One on One: The Imprint Interviews

Pauline Carey is the author of Magic and What’s in a Name?

The interviews with famous authors that air on TVO’s Imprint are
carefully edited versions of interviews that are themselves the end
products of extensive research, editorial discussion, and
pre-interviews. As former Imprint producer Leanna Crouch observes, good
television leaves nothing to chance.

The best interviews in this collection are those in which the
preparation remains invisible and the talk comes off as a genuine
conversation (Margaret Atwood’s interview with Germaine Greer is a
prime example), or in which the interviewer, blessed with the gift of
empathy, draws out the guest (such was the case in Clifton Joseph’s
interviews with Caryl Phillips, Henry Rollins, and Larry Heinemann). The
conversations are not restricted to literary matters: Salman Rushdie,
Ariel Dorfman, and Eduardo Galeano all focus on political concerns in
their discussions with Daniel Richler.

Due to the time constraints imposed by television, much of the material
in One on One was not part of the on-air presentations. The published
interviews reinforce the ephemeral nature of television and the
indestructible power of the printed word.