Kathi Diamant, Actress, Author, Director of the Kafka Project

This weeks guest is Kathi Diamant, accomplished actress, TV producer and anchor and adjunct Professor at San Diego State University. Kathi’s first love is theater and her acting credits include stage, screen and television for which she has received numerous awards, including an Emmy Award for outstanding performance and a Living Legacy Award from the Women’s International Center. Kathi is also well know for her more than 25 years of broadcast media and print journalism in San Diego. She was the co-host of the morning talk show, Sun up, on KFMB-TV. She was an anchor/producer on KPBS, most recently, worked as Production Coordinator for “UNSTUCK with Dr. James Gordon” and as coordinating producer for the newest PBS special with Dr. Wayne Dyer, “Excuses Begone!”

Although acting is her first love, her other passion has been the search for the lost literary treasures of Franz Kafka. As the founder and director of the Kafka Project at SDSU she has worked with the German government for the discovery and return of Kafka’s unpublished letters and notebooks confiscated from his last companion, Dora Diamant, in a Gestapo raid of her residence in Berlin in 1933. Kathi wrote the award winning book, Kafka’s Last Love: The Mystery of Dora Diamant, which tells the remarkable story of the woman who was by the literary giant’s side at the end of his life. Honoring Kafka’s last wishes, she burned some of his work. However, she saved much more than she burned, including 35 letters and 20 notebooks.

In Septemer of 2016 the Kafka Project will be hosting a literary history tour following in the footsteps of Franz Kafka and Dora Diamant to Czech Republic, Poland and Germany.

Kathi attended the University of Georgia and studied Drama and Theater Arts. She received B.A. in Theater from Florida State University. She lives with her husband, actor/writer Byron La Due, in San Diego.

Listen to a podcast of Kathi Diamant!

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Bonus audio