Happy Pride Month! Um: The author of the groundbreaking Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and many other experimental, daring works wrote on Twitter, "“Absolutely hated the cosy little domestic blurbs on my new covers. Turned me into wimmins fiction of the worst kind! Nothing playful or strange or the ahead of time stuff that’s in there. So I...
Just look to Hong Kong, where by the time a group of University of Hong Kong academics gathered in a town hall meeting in May. "The assembled faculty pressed on whether HKU would provide legal assistance if they were arrested for allegedly violating the law while working, what to do if students reported professors on a government tip...
Or so says Zakiya Dalila Harris, the author of The Other Black Girl. The book is a combined thriller and social satire that was indeed inspired by Harris' experiences. "Part of me enjoyed editing and I felt I was good at it, but it’s also an exhausting job for an entry-level person in terms of the pay. I was...
The movie has been in development since 2008. "The project stalled for many years between different directors and studios, because executives wanted more well-known Latino actors to star, such as Shakira or Jennifer Lopez. They also wanted more stereotypical storylines for the characters, such as pregnancies and gang violence." But Hamilton changed all that. - NBC
From the 140-foot long sculpture of scripts and songbooks to replicas of armchairs from Hamilton, the Drama Book Shop in Manhattan will be reborn this week, from the ashes (and flood, pandemic, and rent hikes) of the old. - The New York Times
The newspaper crisis - and be assured, for small, local places, it is a crisis - means that areas where people need the most are getting covered the least. - LitHub
A new documentary "focuses on surveillance and the cop-worn body-cam in specific as key topics, exploring the headquarters of the Taser, drone and camera manufacturer Axon in search of insights on the police state’s expansion. But this inquest soon gives way to a more expansive interrogation of the treachery inherent to every photo and frame of video, warped and...
Rivera began by asking her neighbors to be her subjects. "The images she made were majestic four-by-four-foot prints of everyday New Yorkers of all ages. They were time-stamped by their hair styles and clothing as citizens of the 1970s and ’80s, but they were made eternal by their direct gazes, formal poses and the nimbus of light with which Ms. Rivera...
One artist says little free art galleries stir "feelings of 'cute aggression,' a term that describes the way our minds cope with the onslaught of positive feelings brought on by something adorable — you just want to squish/squeeze/eat it. Thankfully, no one has tried, but part of the popularity might come from the feeling that you could. Artists and...
Sounds ridiculous, right? What do literary novels have in common with Avengers or WandaVision? Benjamin Percy says his Comet Cycle came about because he wanted to "go wild, do something different, change shit up, and create an experience—from a creative and business perspective—that was lit from beginning to end." - LitHub
Mayröcker, an Austrian, earned acclaim as a formally inventive poet, but her writing "ranged far more widely, producing an immense body of work that encompassed nearly every literary genre: novels, memoirs, children’s books, drama and radio plays as well as poetry. (Only a handful of her works have been translated into English.)" Perhaps that should change. - The New...
Another creative moment borne from boredom during the pandemic: "Dan Tepfer plays the first of Bach's "Goldberg" Variations. The piano is a Disklavier, which can record and play back. When he finishes, Tepfer taps a button on his iPad, triggering the piano to play back what he's just recorded with the notes inverted, as if the score were turned upside...
