Four party-affiliated organizations, including the Republican National Committee, collectively spent more than $1 million during the past election cycle mass-purchasing books written by GOP candidates, elected officials and personalities, according to Federal Election Commission expenditure reports. The purchases helped turn several volumes into bestsellers. - Washington Post
For 30 years, Mr. Peterson had been a composer, pianist and professor at San Francisco State University, respected by most musicians who knew his work and highly regarded by his students. The Pulitzer — and the ensuing squabble — changed his life. Another composition, Ralph Shapey’s hour-long piece for orchestra, “Concerto Fantastique,” had been the unanimous choice of the...
“We dancers bonk up against the insanity of pining after someone else’s pair of legs day after day, but with age and maturity and years of fixating on our bodies – our instruments – we come to grips with what we have and what we can do with it. … I scrutinize my physique in the same way a...
He was a star British choreographer who staged a prodigious number of works and was assured a major international career. But "after allegations of sexual misconduct at the Royal Ballet and Royal Ballet School, the company severed ties with him; an independent investigation found there were 'no matters to pursue' in relation to students." - The Guardian
“It’s not really polite to tell other writers they’re bad writers, because they tend to fling it back to you. In response, I would say he’s a clunky, self-indulgent writer … His books are all very long and baggy. They’re about his interpretation of Dylan songs … and it’s incredibly boring.” - The Guardian
And would a penny per stream be a little more fair? After all, "Spotify increasing royalties to a penny per stream would send a clear, graspable message to its subscribers that it values the artists who serve as the foundation of the company. It would also bring Spotify in line with competitors Apple, Amazon Music and Tidal." - Los...
It's not the 1960s anymore (not by a long shot), so actors usually don't play drunk by getting drunk. Instead, consider Aubrey Plaza's technique for her movie Black Bear. "Acting drunk when you’re sober is no easier than acting sober when you’re drunk. To get into the right frame of unsteadiness, Plaza would spin round until almost throwing up...
Well, it's obvious, right? The New York governor "is currently resisting calls to resign over allegations of sexual harassment. So what better way to prove that he is definitely not a phallocratic bully than to 'ram through,' as one outlet puts it, a super-tall tower called Penn 15, and a vast development around it?" - The Observer (UK)
In 2020, after the death of George Floyd at the knee of police officer Derek Chauvin, "a team of researchers from the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis launched the George Floyd and Anti-Racist Street Art database to record and map anti-racist street art in the wake of Floyd’s murder. Crowdsourced through an online submission form, the database now includes more than...
Ironically, bringing audiences back may be the issue. "While this year looks fairly stable, a greater threat may still lie ahead. The emergency infusions of cash that kept so many companies afloat — as well as savings from furloughs and shifting artistic output online — will trickle away once they start staging shows again for live audiences, which could...
One of the big literary events of last week? The cover reveal for Sally Rooney's new novel. "In recent years, book cover design has taken on a higher profile, and we may be seeing a new heyday for book design. It was Rooney’s 2018 novel Normal People that Arter believes signalled the shift towards the book cover as a 'cultural phenomenon...
Michael McClure's final editor, Garrett Caples: "As any editor can tell you, turning a manuscript into a book is an affair in itself. Michael’s poetry is not easy to lay out. It’s always centered on the page, but only sometimes dead-centered, where you can just press a button and you’re fine. Often enough, he centered by hand and eye,...
Prisant was a 51-year-old antiques dealer with no professional experience writing when she wrote to the autocratic editor of the British magazine The World of Interiors, asking for a job. There wasn't one open in New York, but the editor created one for her. "'She told the truth, but always with subtlety and lashings of wit,' Rupert Thomas, Ms....
If you want to know how young people are experiencing the pandemic, the assault on the Capitol Building in January, vaccinations, and more, what better to do than ask? A project called Dispatches from Quarantine "launched in April 2020, and those questions were explored and answered through all sorts of mediums — like the stringing of words, the strokes of...
Kaluuya grew up on a council estate - the rough equivalent to "the projects" in the United States - the son of Ugandan immigrants to Britain. He took advantage of every possible free arts program, and, at 18, ended up bot a writer and an actor for the program Skins. And, years later, came Get Out. "By the time...
