Talking Volumes

 

                                                

 

Talking Volumes, a series of author talks presented by Minnesota Public Radio, the Loft Literary Center, and the Star Tribune, just completed the 2013 series on December 3, with author Michael Connelly. This year I bought season tickets and thoroughly enjoyed the series.   The author readings and  conversations with MPR’s Kerry Miller are held in the famous Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul,  named after St. Paul native F. Scott Fitzgerald.  The theater is also home to Prairie Companion.  The Fitzgerald seats one-thousand, and was sold out for each of the evenings. 

The first author, Edwidge Danticat, a native of Haiti, talked about her newest book Claire of the Sea Light, a novel that intertwines the lives of residents of an impoverished fishing village near Port-Au-Prince.  The novel centers on Claire, a seven year old, whose mother died when she was born.  Her father, a struggling fisherman, plans to give his daughter to a well off fabric shop owner to raise.

The ocean plays an important role in the novel.

 Award winning Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood spoke on October 1, and led interviewer Kerry Miller on a humorous road with her stories.  Atwood took charge of the interview, and talked about her life and her dystopian novels.  MaddAddam finishes the story begun in Oryx and Crake and the Year of the Flood.  In the midst of doom and gloom, Atwood inserts bits of wit.  Atwood ‘s 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, launched her career as a science fiction writer in a field that at that time was dominated by male authors. 

 Minneapolis young adult novelist Rick Riordan spoke on October 15 about his newest novel, The House of Hades.  The author is a favorite among preteen and teen readers.  Riordan, a former English uses Greek mythology in his stories.   The main character, Percy Jackson, was created when Riordan was making up bedtime stories for his son.  The author is a National Book Award winner.

 Southern writer, Pat Conroy gave his talk on November 12.  His latest book, The Death of Santini, is actually a memoir.  In his hugely successful novel, The Great Santini, published in 1976, Conroy wrote about his brutal, physically and emotionally abusive  father, and how he terrorized Conroy, his mother and siblings.  The novel was later made into a movie.  In The Death of Santini, Conroy describes how the publication of the novel somewhat changed his father, and the amends his father tried to make before his death.    Conroy’s conversation with Kerry Miller took on the tone of a therapy session, as he described growing up in an abusive home and the effects this had on his life as a young adult.  Conroy deals with father-son relationships in several of his novels.

Crime writer Michael Connelly spoke on Tuesday night and read from his newest novel, The Gods of Guilt.  He began his career as a journalist, working on crime stories at the Los Angeles Times for many years.  He learned a great deal about crime,  details and facts that he would later incorporate into his novels.   Los Angeles becomes a character in his novel.    Many of his story ideas come from cases he hears about from detective and police friends.  Connelly lives primarily in Florida, where he grew up, but spends part of each year in Los Angeles.