Stories

How To Write About People, And Place, Beyond War

"Turning to fiction allowed for stories that would otherwise have disappeared into the chest of time, to live on, and slowly but surely they are educating, bringing forth that we all share this place together. The 24-hour news cycle leaves little room for reflection or deeper understanding." - LitHub

Bristol Is Booming With New Spaces For Black Music

"We don't need to pretend to be nobody else, we're just us. It just took a while to get there." - BBC

Helping ‘Benjamin Button’ Grow Up, Into A Musical

"In rehearsals, they tightened the structure, fine-tuned the music and lyrics, tamping down the sentimentality. Still, the show is plenty sentimental." - The New York Times

What Makes For A Good Scary Story?

The end, says Stephen Graham Jones."The story is running along the top of a flat mesa, and it's nighttime and 95% of it is even-footing. But then at the very end, you jump off into the night, into the darkness, and you trust." - NPR

The Owners Of Elvis’s Music Catalogue Are Suing Anthropic

“The Elvis plaintiffs bring this action to enforce these exclusive rights against the defendant that has built its entire business model based on copyright infringement at a scale never seen before," according to the lawsuit. - The New York Times

It’s Spooky Season, And Time To Acknowledge The Most Influential American Writer Ever

Edgar Allan Poe "seems in deliberate, even flagrant, contrast with what were once regarded as the great themes of American literature: the freedom of self-reinvention promised by a new society and its frontier, exploration, rugged individualism, and the struggle to conquer nature." - Slate

Our Playlists Are Filled With ‘Old’ Music

Is nostalgia - and not just A.I. - ruining popular music right now, when more than 100,000 songs are released to streamers every single day? - BBC

Noise Laws, Drugs, And Cellphones Are Harming Dance Clubs In Britain

Or so lovers of (ridiculously) loud dance music claim. "At Gaffe, a DIY space in northeast London, a sign shows two arrows pointing in different directions. One says 'Dancing,' the other 'Yapping.'" - The Guardian (UK)

The Queer, Tattooed Colombian Author Who’s A National Book Award Finalist

Júlian Delgado Lopera: "'Most of the catastrophic violence in our history can be traced back to a man who hasn’t allowed himself to feel tenderness,' he affirms. ... He’s referring to a kind of violence that goes beyond the long-running armed conflict." - El País English

The Film Director Whose Impossible Class Struggle Movie Won At Venice

Lee Chang-Dong: "I constantly asked myself: am I worthy of telling this story? And if I am, how do I tell it? Do I stand close to the workers, or keep my distance?" - The Guardian (UK)

How Netflix Went From Zeitgeist To, Well, Zeitghost

"The main problem with 2020s Netflix: It gets eyeballs watching far more than it gets tongues wagging. If a Super Bowl-size event takes place and nobody talks about it, does it even matter?" - Fast Company

Authors Are Angry And In Mourning As A Koch Scion Sells Off Catapult Books After Workers Unionize

Author Gina Frangello: "Catapult is intrinsic to L.A. culture and L.A. literature. So many of their writers are in this area. ... It’s a huge loss for L.A. It’s a huge loss for the West Coast.” - Los Angeles Times

Amy Poehler Goes To Ancient Greece

Poehler, and Hugh Laurie, star in a fictional show about realistic archaeologists. "Getting the objects right was important for the production because an appreciation of artifacts is central to archaeology." - The New York Times

San Francisco’s SFMoMA Gets A Big Boost From A K-Pop Star

Want to sell tickets? Get a K-pop star's art collection up. "The show has been a blockbuster success, with over 66,000 tickets sold and advance sales that were six times higher than any previous exhibition at the museum." - The Guardian (UK)

Sofia Coppola On Finishing What Her Mother Eleanor Started

"'It’s like the opposite of Hearts of Darkness,' Sofia said. 'In a way it’s sort of a nice counterpoint because that movie’s so macho and masculine and this is so feminine.' And it’s also true to what really happened." - Seattle Times (AP)

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