Shakespeare's birthplace just reopened, and Jane Austen's house is about to reopen " and some of the changes advantage the visitors coming now. "The cottage where Austen revised, wrote and h…
Audre Lorde's 1977 piece "Poetry Is not a Luxury" seems prescient right now. "Poems have alchemized death and imagined the continuation of lives cut short by racist violence. The…
Burrows is an actor, playwright, producer, and activist who started her career as a kid on a radio show. In 1968, she was favorably written about in The New York Times, and she says, "It put…
Rupert Murdoch's son James, who has championed environmental causes and helped force out Bill O'Reilly at Fox after the host's past with sexual harassment came into the open, "abruptly resig…
Author Robin Stevens on writing for kids: "What book changed your life? What stories made you think about the world? I couldn't tell you much about what was in most books I read last month b…
Fleisher famously spent 30 years mastering piano's left-handed repertoire after an injury to his right hand " and then reintegrated his right hand when it recovered after three decades. "Fle…
Whew: "If HBO's Game of Thrones was the last great piece of TV monoculture, then the pandemic has popularized a series of forgettable productions that each offers a fleeting, miniat…
The planned reopening date is September 9, but of course not if infections start to crest again in New York. And, of course, "when it reopens, it will limit capacity to 25% and reduce its op…
Novelist Kathleen McMahon says she's tired of flowers on publication day. "MacMahon says she does not like that writers are treated 'like show ponies . . . I'm not comfortable with that. I'd…
Arvind Ethan David is one of very few Broadway producers of color, and he (famously) gave a TED Talk comparing his path to becoming a U.S. citizen to his path producing the show Jagged Littl…
In December of 2015, British novelist Ali Smith proposed an idea to her publishers: Four books in four years, as close to the time news events happened as possible. "I'd try to write one a y…
There are the familiar objects that suddenly seem to glow with importance " toilet paper rolls, Lysol wipes " and then there are the new objects: the to-go cocktail pouch, the ultra-large Bu…
Gayl Jones' debut work, Corregidora, "had a marked effect not only on [her editor Toni] Morrison's subsequent novels but on an entire generation of writers, whether they realized it or not."…
Eusebio Leal Spengler so loved the old city that he found ways to save it. "Never a priority in the 20th century, old Havana fell into disrepair. By befriending Fidel Castro, Leal began the …
Ask choreographer Sarah Crowell. The artistic director emeritus of the Destiny Arts Center. "The inquiry requires that we look at all levels of society. We have a particular way of seeing be…
Tsitsi Dangarembga, an activist and award-winning writer who was just chosen for the Booker longlist, has been arrested in Zimbabwe while she was protesting the arrest and imprisonment of in…
The actor excelled at playing cantankerous characters but came to fame playing an assistant engineer at a nuclear plant in The China Syndrome. Later, he became famous for his spokesperson ro…
Not surprisingly, different readers had passionate (and passionately differing) opinions about their book collections and an essay recreating a cull. "While it is fine to move so-so books al…
"These systemic barriers " no one seemed to notice, no one seemed to care, and so we felt like we had to say something," says Jennifer Holness, who adds that even as the most senior Black fi…
Though the theatre tried hard to attract smaller, socially distanced crowds as it reopened in June, no one was ready to return to an indoor space, and tickets didn't sell. The now common ref…
The U.S. president's TikTok flipout might not just be because of its security issues; indeed, there's a lot more to it, including free speech … and Facebook. "It's a rare feat to upturn tw…
Morgan Jerkins wanted to know more about where her people came from: "I hated the fact that I didn't know much about land. I didn't know about harvest, high tide, low tide, the levees, the d…
Keenan Scott II explains: "We tend to be rewarded for depicting the harshest realities of the Black experience while ignoring its beauty. In art, our trauma is fetishized and romanticized wh…
Alyssa Cole, author of books about the Civil War and contemporary life, decided to write a thriller. One of the issues she has faced: "There are people who find the idea of Black people in l…
Plush toymaking, giving dancing lessons (via Zoom, of course), selling skincare products … stagehands, costume designers, actors, and everyone associated with Broadway are trying to figure…