Category: people

It’s remarkable that Atwood, who turned eighty in November, has reached this crest after spending six decades writing into an ever-shifting cultural landscape. When she was starting out, writers, for the most part, didn’t get published in Canada. Canadian literature as a concept didn’t even exist. – The Walrus

Even at age 89, Walter Cole dons a sequined gown and frizzy wig four nights a week to perform as Darcelle XV. And he does it at his own bar, which he opened with his first wife a few years after coming home to Portland from the Korean War. (It was his second wife that convinced him to try drag.) – American Theatre

The daughter of the late King Sihanouk. she began dancing at age 5; by age 16, she was a leader of the royal dance company and a mainstay of Cambodian cultural diplomacy. She fled the country when the Khmer Rouge took control in 1975; in the 1990s, she returned and, with the 10% of dancers who survived the killing fields, set about to revive the art form. – Reuters

Wood’s earlier essays are more sure of themselves, more eager to please, packed with the kind of aphoristic insights that might have undergraduates reaching for their highlighter pens… In later essays, mostly those written for the New Yorker, there is a more grounded and relaxed voice; a bit less desire to display fizzing erudition, a bit more concern for the messiness of emotional truth. – The Guardian

Lorna Fulton, head of Middlesbrough Town Hall, declined to book comedian Roy Chubby Brown because she thought local audiences might find his act offensive and his 2015 performance sold poorly. The mayor of the northern English city insisted that Fulton reverse herself and hire Brown, saying that her reluctance was “typical middle class prejudice against a blue collar act.” Fulton resigned — and received death threats. – Arts Professional

He was a clarinetist who jammed with Bernstein and Duke Ellington, played with the Cincinnati Symphony for 35 years, then gave it up to open an art gallery. Oh, and he founded a chamber music festival to continue feeding his interest in music. This is what it’s like to have a life in art. – Cincinnati Enquirer

O’Neill photographed everyone from the Beatles to Brigitte Bardot, but, he said, the Queen was the only person who ever made him nervous. “I researched some horse-racing jokes to break the ice and, thank God, she laughed,” he said. – The Guardian (UK)

Brightman first published an acclaimed biography of Mary McCarthy, and edited the letters between Hannah Arendt and McCarthy, before she started to become fascinated by the world of the Grateful Dead and the band’s fans. “‘Deadheads are everywhere and nowhere,’ she wrote, ‘so much a part of American life as to appear almost invisible.'” – The New York Times

But, he says, it was worth getting the info about the U.S’s WWII Japanese American camps into wider view. And he explains he’d invite all of his colleagues from Star Trek to dinner with him … “with one exception.” – The Guardian (UK)

“So there are two different things that happen. One is, this is what I am as an artist. I have nothing to say as an artist. I let the work do its thing. The other is, of course I have a voice, and I will use it as best I can, and fight for causes as a citizen and as a human being, alongside compatriots of all kinds. I’ll use my voice as best I can. I feel they’re important but they’re different from each other.” – Artnet