This week on From the Vault we listen to one of the most prolific and iconoclastic authors of the 20th century, Doris Lessing.
Doris Lessing was a British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer. Born in Persia in 1919, raised in what is now Rhodesia and landing herself in England in 1949, Lessing passed away in November 17, 2013 at the age of 94.
When we heard of her passing in November of 2013, we looked in our archives and found two incredible recordings with Ms. Lessing, one from 1972 and one from 1963 recorded for WBAI at the BBC. We've chosen to share the earlier 1963 interview conducted following the release of perhaps her most notable novel, The Golden Notebook. We will also play some excerpts of a reading of The Golden Notebook done by Mary Roman for KPFA in the 1970's.
But first, in order to understand Doris Lessing a little bit more, we spoke to Grace Cavalieri, our godmother of poetry on the radio. Grace, an award winning poet and playwright, is the longtime host of the radio program Poet and the Poem produced by the Library of Congress and now in its 37th year.
From the Vault is presented through the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, past grants from the Grammy Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the generous support of Pacifica Radio Listeners.
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