Off Mike makes it to Bay Area Bestseller List

Three weeks into his book tour, Michael Krasny’s Off Mike makes it to the Bay Area bestseller list! Krasny has been making appearances in bookstores throughout the Bay Area to packed audiences of the KQED show Forum’s fans, curious to get to know the man behind the mike, the literary radio host they are used to encountering on the air waves on their commutes every morning.

The book takes readers inside Krasny’s world—his coming of age during the heady times of the 1960s with their blend of the civil rights movement, political activism, and sexual experimentation. Krasny talks of a strong desire to become a novelist in the footsteps of Saul Bellow and Philip Roth; and then discovering his real talent as a communicator—a deft ability to draw others out as an interlocutor and host of KQED Radio's Forum, which is rated as one of the most popular NPR shows today. He is a maestro for educated radio listeners, who prefer their discourse high and civil; he is a writer's interviewer.

The book provides insightful and amusing vignettes, and behind the scenes accounts, from his encounters and interviews with cultural, literary and political luminaries, including Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, Alice Walker and Salman Rushdie.  Forum fans and lovers of literature will be riveted by the sharp commentary and entertaining stories from one of the country's leading interviewers.