What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
As an artist and mother of three young children, I am affected by any book that I actually have time to read. On my nightstand at the...
What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
The first thing that comes to mind is that when I was 11 or 12 years old, I got hold of a collection of Edgar Allan Poe's work. It was a...
What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
Poison River, a graphic novel by Gilbert Hernandez, gave me a master lesson in real writing. It was beautiful beyond words and violent...
What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
Hardly anything highbrow, believe me. In the early 50s, I discovered
the narcotic of reading and my first sense of an author was R. Sidney...
A pair of books by Baltimore's Carole Boston Weatherford (Becoming Billie Holiday and Before John Was a Jazz Giant: A Song of John Coltrane) won Coretta Scott King Awards this week at the American...
What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
Shakespeare's play King Lear, which I saw for the first time at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. in 1968. It made me understand for the...
Tuesday night’s Great Poe Debate at the Free Library of Philadelphia certainly lived up to its name. The event was front-page news in that day’s edition of The Philadelphia...
Ten years ago, I spent a few nights at Ike Turner's house. I was writing a profile of Ike for The Oxford American magazine, and I arranged to stay at his house outside San Diego. He and his wife,...
What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
I don't think there's one thing, because it's been a slow evolution, not a sudden change. Mostly, it's been my relationships with family...
