For more than 15 years I’ve been working on a novel called John Woman. You might say that I’ve been pondering this idea my entire adult life, ever since I enrolled at the radical arts institution, Goddard College, up in Vermont.
Kevin Gallagher: My guest on this segment is one of my favorite authors Walter Mosley creator of the Easy Rawlins Detective series. Some of you may only know of his work through the movie Devil with the Blue Dress, with Denzel Washington, but he is much more than that. Walter Mosley is here on the occasion of the publishing of his latest novel “Down the River Unto the Sea” which features yet another new memorable fictional Detective “Joe King Oliver”.
Resistance takes many forms, particularly in the current political climate. Few methods of protest are as cheerfully strange and purposefully bizarre as “The Obama Inheritance.”
This collection of 15 short stories, inspired by right-wing conspiracy theories about the 44th president, take aim at the freak-show realities of the 45th. Talents such as Walter Mosley, Robert Silverberg and Kate Flora start with the right-wing delusions that Barack Obama was a closet Muslim, a Kenyan, a socialist or just the creator of death panels — and spin them out to their (illogical) conclusions. Read the rest of this entry »
Fifteen writers riff on various wild conspiracy theories generated about President Obama over the years. Critic Maureen Corrigan says the sly short stories in The Obama Inheritance pack a punch.
Laurie R. King in conversation with Walter Mosley, June 3, 2017. Sponsored by Mystery Writers of America, NorCal chapter, and by the Bay Area Book Fest.
LIGHT THE DARK, a new collection of 46 acclaimed authors writing about their creative process and what inspires them, is now available from Penguin Books. The collection includes Walter Mosley’s essay titled “How I Awoke” on how discovering Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye at the age of fourteen changed his life. “For the first time I understood the power of language to reach beyond the real and into the metaphysical and metaphor…It was a step beyond the limitations of the physical world and into a realm where a thing and its opposite could meet and magically become something else.”
The government is declaring war on the press and the press is fighting to uphold the journalistic freedom necessary for democracy to function. Genuine news media outlets are discredited at every turn while fake news — the real fake news — gains influence. It’s no wonder that public trust in the media is at an unprecedented low. Read the rest of this entry »