Around Cincinnati

Jane Durrell welcomes in to our studio two of the local artists behind the 5th Street Gallery, a collaborative of a wide variety of artists in many different media. Ober-Rae Livingstone is an artist and manager of the Gallery, and former Enquirer reporter-turned-fulltime artist Sara Pearce, discuss the role of the gallery and its heart-of-the-city location at the Hilton Netherland Plaza Hotel.

Novelist Joan Merrill uses the New York City jazz scene as the backdrop for her latest mystery, And All That Madness, and the authors joins Barbara Gray on the phone to talk about her creative injection of jazz into this story.

The 10th Annual Cincy Fringe Festival kicks off on May 28, and joining Lee Hay with a preview of this year’s anniversary event is Producing Artistic Director Eric Vosmeier.

The final production in the Playhouse in the Park season is the rough and ready, but family friendly, Shipwrecked! An Entertainment by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies. Anna Goller, the props master at the Playhouse, joins our Rick Pender to discuss the challenges of bringing this Thompson Shelterhouse presentation to life.

Barbara Gray talks with New York Times bestselling novelist David Baldacci about his newest thriller, The Hit, and his decision to bring back the character Will Robie, the highly trained assassin who periodically assists the U.S. Government in eliminating the worst of the worst.