The Secret of Turning Your Moments into Miracles w/ MITCH HOROWITZ - Highlights

The Secret of Turning Your Moments into Miracles w/ MITCH HOROWITZ - Highlights

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Historian of Alternative Spirituality & PEN Award-Winning Author

I’ve always considered myself a believing historian and, in fact, most historians of religion are actually believing historians. Very frequently they emerge from the congregations that they’re writing about, whether new religious movements or traditional religions, this is true of Kabbalistic scholar Gershom Scholem, it’s true of people who have written probably the most important biographies of more recent religious figures like Mary Baker Eddy or Joseph Smith, a Mormon prophet. Although, historians don’t frequently acknowledge being believing historians because they feel that it might seem to compromise their capacity for critical judgement, but my impression is different. My impression is that being in very direct proximity to the nature of the philosophical, religious, ethical, therapeutic movements that you’re writing about can heighten your critical acumen.

MITCH HOROWITZ - Historian of Alternative Spirituality & PEN Award-Winning Author of Occult America

MITCH HOROWITZ - Historian of Alternative Spirituality & PEN Award-Winning Author of Occult America

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Historian of Alternative Spirituality & PEN Award-Winning Author

I’ve always considered myself a believing historian and, in fact, most historians of religion are actually believing historians. Very frequently they emerge from the congregations that they’re writing about, whether new religious movements or traditional religions, this is true of Kabbalistic scholar Gershom Scholem, it’s true of people who have written probably the most important biographies of more recent religious figures like Mary Baker Eddy or Joseph Smith, a Mormon prophet. Although, historians don’t frequently acknowledge being believing historians because they feel that it might seem to compromise their capacity for critical judgement, but my impression is different. My impression is that being in very direct proximity to the nature of the philosophical, religious, ethical, therapeutic movements that you’re writing about can heighten your critical acumen.

RICK MOODY: From The Ice Storm to The Long Accomplishment – A Literary Journey

RICK MOODY: From The Ice Storm to The Long Accomplishment – A Literary Journey

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Novelist & Memoirist

Words are the oldest information storage and retrieval system ever devised…The written word will remain, scribbled on collapsed highway overpasses, as a testament to love and rage, as evidence of the wanderers in the ruin.

Exploring Identity, Culture & The Art of Translation w/ JENNY BHATT - Highlights

Exploring Identity, Culture & The Art of Translation w/ JENNY BHATT - Highlights

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Writer, Literary Translator, Book Critic & Host of Desi Books Podcast

People talk about the work life, the line between your work and your life and keeping them separate and keeping the balance. For me, it’s always been that my work defines who I am and who I am in my personal life also defines who I am at my workplace. I don’t know how you separate those identities because I take all my belief systems and who I am to my workplace.

On Work. Life, Culture & Creativity with JENNY BHATT

On Work. Life, Culture & Creativity with JENNY BHATT

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Writer, Literary Translator, Book Critic & Host of Desi Books Podcast

People talk about the work life, the line between your work and your life and keeping them separate and keeping the balance. For me, it’s always been that my work defines who I am and who I am in my personal life also defines who I am at my workplace. I don’t know how you separate those identities because I take all my belief systems and who I am to my workplace.

Exploring Music, Writing & the Cultural Life of Athens with KIRIAKOS SPIROU - Highlights

Exploring Music, Writing & the Cultural Life of Athens with KIRIAKOS SPIROU - Highlights

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Editor, Writer, Curator, Content Creator, Pianist & Composer

This particular exhibition definitely had to do with my close relationship to dance. I have collaborated a lot with choreographers for contemporary dance theater, and I was often advising collaborators, so we would create the tasks and the content of the choreography together. We would exchange the tasks. We would create the score and narrative together. Also, because I’m a pianist, which is a very physically demanding instrument, you have this geography of the piano. I think this exhibitions links to my own experience as a performer and composer for dance and the relationship that music has with the body.

