Posts Tagged ‘art’
Roberta Allen: “Language is the bridge…”
“Language is the bridge…” Roberta Allen began making and exhibiting her conceptual art more than a half century ago, before she came to author eight books and more than 200 works of short fiction. Indeed, as she explains in this 2021 interview, her earliest writing was about her art. Allen had her first solo exhibition…
Read MoreCharlie Brown and Spider-Man inspired Clifford Thompson
Writer-Artist 14: Clifford Thompson “Being at odds with the world around you is a common theme among personal essayists, and my first model of an artistic treatment of such themes was Peanuts.” Writing and Art Were a Single Pursuit Even as a child of seven or eight, Thompson says his attempts at writing and art…
Read MoreAn Interview with Jules Feiffer
“My goal was to overthrow the government…” – Jules Feiffer What a treat it was to chat with Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award-winning cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, novelist, author of more than 35 books, illustrator, and for decades the most widely read satirist in America. Enjoy this candid interview in which he explains how…
Read More“Eating with my Eyes”: The Landscapes of Guy de Maupassant
Writer-Artist 13: Guy de Maupassant “I have the clear and profound feeling of eating with my eyes, and digesting colors as you would digest meat and fruit.” Achieved Greatness and Wished for More France’s greatest short story writer—his first collection of short stories was in its twelfth printing in less than two years, and his…
Read MorePoly-poly-math: Lera Auerbach is a Quadruple Threat
Writer-Artist 12: Lera Auerbach “Borderless creativity” A Living Renaissance Woman Lera Auerbach has resisted creative pigeonholing from her earliest years. Playing the piano and composing at four, she was told she must choose, that it was not possible to become both a virtuoso performer and serious composer. When, at 12, she informed her piano instructor that…
Read MoreDylan Paints America
Writer-Artist 11: Bob Dylan “The idea was to create pictures that would not be misinterpreted.” A 20th century icon, winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature, 12 Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and a special Pulitzer Prize, Bob Dylan has been making art since recovering from a motorcycle accident in the 60’s, has published…
Read MoreProlific Poet William Jay Smith Somehow Found Time to Paint
Writer-Artist 10: William Jay Smith 97 years old when he died, William Jay Smith apparently wasted not a minute of them. U.S. Poet Laureate Achieving national publication of a poem at 14, it was probably unsurprising that Smith would end up Poet Laureate of the United States, a member of the American Academy of Arts…
Read MoreTess Callahan Squints at the Page as well as the Canvas
Writer-Artist 9: Tess Callahan “The constraints we rail against may be the very ones we need.” A short story writer and essayist whose work has appeared in such prestigious venues as AGNI, Narrative Magazine, and the New York Times Magazine, Tess Callahan’s widely praised, multiply translated, debut novel April and Oliver was declared by The…
Read MoreLiterary Figures Painted and Drawn by Their Creators
LitHub editor Emily Temple just posted an article about some literary figures who have been depicted by famous artists—like Roy Lichtenstein’s TinTin, Picasso’s Don Quixote, and Rockwell Kent’s Captain Ahab. There are more than 400 plates of artwork by writers in my book The Writer’s Brush: Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture by Writers, but until…
Read MoreThe Stunning Visual Art of Author Annie Weatherwax
Writer-Artist Six: Annie Weatherwax Annie Weatherwax, novelist, short story writer, essayist, and visual artist was the 2009 winner of the Robert Olen Butler Prize for Fiction for her story “The Possibility of Things.” Her novel, All We Had, was turned into a movie directed by Katie Holmes. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The…
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