Episode 373
with Lauren Groff, Tommy Orange, Caitlin Weierhauser, and Lucy Kaplansky
In this second installment from the Portland Book Festival, host Luke Burbank and Elena Passarello explore the process of “character building” for actors; celebrated author Lauren Groff makes the case for why art is not a competition; writer Tommy Orange discusses how urban Native identity became the theme of his debut novel There There; comedian Caitlin Weierhauser admits to telling all her secrets to pugs; and singer-songwriter Lucy Kaplansky performs her tune “Keeping Time.”
Lauren Groff
Author
For Lauren Groff, writing seems to be her fate. Her most recent novel, Fates and Furies, was a finalist for the National Book Award, won a slew of other awards, and was Amazon’s #1 book of 2015 (and, NBD, Barack Obama called it his favorite book of the year). Her newest collection of stories, Florida, has been dubbed “gorgeously weird and limber” by The New Yorker and “marvelous” by The Economist. The collection places the landscape, climate, history, and state of mind of Florida in its center as it spans characters, towns, and even centuries. Groff, a Florida resident herself, continues her date with fate in this startling, precise and affecting new collection. Website • Twitter
Tommy Orange
Writer
The world of Tommy Orange’s debut novel sings with the voices and energies of the many characters who populate it. There, There, features twelve narrators from different parts of the urban Native American experience and has been hailed as “groundbreaking, extraordinary,” by The New York Times. A recent graduate of the MFA at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Orange is an enrolled member of the Cheyanne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma and currently lives in California. Bursting with poetry, rage, and big ideas, “There, There” marks the propulsive emergence of Orange as an important new voice – all his own. Website • Twitter
Arlo Weierhauser
Actor
Arlo Weierhauser is an actor, known for Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made (2020), The Benefits of Gusbandry (2015) and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (2015) Website • Twitter
Lucy Kaplansky
Singer Songwriter
Lucy Kaplansky started out singing in Chicago folk music clubs as a teenager. Then, barely out of high school, Lucy Kaplansky took off for New York City. There she found a fertile community of songwriters and performers—Suzanne Vega, Steve Forbert, The Roches, and others. With a beautiful flair for harmony, Lucy was everyone’s favorite singing partner, but most often she found herself singing as a duo with Shawn Colvin. People envisioned big things for them; in fact, The New York Times said it was “easy to predict stardom for her.” But then Lucy dropped it all. Convinced that her calling was in another direction, Lucy left the musical fast track to pursue a doctorate in Clinical Psychology before returning to music. Listen • Twitter
