Arts and People
Listening Anew to an American Nomad How the Grammys recognized Harry Partch nearly 50 years after his death. In The American Scholar.
- The Sufi Saint Who Watches Over Senegal Images of Amadou Bamba, a father of the Senegalese independence movement, are all over West Africa. In Atlas Obscura.
- The Novelist Who Recreated 1970s D.C. For Creatures of Passage, Morowa Yejidé painstakingly built a portrait of a vanished city’s overlooked Black community. In WP Magazine.
- She’s Been Called the Mother of Disability Rights – and She’s a Badass Featured in the Oscar-nominated film Crip Camp, Judy Heumann makes waves. In WP Magazine.
- Two Turkish Brothers Found Their Calling in DC, Championing the Black Music Scene Now filmmaker Umran Safter has made a new film about how they broke down barriers. In WP Magazine.
- How Did Artists Survive the First Great Depression? What is the role of artists in a crisis? What does my work mean in this larger emergency? Does my personal creativity matter? And how do I navigate this meltdown? In Literary Hub.
- Uncovering Secret Histories of a World War II Brooklyn Spy: For my book Cork Wars, I faced the usual hurdles for narrative nonfiction: finding the story, learning how to tell it, how to respect the people involved. But I also had to confront the story’s multigenerational scope, and find a way to weave memory with documented history. In Literary Hub.
- Chicago Friends, Richard Wright and Nelson Algren: Writers Nelson Algren and Richard Wright tangled with their city as young unknowns and forged a writing friendship that explored race, reality and new voices. In American Scholar.
- Perspectives on Puerto Rico: Photographers Jack Delano and Edwin Rosskam dodged U boats to reach Puerto Rico on the eve of World War II. The images they took for the U.S. government show an intriguing light on Puerto Rican life. This is the story of how they each fell in love with the island. In Américas magazine.
- Ode to an Artist: Outsider artist James Harold Jennings lived on a school bus in rural North Carolina and opened a door to creative freedom for those who visited him there. In Oxford American.
- In the StoryCorps Booth: A place to record your story, in Grand Central. In Smithsonian.
- Monk on a Mission: In Thailand, an unorthodox Buddhist monk shows abandoned children the power of kick-boxing and their own choices. In Tricycle.
- Crafter of Memory in Film: Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, winner of the 2010 Cannes Palme d’Or, shows the roots of his films in his native northeastern Thailand. In Tricycle.
- Being Silent Sometimes: A 2010 follow-up interview with Apichatpong is here.
- Machado de Assis, Brazil’s Wry Modernist: With the centennial of the death of the Father of Brazilian literature, Machado is gaining new fans. Brazilian musician Tom Zé weighs in. From Américas magazine, under Downloads.
- Pet Detectives: A sting operation in Maryland nets wildlife criminals. In Baltimore magazine.
- Django Reinhardt Festival: Slow Trains
- The Guitar Lab near Galax, Virginia: Guitar-maker Wayne Henderson, national treasure, has a studio in the mountains. In The Washington Post.
- Paderewski’s Piano: Smithsonian
