This week, we’re going into the City Arts and Lectures archives for highlights from the many times Salman Rushdie has come to San Francisco.  Rushdie is the author of fifteen novels, including Victory City, which is expected to be published in early 2023, as well as non-fiction works and short stories. Of course, he’s much in our thoughts these days after being attacked on August 12th, 2022, minutes before he was to appear onstage in New York.
In the first half of this program, we’ll hear part of Rushdie’s most recent visit to City Arts and Lectures in 2017 where he talked with fellow author Michael Chabon.  In the second half, we’ll hear excerpts from conversations recorded in 2008, 2010, and 2015 Rushdie had with his most frequent partner on our stage, KQED’s Michael Krasny.   Rushdie talks about his writing and the creative process – as well as becoming an unwilling “celebrity fugitive” and spokesman for free speech after the publication of The Satanic Verses.  In these wide-ranging, funny, and thoughtful conversations, he also touches on The Marx Brothers, Kurt Vonnegut, Bollywood, the Wizard of Oz, baseball, and his chance encounters with Donald Trump.