KIRIAKOS SPIROU - Editor, Writer, Curator, Content Creator, Pianist & Composer

KIRIAKOS SPIROU - Editor, Writer, Curator, Content Creator, Pianist & Composer

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Editor, Writer, Curator, Content Creator, Pianist & Composer

This particular exhibition definitely had to do with my close relationship to dance. I have collaborated a lot with choreographers for contemporary dance theater, and I was often advising collaborators, so we would create the tasks and the content of the choreography together. We would exchange the tasks. We would create the score and narrative together. Also, because I’m a pianist, which is a very physically demanding instrument, you have this geography of the piano. I think this exhibitions links to my own experience as a performer and composer for dance and the relationship that music has with the body.

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft with JANET BURROWAY - Highlights

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft with JANET BURROWAY - Highlights

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Novelist, Playwright & Author of Most Widely Used Creative Writing Text in America

There’s a lot of controversy about that idea at the moment, about whether fiction is truly empathic and how much freedom the imagination should have because, as one of my friends says, the imagination is not free. It comes from all of the places that we come from. So it’s a controversial notion, but I am firmly on the side of literature is empathic. In fact, I think that all the arts are empathic because all the arts basically say, ‘Wait a minute. Look at it this way.’ And they allow us to see from some other vantage point than our extremely self-interested selves.

JANET BURROWAY - Novelist, Playwright & Author of Most Widely Used Creative Writing Text in USA

JANET BURROWAY - Novelist, Playwright & Author of Most Widely Used Creative Writing Text in USA

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Novelist, Playwright & Author of Most Widely Used Creative Writing Text in America

There’s a lot of controversy about that idea at the moment, about whether fiction is truly empathic and how much freedom the imagination should have because, as one of my friends says, the imagination is not free. It comes from all of the places that we come from. So it’s a controversial notion, but I am firmly on the side of literature is empathic. In fact, I think that all the arts are empathic because all the arts basically say, ‘Wait a minute. Look at it this way.’ And they allow us to see from some other vantage point than our extremely self-interested selves.

Academy Award Nominee BENH ZEITLIN on Directing Beasts of the Southern Wild & Wendy

Academy Award Nominee BENH ZEITLIN on Directing Beasts of the Southern Wild & Wendy

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Writer, Director & Composer

I think it goes to this feeling of freedom, looking how freedom changes as you grow, being a very particular type of freedom that children have just by the nature of not having learned what the rules are. As we grow, we start to limit what we believe is possible. When you’re a kid, there isn’t a delineation between this is real, and this is my imagination. It’s all real. That’s your life experience.

Hustle & Post Traumatic Hood Disorder w/ Poet DAVID TOMAS MARTINEZ - Highlights

Hustle & Post Traumatic Hood Disorder w/ Poet DAVID TOMAS MARTINEZ - Highlights

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Pushcart Award-Winning Poet

When I was younger, I never really thought of living past twenty-five…I felt like I was in a movie. I thought that I was living this movie idea of things and there’d be gunshots around you. You hear it hitting the concrete, and you’re like ‘Oh, shit’. Seriously, I didn’t think of it as real life. When you’re young, the idea that I’d known people that were killed early, you go to prison. These just felt like matter of fact. They seemed to be this part of life and you just accepted them.

DAVID TOMAS MARTINEZ - Pushcart Award-Winning Poet

DAVID TOMAS MARTINEZ - Pushcart Award-Winning Poet

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Pushcart Award-Winning Poet

When I was younger, I never really thought of living past twenty-five…I felt like I was in a movie. I thought that I was living this movie idea of things and there’d be gunshots around you. You hear it hitting the concrete, and you’re like ‘Oh, shit’. Seriously, I didn’t think of it as real life. When you’re young, the idea that I’d known people that were killed early, you go to prison. These just felt like matter of fact. They seemed to be this part of life and you just accepted them.

Writer, Director ETGAR KERET on Dreams, Memory & Writing as a Healing Process - Highlights

Writer, Director ETGAR KERET on Dreams, Memory & Writing as a Healing Process - Highlights

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Writer and Director

When I compare novelists to short story writers or very short story writers, I can’t compare them, but one thing for sure, the purpose is different. I think that someone who writes tries to create or document a world. And when you write very short fiction you try to document a motion, some kind of movement.

