Category Archives: Audio

Podcast: Stewart O’Nan and Jonathan Evison at Storyfort

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For the first of four episodes recorded at the Storyfort Festival in Idaho, the GrottoPod breaks format and sits in a Boise nightspot with Stewart O’Nan, whose 16 novels include Snow Angels, West of Sunset, and City of Secrets, and New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Evison. There — minus BQ, and just prior to the release of Evison’s newest book, Lawn Boy— O’Nan, Evison and host Larry Rosen go granular on the nuts and bolts of writing, publishing, promoting and why a Pittsburgh native would write a book about the Boston Red Sox.

Listen to the episode here.

O’Nan Reads From ‘West of Sunset’ at Point Park

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This year marks the 90th anniversary of the publication of “The Great Gatsby” – the height of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary fame. But a new novel suggests that some of Fitzgerald’s best work came much later, at a time of loss and personal struggle.

Its author, Pittsburgh native Stewart O’Nan, will read from”West of Sunset” Wednesday evening at Point Park University, where he’s teaching a master class in fiction writing.

90.5 WESA’s Josh Raulerson spoke with O’Nan about Fitzgerald’s career as a Hollywood screenwriter during the final years of his life.

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Maureen Corrigan and Stewart O’Nan on Writers on Writing

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Maureen Corrigan, author and NPR book critic, talks to co-host Nicole Nelson about her latest book, So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came To Be And Why It Endures, as well as what some of Fitzgerald’s revisions left behind in earlier drafts of the novel, the importance of water imagery in the book, and her experience retracing some of the author’s steps. In the second half, Stewart O’Nan discusses his latest novel West of Sunset, which fictionalizes the last chapter of Fitzgerald’s life, the Hollywood years. He talks about coming late to appreciate Fitzgerald himself, what kind of research was required to immerse himself in the world of Hollywood in the late 1930s, and how his experience writing narrative nonfiction helped create a world that served both history and his character. (Broadcast date: February 25, 2015)

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