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There were evenings in Barrow Street, while I played the violin part in Bach's B-minor to Isaac's flute, when his musical sense of style would make me gasp. It was [...]

DURING the summer of 1950, when Hannah Arendt was on vacation, she was reading proofs for The Origins of Totalitarianism. In a letter to her mentor and beloved friend, Karl […]

Steve Coil has managed to find time to write ambitious pieces while serving as the Washington Post's managing editor. Now he's working on a book about U.S. intelligence and Osama [...]

Issues concerning the manner in which writers can use guest privileges at monasteries as a way to create a personal retreat are examined. Topics include the history of welcomeness in monasteries, the sacredness of writing, and specific US monasteries, such as the Pecos Benedictine Monastary in Santa Fe, NM.

The prolific and varied career of writer and poet John Yau is examined. Topics include his birth in Boston, MA, his immigrant Chinese parents, his education, his poetry, and his art criticism.

Issues concerning the life and literay work of Viken Berberian are examined, focusing on the manner in which he came to write 'The Cyclist' which explores the mind of a terrorist. Topics include Berberian's upbringing in West Beirut, Lebanon; the murder of his father by an Armenian terrorist; the mixed religious and cultural influences on the terrorist Berberian protrays in his novel; and Berberian's education at the University of California at Los Angeles, Columbia University's journalism school, and the London School of Economics.

The life and work of author John Dufresne is examined. Topics include his birth and early years in Worcester, MA; his experience at the Master's of Fine Arts program at the University of Arkansas, where he studied under John Clellon Holmes; his portrayal of southern life; the difference between southern and northern literature; his lyrical language; and his fascination with love and trouble.

The literary journey of writer Nick Montemarano, whose first novel, 'A Fine Place,' will be published in February 2002, is described. Topics include the history of his publisher, Context Books; a murder in Brooklyn, which serves as the foundation for his novel; his portrayals of family life; his education at the State University of New York at Binghampton and at the University of Mass at Amherst; and the manner in which he found his agent, Jill Grinberg.

A writer surveys other writers to learn what they are reading in the aftermath of the Sep 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Topics include the manner in which reading allows people to continue to live their lives in the midst and aftermath of a catastrophe, and list of books that were read, such as 'Pride and Prejudice,' 'War and Peace,' 'When Things Fall Apart,' and 'The Tennis Court Oath.'

It's easy to arrive at the subject of Carey McWilliams and enter into a pure love-fest, ending with a blanket endorsement. (1) Though his legacy, especially to historians of the [...]

The history of American writers in Greece is examined. Topics include the presence of Greek's ancient world; expectations and misconceptions of the arriving writer; the experience of writers such as Mark Twain, Henry Miller, and Gregory Curso; and the social and literary life of American writers in Greece in 2001.

Born in Harlem in 1928, Piri Thomas was a child of the Depression. His mother was a light-skinned Cuban; his father a Puerto Rican whose darker complexion Thomas alone of [...]

Matters writers should consider when they give public readings of their works are examined. Topics include the popularity of authorial readings, the impressive talent for public reading Truman Capote displayed, the importance of voice, and the difference between the writing and the performing of the written word.

Issues concerning the relationship between fiction and the author's actual life are examined, focusing on trends in late 20th and early 21st-century fiction for authors to reveal how their personal life relates to their fiction. Topics include writers' publicity appearances as a means to reveal their private life, how readers respond to writers' lives, and the danger of diluting fiction with facts.

Profiles of first-time authors Laura Glen Louis, Jeffrey Frank, Alexandra Styron, David Czuchlewski, and Christine Balint, and excerpts from their fictional works, 'Talking in the Dark,' 'The Columnist,' 'All the Finest Girls,' 'The Muse Asylum,' and 'The Salt Letters,' respectively, are presented.

Issues concering the literary career of African American novelist Colson Whitehead, author of 'The Intuitionist' and 'John Henry Days,' are examined. Topics include his education at Harvard University, his work as TV editor for the 'Village Voice,' his appreciation of popular culture, and his unique place in the literary world of young American authors.

A novelist and teacher of creative writing describes his experience teaching with the world-famous writer, James Michener. Topics include Michener's background as an orphan who never knew his parents, his athletic scholarship to Swarthmore College, the first meeting between the teacher and Michener, and Michener's generous comments made to apprentice writers.

A writer uses the experiences of 19th-century arctic explorers as a metaphor for the process of writing. Topics include the details of the arctic explorations, and the essential characteristic of creative writing as an exploration into the unknown.

A writer describes his experience with a pet bird, a buncho that is caged in the writer's study. Topics include the loneliness of writing, the experience of having the bird in the room while the writer is writing, and the bird's eventual death.

The life of writer Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote 'Fight Club' and 'Choke,' is described, focusing on his journey from discontented mechanic in Portland, Oregon, to international celebrity. Topics include his accidental disengagement from the television culture, which propelled him deeper into literature, and writers who have influenced him, such as Denis Johnson.

AMONG THE ARABS familiar with the literature and culture of the West, there have been very few as deeply and as widely knowledgeable about them as was Jabra Ibrahim Jabra [...]

