« Previous  |  Next »

To Blacks, Precious Is ‘Demeaned’ or ‘Angelic’

A reinforcement of noxious stereotypes or a realistic and therapeutic portrayal of a black family in America? “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” the new film about an obese, poor, illiterate, young black woman who is sexually and ...

From FELICIA R. LEE, The New York Times,  20 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Oprah Winfrey,  Tyler Perry,  Duke University,  Alice Walker,  Steven Spielberg

To Lynn Redgrave, the Examined Life Is Worth Staging

LYNN REDGRAVE, sitting with her dog, Viola, in her bouquet-filled dressing room at the Manhattan Theater Club, was describing the exact moment in 2003 that she jettisoned her inner critic and fearmonger. She needed to draw on that newfound clarity and ...

From FELICIA R. LEE, The New York Times,  30 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Michael Redgrave,  Lynn Redgrave,  Natasha Richardson,  Manhattan Theater Club,  Vanessa Redgrave

Serving Literature by the Tweet

The founders of Electric Literature, a new quarterly literary magazine, seek nothing less than to revitalize the short story in the age of the short attention span. To do so, they allow readers to enjoy the magazine any way they like: on paper, Kindle, ...

From FELICIA R. LEE, The New York Times,  27 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Electric Literature,  Michael Cunningham,  Rick Moody,  Colson Whitehead,  Lydia Davis

Like Author, Like Heroine: Blazing a Trail Into the World of Elite Education

CHICAGO It required an almost 40-year labor, but Angela Jackson’s first novel, “Where I Must Go,” seems to have been born at the right time. Set in the late 1960s in an unnamed city (clearly this one), it follows a black working-class girl to the elite, ...

From FELICIA R. LEE, The New York Times,  12 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Barack Obama,  Angela Jackson,  Harvard University,  University of Chicago,  Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Same Pooh Bear, but an Otter Has Arrived

“Return to the Hundred Acre Wood,” the first authorized sequel to the A. A. Milne classic Winnie-the-Pooh books in more than 80 years, is out on Monday, inviting the question, “Why now?,” as well as, “Why do it at all?” Lottie the Otter, an addition to ...

From FELICIA R. LEE, The New York Times,  5 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Michael Brown (politician),  Walt Disney Company,  Mark Burgess,  Francis Ford Coppola,  Dorothy Parker

ArtsBeat: Smithsonian Offers Voluntary Buyouts to All Workers

In a bid to save money and to reorganize, the Smithsonian Institution has offered all of its 6,000 workers a voluntary buyout plan, a spokeswoman for the Smithsonian confirmed on Tuesday. The details of the buyout offer, reported Tuesday in The ...

From FELICIA R. LEE, The New York Times,  29 Sep 2009

Related Topics: Roman Polanski,  Dan Rather,  Lorrie Moore,  Taylor Branch,  Sam Tanenhaus

ArtsBeat: Byron Uncensored: Letters to Be Sold at Sotheby's

Lord Byron’s saucy letters to a clergyman, which include details of an affair with a servant girl and a reference to William Wordsworth as “Turdsworth” are set to be auctioned by Sotheby’s on Oct. 29 in London. The letters, to Byron’s close friend ...

From FELICIA R. LEE, The New York Times,  29 Sep 2009

Related Topics: Lord Byron,  Sotheby's,  William Wordsworth,  Warner Music Group Corp.,  Sarah Palin

For MacArthur Grants, Another Set of ‘Geniuses’

A papermaker dedicated to preserving traditional Western and Japanese techniques; a scientist developing theories of global climate change; and a journalist who helps uncover details of unsolved murders from the civil rights era are among the 24 ...

From FELICIA R. LEE, The New York Times,  21 Sep 2009

Related Topics: Edwidge Danticat,  Harvard University,  James B. Longley,  National Geographic,  New York Times Company

Back to the Scary Future and the Best-Seller List

They are her characters and her catastrophes, but Margaret Atwood says she sometimes frightens even herself when her imagination gets going. The latest dystopian speculations from this celebrated Canadian writer can be found in her novel “The Year of ...

From FELICIA R. LEE, The New York Times,  21 Sep 2009

Related Topics: Margaret Atwood,  Gamestop Corporation

Sassy Steps, From Salsa to Swing and Australia to Broadway

Jason Gilkison, the director and choreographer of the musical “Burn the Floor,” was channeling his inner grandfather. During a recent rehearsal in a careworn Midtown building, he wiggled his hips, chanted “boom-ba-ba-ba” and flung comments like “Sign ...

From FELICIA R. LEE, The New York Times,  28 Jul 2009

Related Topics: Academy Awards

« Previous  |  Next »

Who is This?

Help us add to our database, by linking this writer their entry in Wikipedia or Source Watch, or by suggesting that we remove it from our index.

Suggest an Entry