Writer to Writer is a series of interviews with local and national authors which ran for over a decade after launching with six pilot episodes (including interviews with science fiction and fantasy writer Alan Dean Foster and mystery writer Stuart Kaminsky) in 1994. The series started when Kathleen Clower, then the Director of Television Production for Florida Community College at Jacksonville, became interested in the Florida First Coast Writers Festival. An annual event sponsored by the College which offered writing and publishing workshops, the Festival was founded in 1985 by Professor Jack Surrency but had come under the direction of Professor Howard Denson by the early '90s. After attending one of the Festivals, Clower was impressed by the caliber of the speakers being brought in, and thought it would be worthwhile to create an interview series similar to Worth Quoting featuring them. With the cooperation of Denson, Clower reached out to several of the authors schedule for the 1994 event, and convinced them to participate. Once the authors had committed, Clower built a simple set on which Writer to Writer could be filmed and then found interviewers who were familiar with the authors’ works and had read at least one of their books, including Mary Sue Koeppel, Carol Grimes, and Charlie Patton of The Florida Times-Union. Eventually Clower herself became the Festival coordinator, which made lining up interviews even easier, and she wound up producing over 50 episodes of Writer to Writer.
Although Writer to Writer was initially intended for cablecast on Channel 26, the educational channel which the College began operating in 1980 to host its telecourse, some of the programs achieved greater status. Clower had a relationship with the Adult Learning Service (ALS) of PBS through some of the other programming she did for FCCJ, and when her contacts learned of the series they selected a number of programs to distribute to colleges, universities, and PBS stations nationwide by satellite feed.
This collection represents the majority, but not all, of the interviews filmed for this series. If you have information regarding existing copies of interviews with speakers not represented here, please contact Jennifer Grey at jennifer.grey@fscj.edu. Opinions and views of the speakers in this series do not necessarily represent those of Florida State College at Jacksonville.
These videos and other FSCJ produced content can be found on the FSCJ Library and Learning Commons YouTube™ Channel.