Young has received many rave reviews and prizes.
She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle and teaches Creative Writing in prisons for LEARNING TOGETHER, Cambridge Universty.
Preti is also a New Generation Thinker and broadcasts for Radio 3 and 4 on world literature and culture.
PRETI’S QUARANTINE ISLAND CHOICES:
Music
Alice Coltrane : Journey in Satchidananda
British Grime
Dave
Stormzy
Nick Cave: The Boatman’s Call
Live Concerts
Gil Scott Heron
Poetry
Adrienne Rich, Collected Poems
Claudia Rankine: Citizen: An American Lyric
Novels
Mark Haddon: The Porpoise: A Novel
Films
Mood for Love
2046
Both directed by Wong Kar-wai
Podcast
This American LifeI had a delightful conversation with Preti whose recent novel We That are Young has received many rave reviews and prizes.
She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle and teaches Creative Writing in prisons for LEARNING TOGETHER, Cambridge Universty.
Preti is also a New Generation Thinker and broadcasts for Radio 3 and 4 on world literature and culture.
PRETI’S QUARANTINE ISLAND CHOICES:
Music
Alice Coltrane : Journey in Satchidananda
British Grime
Dave
Stormzy
Nick Cave: The Boatman’s Call
Live Concerts
Gil Scott Heron
Poetry
Adrienne Rich, Collected Poems
Claudia Rankine: Citizen: An American Lyric
Novels
Mark Haddon: The Porpoise: A Novel
Films
Mood for Love
2046
Both directed by Wong Kar-wai
Podcast
This American Life
Ralph's choices
Movies
Anything with Peter Sellers
Laurel and Hardy
Radio
The Goon Show
Music
Singer Songwriters: Randy Newman, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan
Guitarists
Rev Gary Davis, Blind Bob Fuller, Blind Willie McTell, Jango Reinhardt
Books/Biographies
Oscar Wilde Richard Ellmann
Is That It? Bob Geldorf's autobiography
Ariel, Sylvia Plath
Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath, Tortilla Flats, Mice and Men
Robin Renée claims personal favorites and influences from acts as disparate as Elvis Costello, Jai Uttal, James Taylor, Gary Wilson, and Devo. In the biracial, multicultural family in which she grew up, the blended experience extended easily to music. She was just as likely to take a ride on Gladys Knight's "Midnight Train to Georgia" as to drive along Kraftwerk's "Autobahn," and the easy-going sounds of "You've Got a Friend" were as common as Dylan's acerbic "Masters of War."
Her choices for Quarantine Island Discs are:
Music
David Newman's Leap of Grace See the YouTube video for a sample of this beautiful music
Poem
A Concert of Lions by Robin Renne
Films
The Room and The Disaster Artist
Documentary, Won't You Be My Neighbor?
TV
Ozzy and Drix
Novels
For Hire& Audition, Kevin Patterson and Alana Phelan
Podcast
What a Day