Kpfa - Bookwaves On Cover To Cover

Esi Edugyan, author of the novel, “Washington Black,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky. From Wikipedia: < Born and raised in Calgary [1], Alberta, to Ghanaian [2] immigrant parents, Edugyan studied creative writing at the University of Victoria [3], where she was mentored by Jack Hodgins [4]. She also earned a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars [5]. Her debut novel [6], The Second Life of Samuel Tyne [7], was published in 2004 and was shortlisted for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award [8] in 2005. Despite favorable reviews for her first novel, Edugyan had difficulty securing a publisher for her second fiction manuscript. She spent some time as a writer-in-residence in Stuttgart [9], Germany. This period inspired her to drop her unsold manuscript and write another novel, Half-Blood Blues [10], about a mixed-race [11] jazz [12] musician in World War II [13]-era Europe who is abducted by the Nazis [14] as a “Rhineland Bastard [15]“.  Published in 2011, Half-Blood Blues was announced as