Category: people

“The burly and bearded Ai said 81 days in secretive detention in 2011, which sparked an international outcry, triggered his foray into music.” The album, titled Divina Commedia and due for release at the end of this month, will be distributed online.

Peter Altenburg (né Richard Engländer) “walked out of courses in law, botany, and medicine before, in his thirties, giving himself over to a life of thorough and eccentric bohemianism. He is reputed to have spent most of his adult waking hours in coffeehouses, and the sleeping ones in a hotel that was little more than a brothel.”

Llyn Foulkes “doesn’t really play by art world rules. He doesn’t network. He isn’t that interested in socializing or kissing up to collectors.”

“Eugène Ionesco was 59 and considered one of the foremost playwrights of his time when Mr. Storch suggested that he rewrite the second act of his relatively new three-act play, Hunger and Thirst.“

Paul Durica livens up history when he researches and acts as famous, and infamous, Chicago residents in his street tours (though honestly, he’s finishing his dissertation at the same time).

“I’ve never seen her daunted. She’s so tiny and exquisite and ebullient. She gives off a sense of being unlike other people. There’s only one of her.”

“Walker thinks the way a lot of artists think — not in straight lines, but from multiple angles at once. ‘In the middle of whatever,’ says Shteynshleyger, ‘he’ll start talking about ancient history, or the Stone Age, or God knows what.’ Walker’s thought process, she says, takes ‘meandering paths. It’s not A to B; it’s more like A to F, then to B.'”

One of Russia’s most important contemporary authors, Mikhail Shishkin, has pulled out of representing Russia in a major international literary event because he does not want to be the voice of “a country where power has been seized by a corrupt, criminal regime [and] where the state is a pyramid of thieves”.

“She acts eight times each week in “Perfect Crime,” showing such dedication that she is the Guinness World Records holder for the most performances by a theater actor in the same role. She has missed just four performances since 1987.”

“Inspired by the events [of the anti-Mubarak uprising], and driven partly by the state media’s outrageously misleading coverage of them, [Bassem] Youssef started recording commentary in his own home, which he broadcast on YouTube. … And he quickly became known for saying what so many Egyptians were thinking – and for being hilarious at the same time. A local network noticed and made an offer. He accepted, and left surgery for satire.”