Writer/Filmmaker ETGAR KERET: A Voice for Humanity, Culture & Creativity

Writer/Filmmaker ETGAR KERET: A Voice for Humanity, Culture & Creativity

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Writer and Director

When I compare novelists to short story writers or very short story writers, I can’t compare them, but one thing for sure, the purpose is different. I think that someone who writes tries to create or document a world. And when you write very short fiction you try to document a motion, some kind of movement.

JUNG CHANG - Historian & Author of International Bestseller Wild Swans - Highlights

JUNG CHANG - Historian & Author of International Bestseller Wild Swans - Highlights

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Historian & Author of International Bestseller Wild Swans

Writing Wild Swans was the thing that resolved the trauma for me. When I first came to Britain in 1978, I was one of the first people to leave China and come to the West. I wrote about the experience in Wild Swans. And for many years I had nightmares of the horrible things I saw and experienced. Writing Wild Swans made all these nightmares disappear. It was a wonderful process. The writing process turned trauma in memory. I am now able to talk to you about my book, my life, to read it without too much pain. I think this is a luxury people in China still don’t have.

JUNG CHANG - Historian & Author of International Bestseller Wild Swans

JUNG CHANG - Historian & Author of International Bestseller Wild Swans

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Historian & Author of International Bestseller Wild Swans

Writing Wild Swans was the thing that resolved the trauma for me. When I first came to Britain in 1978, I was one of the first people to leave China and come to the West. I wrote about the experience in Wild Swans. And for many years I had nightmares of the horrible things I saw and experienced. Writing Wild Swans made all these nightmares disappear. It was a wonderful process. The writing process turned trauma in memory. I am now able to talk to you about my book, my life, to read it without too much pain. I think this is a luxury people in China still don’t have.

Chilean singer-songwriter & activist NANO STERN On Tradition, Innovation & the Power of Song - Highlights

Chilean singer-songwriter & activist NANO STERN On Tradition, Innovation & the Power of Song - Highlights

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Musician and Songwriter

There is a metaphor to every single word that we say, we're just not aware. But if we were aware, then it would become very interesting. And that's the quest for me to be constantly more and more aware because it's so beautiful. It's a quest for beauty as well.

The Intersection of Music, Culture & Activism with NANO STERN

The Intersection of Music, Culture & Activism with NANO STERN

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Musician and Songwriter

There is a metaphor to every single word that we say, we're just not aware. But if we were aware, then it would become very interesting. And that's the quest for me to be constantly more and more aware because it's so beautiful. It's a quest for beauty as well.

From Edward Scissorhands to The Addams Family - CAROLINE THOMPSON - Screenwriter & Novelist - Highlights

From Edward Scissorhands to The Addams Family - CAROLINE THOMPSON - Screenwriter & Novelist - Highlights

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Award-Winning Screenwriter & Novelist

Tim Burton had just Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. He was at some point in the making of Beetlejuice. Our agency didn’t know what to do with either of us with our off-kilter sensibility, so they introduced us, and we immediately felt a kinship and became friends. It was pretty clear from pretty early on that we wanted to work together. We threw out ideas. Among the ideas we talked about Tim mentioned to me a drawing he had made in high school of a character who had scissors instead of hands. And I said, ‘Stop right there!; First of all, this may surprise you, it was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard in my life, so I knew it was brilliant. It was so simple and so stupid and such an obvious metaphor, I knew that it had power beyond belief. I said, ‘Stop, I know exactly what to do with that!’

Horror, Fantasy & the Art of Screenwriting with CAROLINE THOMPSON

Horror, Fantasy & the Art of Screenwriting with CAROLINE THOMPSON

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Award-Winning Screenwriter & Novelist

Tim Burton had just Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. He was at some point in the making of Beetlejuice. Our agency didn’t know what to do with either of us with our off-kilter sensibility, so they introduced us, and we immediately felt a kinship and became friends. It was pretty clear from pretty early on that we wanted to work together. We threw out ideas. Among the ideas we talked about Tim mentioned to me a drawing he had made in high school of a character who had scissors instead of hands. And I said, ‘Stop right there!; First of all, this may surprise you, it was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard in my life, so I knew it was brilliant. It was so simple and so stupid and such an obvious metaphor, I knew that it had power beyond belief. I said, ‘Stop, I know exactly what to do with that!’