William Faulkner's first day on European soil is the stuff of legend. He and his artist friend William Spratling sailed from New Orleans on the cargo West Ivis and arrived [...]

A Thomas Bentley compiled and wrote The Monuments of Matrones which the well-known printer Henry Denham published in 1582. This massive work - over 1,500 pages - was the first comprehensive prayer book for women, a major devotional publication of Elizabethan England, containing prayers, biblical extracts, biographies of Old and New Testament women, and writings by Reformation queens, including Elizabeth. Title pages and some prayers have been studied by modern scholars, but nothing was known of the author beyond his self-identification as a student of Gray's Inn. We believe that the churchwarden of St. Andrew Holborn, compiler of the church records, is the same Thomas Bentley as the author of The Monument. This Thomas Bentley had been at Gray's Inn, St. Andrew was the Gray's Inn church, but especially notable is that the initials inserted into family prayers in The Monument were those of his family.

Mem Fox has written numerous books and articles which help teachers to teach literacy and also books for children and parents. Fox was educated in Africa, where her parents were missionaries. After high school she did domestic work at the World Council of Churches Conference Center, near Geneva, Switzerland before studying at Rose Bruford's drama school in London, where she also took a teaching degree. She also learned to write there. After marrying, she emigrated to Australia, where she taught drama and became an author

Author Norman Mailer was a popular writer during the first half of the 20th century. His works included 'The Naked and the Dead,' 'Barbary Shore' and 'The Deer Park.' However, he was also known for the fact that he hastened the demise of the novel as a serious commodity in the literary world. His short-lived literary career was viewed by many as a natural consequence of his allegedly egoistic and existentialist views.

The article compares and contrasts the lives of Leo Tolstoy and Ludwig van Beethoven. Artistic talent, personal conflicts, and the nature of the creative process are discussed.

James Joyce and his family spent some of their most financially secure years at an apartment on the via Bramante in Trieste, Italy. This is largely because Joyce had two teaching positions and was able to devote most of his spare time to making certain 'Dubliners' was published.

Ford Madox Ford may be described a largely unread writer, despite his having written volumes of materials, including novels, poems, political and social argument and biographies. To better understand Ford, an analysis of a number of his works has been undertaken, including such books as 'The Good Soldier,' 'A Call,' 'Vive Le Roy' and 'Parade's End.' Although some of his works may have failed to incite critical mention, his impressions and reminiscences are interesting. Ford's book, 'The March of Literature,' has been described as one that was able to 'breathe' the spirit of literature.

A literary life's greatest rewards do not depend on career advancement, but are found in the work itself. For example, Nicolaus Kogon financed and edited the publication of an anthology called 'The Age of Koestler.' Richard Ryan works as a stockbroker during the day and as a poet and novelist at night.

Guy Davenport is a literary modernist in the post-modern world. Although most of his works and concepts are not appreciated and shared by the younger generation, he persists in this writing style and continues to be radical, direct and constantly searching for correlations in events, which are characteristics of Modernism. Davenport focuses on the middle of the 19th to the 20th century and makes it possible for past events and present occurrences to appear related by pointing out aspects which may bear certain resemblances.

Thomas Carlyle was an outcast among his peers mainly because of his cantankerous attitude and unruly humor. Writers have often referred to him as difficult to comprehend and a test of patience. Biographer J.A. Froude came up with a book on Carlyle, showing that his 42-year marriage with wife, Jane Welsh Carlyle, was an unhappy one until the time of her death. 'Reminiscences' showed another side of Carlyle, which may explain his introvert behavior and crude sense of humor that appeal to the reader's emotions.

F.R. Leavis is considered the pioneer of literary modernism. He had a severity about him that often intimidated others. His attitude, however arrogant and contradictory, was not bullying or overpowering in an oppressive sense. Leavis had difficulties being around people his age who found him overly demanding. His circle consisted mostly of younger people who found an adoration of literature through him. These students, however, appeared to be hooked on Leavis' eloquence and attitude towards literature rather than the subject itself.

Charles Bukowski continued to confront the ultimate truth of poverty and his own fears and myths in his fiction and motion picture screenplays after attaining fame. Bukowski created his own myths and explicated the issues of persona, fame, money and success with humor and irony. He retained the myths even after experiencing personal fame because he believed fame exacts a price from all. While his works exuded a cult-like charm, his critics judged him not on the basis of literary excellence, but with a bias against his personal characteristics.

Writer and supporter of the Japanese military, Mishima Yukio, committed seppuku, ritual suicide, on Nov 25, 1970, after a failed attempt to use open rebellion of the military to prevent it from being reduced. His revolt was pointless and so the suicide seems worthless unless interpreted through Romantic Irony and Zen. Using these philosophies, Mishima's imitation of a samurai was an effort to attain pure realism through the conjunction of art and action.

Early on Christmas morning I stood with hundreds of people on a roadside in Abalak, a town in southern central Niger, West Africa, on the edge of the Sahara. I [...]

Shortly after Thomas Aquinas died, on March 7, 1274, miracles began to occur near his body. The monks of the Cistercian abbey at Fossanova, where Thomas was buried, feared that [...]