Over the decades I’ve learned a huge amount about writing novels. I feel like I’m just learning on the job about screenplays. One key difference is that a screenplay is a contribution to something that a team is going to work on, so it’s necessarily a collaborative document. - The Millions
"Elena Poniatowska has chronicled every major social movement in Mexico over seven decades, her 40-plus books a one-woman time capsule of a country's modern history. … (She) still writes a weekly column, showcasing her uncanny ability to get her subjects — presidents, murderers, victims of unspeakable crimes — to crack open." - MSN (The Washington Post)
A series of papers, discovered in Florentine archives, concerns the emancipation in 1452 of an enslaved Circassian woman, probably abducted as a girl, named Caterina, which was the name of Leonardo's mother. All of the documents are linked to his father, who wrote some of them himself. - NBC News
Lynn Seymour’s death last Wednesday undammed an outpouring of truly wrenching sadness from those whom this extraordinary ballerina injected with her poison - as the choreographer Frederick Ashton memorably said about his enslavement to Anna Pavlova. - The Arts Desk
"(He) wrote some 60 novels, including westerns, mysteries, science and fantasy fiction, and children's books. But he was best known for two series of novels with enormous mass-market appeal: The Kent Family Chronicles, eight volumes written in the 1970s ..., and the North and South Civil War trilogy." - The New York Times
Burny Mattinson became a messenger at Disney, beginning a career that would eventually make him the longest-tenured employee of the company (just shy of seventy years) and one of the last still at the company to have started there when Walt Disney himself was running it. - The New Yorker
"For more than 50 years, Barlow created 'nonmonumental' sculptures that prioritized absurdity over grandeur. Functional materials like cardboard, nuts and bolts, fabric, and plywood were stacked, stitched, and stretched into imposing forms and painted in vibrant colors. … Sometimes, they tipped dangerously to the side." - ARTnews
"Despite the outpouring of national pride over Oe's win, his principal literary themes evoke deep unease (in Japan). A boy of 10 when World War II ended, Oe came of age during the American occupation. - AP
His opera Life Is a Dream had a difficult birth: the company that commissioned it closed before it was produced, and Spratlan was reduced to raising money himself for performances of the second act -- which became the first opera to win a Pulitzer in 40 years. - MSN (The Boston Globe)
"In an epic that began with Walk to the End of the World (1974) and concluded 25 years later, ... Charnas conceived a dystopic world in which an escaped female slave, Alldera, leads the rebellious Free Fems to brutally conquer and enslave their former male masters." - The New York Times
"He and his peers have achieved immense success, but still don’t know how to cope with the cultural shifts that naturally occur over a long career. Instead they want to keep the conditions that gave rise to their success forever preserved so they can say whatever." - The New York Times
"Critics called his storylines ludicrous and his special effects schlocky, … but many of his films turned a profit and gained a cult following, attracting later generations of moviegoers … (with) mutant ants, 60-foot giants, rampaging grasshoppers and a bloodthirsty spider that proves too big to squash." - MSN (The Washington Post)
Kohn Pedersen Fox, the firm which he co-founded and served as president and number-one salesman, designed such celebrated buildings as the World Bank headquarters in DC, Procter & Gamble headquarters in Cincinnati, and skyscrapers from London and New York to Seoul and Shanghai. - MSN (The Washington Post)
"Once hailed as among the finest actors of his generation, Blake became better known as the center of a real-life murder trial, a story more bizarre than any in which he acted. Many remembered him not as the rugged, dark-haired star of Baretta, but as a spectral, white-haired murder defendant." - AP
He was already a successful designer for opera and ballet (who got his start with David Hockney) when, in the 1990s, he started writing stories about a pig for his niece Olivia. He published his first Olivia book in 2000, and the series became a juggernaut. - MSN (The Washington Post)
