Saturday, June 27, 2020

Coming Soon... Bradbury 100 podcast



Bradbury 100 is my new podcast - a celebration of the centenary year of Ray Bradbury. This will be a limited-run series, with about ten episodes, where I aim to bring together fans, friends and scholars of Bradbury.

Among the interviews I already have in the can are those with the novelist and author of Searching for Ray Bradbury, Steven Paul Leiva; and the managing director of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, Jason Aukerman.

You'll be able to subscribe to the podcast through any good podcast app, or listen here on Bradburymedia. Watch out for updates, where I will give all the details.

UPDATE! You can now subscribe to Bradbury 100 via iTunes/Apple Podcasts, and other podcast directories will follow. At present, your podcast feed will only pick up the trailer, but episodes will begin to appear in August late July.

Thursday, June 11, 2020

Bradbury Centenary: Dandelion Wine live reading

The Ray Bradbury centenary/centennial year continues with various events taking place online instead of in the real world. Of course, we've lost some big events such as Comic-Con San Diego, which was due to celebrate Bradbury 100, but some previously localised events will now be accessible globally, such as...



Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine Arts & Music Festival - this event usually takes place in Ray's home town of Waukegan, in the city's Bowen Park. This year, it is going online. One of its centrepiece events will be a non-stop reading of the novel Dandelion Wine, starting at 10am CDT and projected to run through to 8pm CDT.

We are promised "celebrity Bradbury fans reading from around the galaxy". I'm not sure who else is in the cast list, but one of the readers will be me, so the event certainly has an intercontinental reach... I'm due to read the section of Dandelion Wine which ws originally published as the short story "The Night" (1946).

The Dandelion Wine reading will be streamed live on Facebook. If you'd like to dip in, you'll find further information here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1124476531218342/ 

When I read through the story this morning to refresh my memory, I was reminded that this story refers to a number of streets and landmarks in "Green Town", the fictionalised version of Waukegan where Dandelion Wine is set. I blogged about the parallels between the fictional and real town some years ago, here: http://bradburymedia.blogspot.com/2006/10/green-town-illinois.html

And "The Night" also plays on the town's fear of murderous criminal "the Lonely One". Although fictionalised by Bradbury, there really was a "Lonely One" in Waukegan. I researched him a few years ago, and exclusively revealed his true story here: https://bradburymedia.blogspot.com/2009/09/revealed-lonely-one.html

I hope you will be able to join us for the reading.