Interview with CW Gortner, Author of THE FIRST ACTRESS

Listen in while C.W. Gortner and I talk about his latest book, about the fascinating, larger-than-life Sarah Bernhardt. There have been so many great reviews, but I particularly loved this one: “A literal drama queen, the historical Bernhardt provides a great wealth of material—sleeping in a coffin, keeping pumas as pets, the circles in which she moved with the likes of Victor Hugo and Oscar Wilde—for the creation of a colorful melodrama, equal parts flamboyancy and pathos. Since Bernhardt loved to extravagantly mythologize her own story, she would doubtless delight in Gortner’s first-person fictionalization of her extraordinary life.”—Booklist What's not to like?