Category: people

Waligwa was diagnosed with a brain tumor the same year she starred in the movie with David Oyelowo and Lupita Nyong’o. Oyelowo wrote on Instagram, “We mourn the loss of our beautiful Nikita Pearl Waligwa. … She was a ball of light in @queenofkatwemovie and in life. Her battle with a brain tumor was humbling to witness. Her light will live on.” – The Hollywood Reporter

Cullinan was hired as a typist at The New Yorker when she was 22, but soon the magazine started publishing her stories as well. “Ms. Cullinan helped redefine Irish-American literature, veering away from the male tradition of ‘ward bosses and henchmen, larger-than-life political fixers, tavern social life and father-son relationships,’ Patricia Coughlan, who taught Irish literature at University College Cork, wrote in a 2017 essay in The Irish Times.” – The New York Times

Casei “in the 1960s and ’70s could be reliably heard as Suzuki, Maddalena, Lola and other bread-and-butter mezzo-soprano characters at the Metropolitan Opera before transforming herself into a pathbreaking labor leader.” She performed at the Met for 20 years, starting with Maddalena in Rigoletto and ending as Larina in Eugene Onegin. Then she became president of the American Guild of Musical Artists – and she was a transformational labor leader for the performers’ union. – The New York Times

Hotchner was “a novelist, playwright, biographer, literary bon vivant and philanthropist whose life was shaped and colored by close friendships with two extraordinarily gifted and well-known men, Ernest Hemingway and Paul Newman.” – The New York Times

Cohen was a veteran stage and screen actor who found extra fame late in life as Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon)’s housekeeper and nanny on Sex and the City (and both movies). “On Broadway, she appeared in Orpheus Descending and Ivanov, and received Lucille Lortel and Drama League award nominations, as well as the New Dramatists’ Bowden award, the Fox Foundation’s Lilly award and the Richard Seff award from Actor’s Equity Association.” – Variety

Remington famously hadn’t read the books when she created the covers, leading to missteps including lions on the original cover. “While working as a freelance illustrator, she also did whatever else she could to make ends meet. She designed costumes for the theater, did holiday store window displays for Tiffany, ushered at Carnegie Hall and, she told Andwerve, ‘worked on a yacht to go on free trips to Martha’s Vineyard. … It was,’ she added, ‘a great deal of fun.'” – The New York Times

Pyotr Pavlensky — who gained notoriety in Russia for sewing his lips shut in solidarity with Pussy Riot and nailing his scrotum to Red Square, and who, having received political asylum from the French government, proceeded to set fire to the Bank of France — obtained, posted online, and gave to the newspaper Libération sexting messages and images sent to a woman by President Macron’s former spokesman, who is — make that was — running for mayor of Paris. – Yahoo! (AP)

“[She] began her career in the 1960s performing with the Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey and Donald McKayle dance companies … [and] became a leading black performer on Broadway … and later turned to supporting roles on film and television, playing one of TV’s first black lesbian characters.” (And no less than Bob Fosse called her “the best dancer I’ve ever seen.”) – The Washington Post

“[Her work] did nothing less than heighten the stakes of what we expect from a photograph, expectations that persist. … She was an artist under the guise of a journalist and an activist under the guise of a dispassionate civil servant, and it would be impossible to think of any of these roles today without her influence.” – T — The New York Times Style Magazine

“Aha, a Viking!” he shouted and gave a chuckle. I said it was an honor to meet him. He waved it off and said something to Forelli in German, turned to me and, speaking English, said that we would soon be seeing each other for lunch. Then he sat down on his bicycle and rode off. – New York Times Magazine