Connie Martinson

Constance Frye Martinson
Born	April 11, 1932 (1932-04-11) (age 79) Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Occupation	Journalist and television producer

Constance Frye Martinson (born April 11, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American writer and television personality. Since its 1979 debut, she has hosted the syndicated television show Connie Martinson Talks Books, which airs on public television.^[1]  She is married to American film director Leslie H. Martinson. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, she writes a column for the Beverly Hills Courier.^[2]

Martinson graduated in 1953 from Wellesley College in Massachusetts with a bachelor of arts degree and was awarded the Davenport Prize for speech and literature. She worked as an editor for Writer magazine in Boston before moving to Los Angeles with her husband, film and television director Leslie Martinson. Prior to parlaying her love of literature into a self-financed half-hour television series on books, she was involved in public relations for the Coro Foundation and taught at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Judaism.

The Connie Martinson Talks Books Collection, now donated to Claremont Graduate University, consists of nearly 3,000 television interviews (L.A. CityView Channel 35, Government-access television cable TV and PBS in New York) with authors of fiction and nonfiction taped over the last 30 years.^[3] Included in the collection are interviews with Maya Angelou, Ray Bradbury, Al Gore, Rosa Parks, Gore Vidal, Studs Terkel and Joyce Carol Oates. One of her most famous interviews took place in 1995 when she interviewed a then little-known author named Barack Obama about his first book, Dreams From My Father.^[4] Interviews with a diverse group of best-selling authors include Matthew Pearl, Cathy Scott, Ved Mehta, Roger Cohen, and Vincent Bugliosi.

References

1. ^ "Constance Frye Martinson." Marquis Who's Who TM. Marquis Who's Who, 2008. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2008. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC
2. ^ List, Beverly Hills Courier staff
3. ^ Los Angeles Times, "Interview archive will speak volumes," May 8, 2008
4. ^ Barack Obama interview

External links

• Connie Martinson Official website
• The series Connie Martinson Talks Books is being digitized as a project of The Drucker Institute and the Claremont Colleges Digital Library
• Connie's favorite interviews's channel on YouTube
• Internet Movie Database listing, Connie Martinson

Persondata
Name	Martinson, Connie
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	April 11, 1932
Place of birth	Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Date of death
Place of death