Yearly Archives: 2021
Storytelling Goes Academic, Or Maybe Academia Gets Cool, With Podcasts
Daniel Heath Justice's "podcast, which will be peer-reviewed before its release—a first in North America—is part of a bold new take on research that...
How Drug Trafficking Culture Came To Rule Style, Social Media, And Music
"The lives of buchonas, their flamboyant styles and their taste for plastic surgery are regularly chronicled in Spanish-language media outlets. Vloggers do roundups devoted to top buchonas. And...
The Shortlisters For Canada’s Richest Literary Prize Talk About Their Writing Habits
The authors nominated for the Giller who have kids say they write whenever they can. Another: "COVID has helped me let go of a...
A Naked Man Got Trapped In A Theatre’s Bathroom Walls
Sounds like a horror novel, but this was real. "The man got into a crawl space in the building. ... He was in the...
Knocking Down Statues Is A Worldwide Tradition
King George III in New York, the Buddhas in Afghanistan, a traitorous general in Virginia - "scrutinizing monumental statuary is an integral part of...
Writers Need Editors, But Are Popular Grammar Checkers Worth It?
For $30 a month, maybe. But it lacks nuance, and can be "downright self-serving," making suggestions, for instance, to call itself an "excellent" service...
The Armorer For ‘Rust’ Was Set To Earn A Whopping 7,913 Dollars
That's a normal budget for an indie, but it does bring home grim realities of the industry. "The producers of the movie Rust earmarked $650,000 to...
Julie Green, Artist Who Memorialized Death Row Inmates’ Final Meals, 60
Green "planned to paint the meals until capital punishment was abolished, or until she had made 1,000 plates, whichever came first. In September, she...
Authors’ Guild Doubles Down On Support Of DOJ In Suit Against Merger
Boo from the Guild to the proposed Penguin Random House takeover of Simon & Schuster: "Consolidation doesn’t just stifle competition, it also makes acquisition...
Princess Di Is Back In The Public Spotlight, But Why Now?
Not entirely clear, but "Diana’s posthumous framing as a rebel against the establishment with an undercurrent of feminine fragility resonates — even among those...
After An Anti-Racism Review, Scottish Ballet Revamps Nutcracker
"Changes to characters, costumes and choreography will be made to 'remove elements of caricature,'" especially from the Land of the Sweets. In addition, Drosselmeyer...
Why So Many People Die In Concert Crowd Surges
The teens and adults who were killed in a crowd surge Friday night weren't the first, and probably won't be the last. "The music...
Brazilian Star Singer Marilia Mendonca, 26, Dies In A Plane Crash
Mendonça, Grammy winner and social media sensation, was killed in a small plane crash in Minas Gerais. "Her legions of fans found power in...
The Work It Takes To Create A Compelling Memoir
Just ask Laura Davis: "After many failed attempts at story architecture, with the help of several editors, my brilliant coach ... and 127 early...
England’s South West Region Gets A Big Boost From Bridgerton
The Netflix series revives the always-popular with Austenites tourism industry in Bath, but then there's David Attenborough's Our Planet and other productions that, said...
Smithsonian Moves To Return Benin Bronzes
The museum has become "the latest Western cultural institution — and one of the most prominent to date — to agree to explore returning...
How ABBA Became Such Beloved Gay Icons
The group's songs weren't actually popular in gay clubs at the time - but then came the 1980s, when disco was supposedly "dead," and...
A Parent Wants To Criminally Prosecute Librarians
During a tsunami of deeply virulent homophobic, racist protests against books, a parent in Kitsap County, Washington, has asked to prosecute librarians for having...
Ian Fleming Estate Authorizes New 007 Series
Kim Sherwood has struck a deal with HarperCollins to write three contemporary thrillers set in the world of James Bond but where the original...
This Nigerian Nobel Laureate’s Got A New Book, 50 Years After The Previous One
Wole Soyinka has received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He has written more than two dozen plays, a vast amount of poetry, several memoirs,...
Trial In Spain Of Former Director Of Valencià d’Art Modern Accused Of Buying Forgeries
Consuelo Císcar is accused of using €3.4m in public funds to buy 98 works of art by the late artist Gerardo Rueda that she...
Two High Profile Projects Aimed At Reviving Memphis
Two ambitious new projects by leading architecture firms are at the forefront of the renaissance, using design to lift Memphis’s image in the eyes...
What Happens When You Try To Hack Opera With Gamers, Techies And Artists?
“Western opera was invented because people from different disciplines came together to reimagine theatre. They leveraged the best of all the art forms and...
A Social History Of Laughter
In the early years of the 18th century a select group of philosophers began to conceive of laughter as something that might police the...
The Trauma That Upended Kenneth Branagh’s Life At The Age Of Eight
He's been reeling from it, one way or another, ever since, and it's the reason he made his latest film, Belfast. - The New...