Beginning Sunday, March 31st 2019 at 11am on Alabama Public Television
When English professor Don Noble was asked by the University of Alabama Center for Public Television & Radio in 1988 to host a series of interviews with writers, he agreed without hesitation. “One of my academic fields is contemporary literature, so I’m very interested in living writers. I thought the program would give me an opportunity to meet these people I’d been reading and studying.”
Since venturing into broadcasting Noble has hosted over 400 half-hour shows featuring interviews with literary stars such as Toni Morrison, William Styron, Ray Bradbury, and Rita Dove. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Bookmark with Don Noble series airing on Alabama Public Television, APT will present a collection of 15 classic episodes beginning March 31st. The series airs Sundays at 11:00 a.m.
March 31 – Episode 1 – Eugene Walter – A 1989 visit with novelist/poet/artist Eugene Walter of Mobile, whose fascinating career included the launching of The Paris Review and nearly 20 years in the Italian cinema.
April 7 – Episode 2 – Ray Bradbury – One of the masters of science fiction, Ray Bradbury, speaks with Don Noble in 1996 about how the genre has taken over pop culture.
April 14 – Episode 3 – Horton Foote – Don Noble talks with Foote in 1998 about his many plays and about his beautiful screen adaptation of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
April 21 – Episode 4 – Pat Conroy – A 1999 visit with one of the nation’s premier novelists, Pat Conroy, author of “The Water is Wide,” “The Great Santini,” “The Lords of Discipline,” “The Prince of Tides,” and “Beach Music.”
April 28 – Episode 5 – Toni Morrison 1 – A 2000 visit with Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, author of “Beloved,” “Song of Solomon,” and “Jazz.”
May 5 – Episode 6 – Toni Morrison 2 – Part 2 of a 2000 visit with Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, author of “Beloved,” “Song of Solomon,” and “Jazz.”
May 12 – Episode 7 – John Berendt – A 2000 conversation with the author of the phenomenally successful “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” a tale of murder and intrigue in Savannah, Ga.
May 19 – Episode 8 – Ernest Gaines – A 2000 interview with the author of “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” “A Gathering of Old Men,” and “A Lesson Before Dying,” tells why he sets his fiction in the Louisiana of his childhood.
May 26 – Episode 9 – Michael Cunningham – A 2001 interview with the Pulitzer Prize winning author of “The Hours,” a novel partly based on Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway.”
*Bookmark will be preempted two weeks during APT’s June pledge drive.
June 16 – Episode 10 – William Styron – A 2003 interview with the author of “Sophie’s Choice,” “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” “Darkness Visible,” and other books. Styron is a recipient of both The National Book Award and The Pulitzer Prize.
June 23 – Episode 11 – Ann Rice – A 2005 interview with the infamous vampire author in which she takes her pen to the light, as in toward Heaven with her novel about the 7 year-old Jesus Christ.
June 30 – Episode 12 – Rita Dove – Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Dove talks about the subjective and personal elements that she integrates into her once formal and objective poetry in this 2005 interview.
July 7 – Episode 13 – Alexander McCall Smith –A 2007 interview with the prolific author who talks about inspiration for The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series of novels.
July 14 – Episode 14 – Barry Hannah – A 2008 interview with the author of eight novels and five short story collections as he shares memories of his time teaching at the University of Alabama.
July 21 – Episode 15 – Gay Talese – In this 2013 interview Talese talks about his time as a student at the University of Alabama and his unique style of watching people before he writes about them.
