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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 [...]

The article is presented as a letter from a widely acclaimed author to one beginning a literary career. The origins of stories, the process of creating a novel, and the need for writing about what deeply moves the author are discussed.

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.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, good ol' boys and girls. I want to start my talk tonight by introducing you to Miss Daisy. Chances are, you already know her. She [...]

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.

This article discusses the manner in which the gentlemanly education and life at Yale College influenced James Fenimore Cooper's works. Topics include youth, debt, rebelliousness, and expulsion.

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.

This article discusses the manner in which William Faulkner's relationship with Joan Williams is portrayed in 'The Wintering.' Topics include biography, letter writing, and story telling.

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 [...]

The author's childhood denial of her left-handedness is examined in relation to a later injury to her wrist and the consequent interruptions to her life.

Issues related to the life of 20th-century author and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre are examined, focusing on a presentation of a summary of key events in the man's life. Topics include his boyhood; his poor eyesight, those who bullied him as a child; his friend at school, Paul Nizan; his overbearing step-father; his wartime experiences, including his escape from a German prison; themes of his fiction; his fame; and his account of Cuba in the early 1960s.

Modern feminist criticism seeking to minimize the works of William Hazlitt, based on his 1803 entanglement with Sara Walker, and chronicled in his 1822 'Libor Amoris', is analyzed. Hazlitt has been unfairly accused.

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.

In his introduction to Byron and Greek Love, Louis Crompton identifies a 'central issue confronting gay studies'--'the friendship problem': If a novel, poem, or essay describes or expresses ardent feelings [...]

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

Let me begin by reading to you an unpublished letter that Joseph Conrad wrote in the postwar years. One of the things I plan to do here is to reveal [...]

Edward Shils was a distinguished educator, scholar, author and editor, but first and foremost a sociologist. He vigorously defended the traditional research university throughout his life and argued that it performed a significant central function in modern society. He believed that science and scholarship must be valued for their own sake and that universities should be free from government interference. Shils was one of the most thoughtful analysts of higher education and of intellectual life., Edward Shils (1910-1995) defended the traditional research university throughout his career, arguing that it performs a central role in modern society, that science and scholarship must be valued for their [...]

Edward Shils was to become one of the most learned men in the social sciences of the 20th century. To Shils, the test of a true classic work in the social sciences is its power to direct the reader to new and rewarding intellectual directions rather than what it says in plain text. Two volumes confirm the stature of Shils as a scholar of great learning and insight, namely, 'The Virtue of Civility: Selected Essays on Liberalism, Tradition, and Civil Society' and 'The Calling of Education: The Academic Elite and Other Essays on Higher Education.', Early in his work as a graduate student in the sociology department of the University of Chicago, Edward Shils, who was to emerge as the most learned man in the [...]

Canadian writer Donald M. Fraser so loved his old town in Nova Scotia that he used in his fiction the name of Nostrum. Nostrum was a small city on the eastern seaboard with several abandoned coal mines. Nostrum represented a point of departure for the writer who died at the age of 38.

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.