About the Book:

HARD TO FIND BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

Some of America's most distinguished playwrights and screenwriters — collectively the winners of 11 Pulitzer Prizes and 8 Academy Awards – come to vivid life through the unusual interviews in Shoptalk by Dennis Brown, which assume the mantle of a fascinating time-capsule as these artists and craftsmen discuss their successes and their failures, and the pain behind both.

The writers profiled include Edward Albee (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), Horton Foote (Tender Mercies and To Kill a Mockingbird), Frank D. Gilroy (The Subject Was Roses), William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President's Men), William Inge (Picnic), Alan Jay Lerner (Gigi and Camelot), Mary Mercier (Johnny No-Trump), Jason Miller (That Championship Season), John Patrick (The Teahouse of the August Moon), Richard Wilbur (Candide), Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), and Lanford Wilson (Talley's Folly). The book also includes rare interviews with Edwina Dakin Williams, Tennessee Williams' celebrated mother, who confirms herself as the model for Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, and David Merrick, Broadway's most prolific producer and a legend in his own right. Brief, colourful snapshots of celebrities such as John Wayne, Richard Burton, James Baldwin, and Harold Clurman (influential and respected American theatre director and drama critic) also weave through the pages.

Dennis Brown adroitly draws his subjects out, allowing them to speak freely and openly about how their works evolved, offering up provocative insights into the creative process and the writing life. Their perceptive observations and instructive anecdotes make this a volume to read and to remember.

What people say:

"Dennis Brown is a superb interviewer. He cares, he does his homework and, most of all, he listens. And in addition to all of that he's a terrific writer. The end result is Shoptalk, an important collection of fascinating stories about an important collection of American writers and theater people." — Jim Lehrer of The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

"An illuminating look into the hearts and minds of some of our best writers." — Publishers Weekly

"As fascinating for portraits of frustration and disappointment as for legendary successes." — The Washington Post

"A fascinating collection of interviews. Anyone committed to a life in the theatre should read this cautionary tale with care — wiser, more vividly expressed advice is near impossible to find." — Fireside Theatre Book Club Magazine

About the Author:

Dennis Brown has written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and was press representative for CBS Entertainment in New York for seven years.