Date: 1993-10-31
Name(s): Godfrey, Lisa, Kavanagh, Peter, 1953-2016, Kendrick, Walter M., Rendell, Ruth, 1930-2015, Skal, David J., Wachtel, Eleanor
Description: A special Halloween episode in three parts. Part One: Eleanor Wachtel interviews British mystery and suspence novelist Ruth Rendell. Part Two: Eleanor leads a panel on Horror in literature and film, which is followed by clips from the films Count Dracula (1970), and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Part Three: Tanya Jacobs reads Edgar Allen Poe's Gothic horror short story, "The Tell-Tale Heart."
Date: 2010-10-31
Name(s): Brand, Dionne, 1953-, Drabble, Margaret, 1939-, Eisenberg, Deborah, O'Hagan, Andrew, 1968-, Stinson, Mary (Producer), Wachtel, Eleanor
Description: This week's episode is the 20th anniversary celebration of Writers & Company. It was recorded onstage in front of a sold-out house at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto. On this very special edition of Writers & Company, Eleanor Wachtel and special guests Margaret Drabble, Dionne Brand, Deborah Eisenberg, and Andrew O'Hagan reflect on reading, writing, highlights, and breakthroughs of the past twenty years.
Date: 2002-10-20
Name(s): Carey, Peter, 1943-, Leavitt, David, 1961-, Stinson, Mary (Producer), Wachtel, Eleanor
Description: Host Eleanor Wachtel talks with two writers about two cities that mean a great deal to them. David Leavitt talks about the peculiar presence of the Anglo in Florence, Italy, and Peter Carey revisits his mates in Sydney, Australia.
Date: 1995-01-29
Name(s): Morrison, Blake, Rabinovitch, Sandra, Sexton, Linda Gray, 1953-, Wachtel, Eleanor
Description: Writers and Their Parents - Part I: Linda Gray Sexton has written a candid and poignant memoir about her mother, the poet Anne Sexton. Part II: Eleanor talks with British poet Blake Morrison about his prize-winning book, And When Did You Last See Your Father.
Date: 1998-02-15
Name(s): Rabinovitch, Sandra, Shalev, Meir, 1948-2023, Wachtel, Eleanor, Yizhar, S., 1916-2006
Description: WRITING A NATION: ISRAEL AT 50. Episode 1 of a 5-part series on the Authors of Israel, as it celebrates its 50th anniversary. Part I: Eleanor Wachtel interviews Israeli author Meir Shalev, who discusses the sometimes oppressive weight of history in the Holy Land, the life of the Zionists who first established Israel, and the self-mythologizing aspects of the country's settlers. Part II: Eleanor interviews S. Izhar, the grand old man of Israeli literature, who discusses the novel he wrote in…
Date: 1998-02-22
Name(s): Elon, Amos, Michael, Sami, Rabinovitch, Sandra, Wachtel, Eleanor
Description: WRITING A NATION - ISRAEL AT 50 - Episode 2 of a 5-part series on the Authors of Israel, as that country celebrates its 50th anniversary. Part I: Eleanor Wachtel interviews Israeli author Amos Elon, who discusses the messianic and idealistic motives of the Zionist settlers who came to Israel in 1948, the ideas of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, the defining characteristics of Israeli society, a hybrid culture made up of Jews from over 100 countries, and how Israel has two capitals with…
Date: 1998-03-01
Name(s): Bat Shahar, Hanna, Qāsim, Samīḥ, Rabinovitch, Sandra, Wachtel, Eleanor
Description: WRITING A NATION - ISRAEL AT 50 - Episode 3 of a 5-part series on the Authors of Israel, as that country celebrates its 50th anniversary. Part I: Eleanor Wachtel interviews Hanna Bat Shahar. Hailing from an ultra Orthodox background, Bat Shahar writes from inside the world of the religious Jewish community. Part II: Eleanor interviews Samīḥ al-Qāsim, the country's leading Palestinian poet.
Date: 1998-03-08
Name(s): Rabinovitch, Sandra, Shammas, Anton, Wachtel, Eleanor, ʻAraidi, Naʻim, 1950-2015
Description: WRITING A NATION - ISRAEL AT 50 - Episode 4 of a 5-part series on the Authors of Israel, as that country celebrates its 50th anniversary. Part I: Eleanor Wachtel interviews the award-winning Arab poet, novelist, and teacher, Naʻim ʻAraidi. From a Druze village in Galilee to a PhD in Hebrew literature, Naʻim ʻAraidi writes in both Arabic and Hebrew. This episode includes a previously recorded clip of Palestinian author Anton Shammas reading from the English translation of his novel Arabesques.
Date: 1998-03-15
Name(s): Gur, Batya, Rabinovitch, Sandra, Taub, Gadi, Wachtel, Eleanor
Description: WRITING A NATION - ISRAEL AT 50 - Episode 5 of a 5-part series on the Authors of Israel, as that country celebrates its 50th anniversary. Part I: Eleanor Wachtel interviews the provocative mystery writer Batya Gur, a woman a woman who investigates Israel's closed societies.; Part II: Interview with the dynamic young cultural critic Gadi Taub.
Date: 2002-09-08
Name(s): Banks, Russell, 1940-2023, Brand, Dionne, 1953-, Glendinning, Victoria, Schama, Simon, Stinson, Mary (Producer), Wachtel, Eleanor
Description: American novelist Russell Banks, Canadian poet and novelist Dionne Brand, New York art historian and critic Simon Schama, and English biographer and novelist, Victoria Glendinning, reflect on writing in times of crisis. Includes readings by the panellists from poets and writers whose work expresses responses to crisis.
Date: 2018-01-21
Name(s): Guo, Xiaolu, 1973-, Stinson, Mary (Producer), Wachtel, Eleanor
Description: In her new memoir, Nine Continents, Chinese writer and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo takes an unsentimental look at her family and country's history, and how it has shaped her art.
Date: 2019-10-20
Name(s): Li, Yiyun, 1972-, Rabinovitch, Sandra, Wachtel, Eleanor
Description: Prize-winning author Yiyun Li talked to Eleanor Wachtel on stage in Toronto about her new novel, Where Reasons End, written in the months following the suicide of her 16-year-old son.
Date: 2009-06-28
Name(s): Li, Yiyun, 1972-, Rabinovitch, Sandra, Wachtel, Eleanor
Description: This week on Writers & Company, host Eleanor Wachtel speaks with award-winning Chinese-American writer Yiyun Li. Her powerful and moving novel The Vagrants is set in China in the late '70s - a time of change following the end of the Cultural Revolution. Wachtel and Li journey deep into that work- and Li's successful career.
Date: 2014-06-01
Name(s): Li, Yiyun, 1972-, Rabinovitch, Sandra, Wachtel, Eleanor
Description: Yiyun Li was 16 years old at the time of Tiananmen, but she felt it was her generation who put their lives on the line. Her new novel, Kinder Than Solitude, looks back on those horrific events.
Date: 2023-02-26
Name(s): Li, Yiyun, 1972-, Rabinovitch, Sandra, Wachtel, Eleanor
Description: Growing up in Communist China, Yiyun Li devoured any books she could find. But she never imagined that, on moving to the U.S., she'd become the author of prize-winning fiction in English, including such acclaimed works as A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, The Vagrants and Kinder than Solitude. Her latest novel, The Book of Goose, is a beguiling tale of two peasant girls in rural post-war France. Inspired by a real-life literary hoax, it's a moving meditation on friendship, imagination and truth…
