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Mark Winegardner, Writing in the Shadow of Puzo

Before Mario Puzo died in 1999, he signed off on the idea that someone would be hired to continue the saga of The Godfather.

In the fall of 2002, Mario Puzo's publisher, Random House, opened a contest to choose Puzo's successor. The winner was Mark Winegardner, a creative writing professor from Florida.

Winegardner tells NPR's Scott Simon about the process of writing The Godfather Returns, and why it's irrelevant that he's not Italian.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Scott Simon is one of America's most admired writers and broadcasters. He is the host of Weekend Edition Saturday and is one of the hosts of NPR's morning news podcast Up First. He has reported from all fifty states, five continents, and ten wars, from El Salvador to Sarajevo to Afghanistan and Iraq. His books have chronicled character and characters, in war and peace, sports and art, tragedy and comedy.