This Writing Life
Episodes
Friday Jul 28, 2017
Episode 122 - Rick Bass: Part 4 - For a Little While
Friday Jul 28, 2017
Friday Jul 28, 2017
In part four of This Writing Life's conversation with Rick Bass, whose new book For a Little While (Pushkin) on 2017's Story Prize, we talk about his love of the short story, and why it is the most human of literary forms. We return to the relationship between Bass's environmentalism and his writing, before skipping off again onto nature writing and finally the difference between optimism and hope in Bass's conception of humankind. Buried somewhere in all this, Bass refuses to talk about his new novel. 'It's an old writer's taboo...'
The fifth and final part to follow next week.
Thursday Jul 27, 2017
Episode 121 - Rick Bass: are you optimisitic about human nature?
Thursday Jul 27, 2017
Thursday Jul 27, 2017
A short trailer for part 4 of This Writing Life's conversation with Rick Bass. In which Rick answers the question: are you optimisitic about human nature?
Tuesday Jul 18, 2017
Episode 120 - Rick Bass: Part 3 - For a Little While
Tuesday Jul 18, 2017
Tuesday Jul 18, 2017
Part three of This Writing Life's transatlantic chat with a Montana-bound Rick Bass takes in the material in Episode 119: in which Rick reviews his short story career in For a Little While (Pushkin), and attempting to describe what it feels like to be lost in a story.
In between he discusses the connections between writing and geology, about following his imaginative nose through a story. To finish, we talk about his story 'Elk', which first appeared in the New Yorker, images of substrata and blue in his work, and the mysteriousness of his own characters.
Part 4 to follow.
Saturday Jul 15, 2017
Saturday Jul 15, 2017
'You are a stranger inhabiting this blazing dream and you barely get out with your life...yeah, and then you go to the bar for a drink.'
A Writing Life podlet, in which Rick Bass recalls what's like to review your career (to date) in his superb collection of stories, For a Little While (Pushkin Press), which won 2017's Story Prize. From here Bass tries to explain what it feels like when inspiration strikes and fades.
Wednesday Jul 12, 2017
Episode 118 - Rick Bass: Part 2 - For a Little While
Wednesday Jul 12, 2017
Wednesday Jul 12, 2017
Part two of This Writing Life's transatlantic conversation with Rick Bass, novelist, activist, award-winning short story writer, begins with a question referencing Philip Larkin, Romanticism and Transcendentalism and continues with an answer discussing fiction, geology, humans and time: 'We are new to this world. We don't know how to be in this old world.'
Monday Jul 03, 2017
Episode 117 - Rick Bass: Part 1 - For a Little While
Monday Jul 03, 2017
Monday Jul 03, 2017
'I am working on a new novel...and an op-ed for the Los Angeles paper about Trump and his reign of terror.' Here in one line is This Writing Life's lengthy podcast conversation with Rick Bass - novelist, award-winning short story writer, and environmental activist. In future episodes we discuss For a Little While, a collection of his best short fiction, which a week after we spoke won the prestigious Story Prize.
We began however with Rick Bass the Environmental Activist - in his home state of Montana and elsewhere across the United States and disunited world. You can read more about his work to save the natural world and fight the powers that seek to denude it at his excellent website: rickbass.net/projects.