Amiri Baraka: “Politics is to protect truth and beauty”

Amiri Baraka

“Politics is to protect truth and beauty.” Amiri Baraka, famed leader of the Black Arts Movement, was a poet, playwright, jazz critic, and actor. He was also a notorious political revolutionary who did not cease protesting despite arrests and beatings by the Newark police and struggling to install an honest government that would respond to…

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Enjoy the latest issue of INTERFACES

interfaces

Voilá, the latest issue of INTERFACES, internationally renowned journal of text and image. This issue focuses on images and memories, with fascinating discussions ranging from fiction that uses photographs with its text, to Ken Burns’ recontextualizing photojournalism in his Vietnam War documentary and, as an added treat, my on-camera interview with Jules Feiffer, the brilliant…

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Susan Minot Paints Everything, Everywhere

Susan Minot

“I like to say ‘I write,’ or ‘I paint,’ and not ‘I am an anything.” The award-winning writer of novels, short stories, screenplays, and poems, Susan Minot says she grew up in a family in which everyone always had something before them to do with their hands. It is a habit that has stayed with…

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti is turning 100!

Happy 100th Birthday Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Legendary poet, artist, publisher and social activist Lawrence Ferlinghetti will celebrate his 100th birthday on March 24. My on-camera interview with him in 2001 has been edited into a four minute homage by Michelle Memran, producer and director of last year’s critically lauded film “The Rest I Make Up.” After producing no fewer than 30…

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I Am Honored by the Award- Winning Journal INTERFACES

interfaces

INTERFACES, The award-winning international journal of text and image, co-published, in French and English, by the College of the Holy Cross, the Sorbonne, and the University of Bourgogne, has done me the honor of making me a contributor. In the current issue, Maurice Géracht of Holy Cross introduces me and The Writer’s Brush interview series…

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A Fun Discussion of The Writer’s Brush with Mark Lynch of WICN

The Writer's Brush

A Sit Down with Mark Lynch I sat down last week for a fun discussion with the ever-insightful, enthusiastic Mark Lynch of WICN about my 40-year labor of love, The Writer’s Brush: Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture by Writers.  We covered Charles Bukowski’s drawings of poodles, Edgar Allen Poe’s self-portrait, D.H. Lawrence’s painting of The Rape of…

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The Stunning Visual Art of Author Annie Weatherwax

The Stunning Visual Art of Author Annie Weatherwax by @DFriedmanAuthor #VisualArt #VisuArtist #Writer #Artist

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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How To Write Better: Borrowing From Chemistry

How To Write Better: Borrowing From Chemistry by @DFriedmanAuthor #write #writer #chemistry

Better Writing Through Chemistry  In 1935, Dupont promised they’d bring us better living through chemistry. Today, the phrase is used ironically for movie and album titles and most especially to describe recreational drug use. Acknowledging that chemistry has improved our lives is bromidic. Less well known is that the chemical lexicon, demonstrably miscible with our…

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