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Jonathan Lethem's razor-sharp prose is marked by an unaffected elegance. Lethem's 1999 novel, Motherless Brooklyn, is at once hard-boiled detective story and a journey through the mind of Lionel Essrog, a man obsessed with language and suffering from Tourette's syndrome. Motherless Brooklyn won The National Book Critics Circle Award. Among Lethem's seven novels are Amnesia Moon, The Fortress of Solitude and You Don't Love Me Yet, which follows the members of a Los Angeles rock band and their exploits which include a kangaroo kidnapping, chronic writer's block, and one character's obsession with a man who repeatedly calls the complaint hotline where she works. Lethem's forthcoming novel, Chronic City, brings together another band of misfits, from Chase Insteadman, an aging child star whose fiancée is literally lost in space - she's trapped on the International Space Station - to a scathing music critic, Perkus Tooth, whose incurable paranoia draws Chase into a dark web of conspiracy theories and a quest for truth on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Lethem received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005. In addition to his books, he is a prolific writer of essays and stories, which have appeared in Rolling Stone, Esquire, the New York Times, The New Yorker and many other publications.
Paul Lancour has worked in broadcasting in the Bay Area for over two decades, primarily at 88.5 KQED-FM. He is also a long-time member of Crowded Fire Theater Company, and has been both an actor and sound designer with many other local theater groups. Paul Lancour has interviewed Lewis Black, Adam Gopink, and Junot Díaz for City Arts & Lectures.
