Arts Interview: William Finnegan | It’s A Question Of Balance 25 July 2015

Broadcast on 25 July 2015 on KSCO AM 1080, KOMY AM 1340 and KSCO.com Live Stream.

'It's A Question Of Balance' is a two hour show which balances the intellectual with the creative. The show combines a debate topic with an arts interview because discussion and creativity are two of the most vital ways we engage in the world. 

Check out podcasts of the different topics and arts guests at www.itsaquestionofbalance.com

Hour 2: In-Depth Arts Interview with William Finnegan

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. 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 from the Drug Policy Foundation for his article “Deep East Texas”; a Citation for Excellence from the Overseas Press Club for his report from Sudan, “The Invisible War” in 2000; 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. 

For more info and to hear previous shows visit www.itsaquestionofbalance.com