David LowIn his recent article in the Christian Science Monitor, Matthew Shaer talked to two graduates working at small presses, Johnny Temple ’88, publisher of Akashic Books in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Matvei Yankelvich ’95, a founding editor at Ugly Duckling Presse. Shaer reported that while conventional books sales are sinking in the current economy, e-book sales have been soaring. He pointed out, however, that it’s not the larger publishing houses who are moving quickly toward mass digitization but the small presses of the independent publishing world. Temple plans to have e-book content from his company available soon and recognizes both its…
Christopher McKnight Nichols ’00 has co-edited and co-authored (with Charles Mathewes) a challenging essay collection, Prophesies of Godlessness: Predictions of America’s Imminent Secularization from the Puritans to the Present (Oxford University Press, 2008). The book considers the similar expectations of religious and moral change voiced by major American thinkers from the time of the Puritans to today. Generations of Americans, from colonial times to the post-modern present, have witnessed or predicted the coming of “godlessness” of American society. The essay collection examines the history of these prophesies, and each chapter explores a certain era, a particular individual, a community of…
In her new biography, My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century (Yale University Press, 2009) Adina Hoffman ’89 tells the story of an exceptional man, Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali, and the culture from which he emerged. Born in 1931 in the Galilee village of Saffuriyya, he had to flee his homeland during the war in 1948. He traveled on foot to Lebanon and returned a year later to find his village destroyed. An autodidact, he has since run a souvenir shop in Nazareth, but his written work is highly respected by many…
Artist Andrew Witkin ’00 Wins Foster Prize Andrew Witkin ’00 was recently awarded the prestigious Institute of Contemporary Art's 2008 James and Audrey Foster Prize of $25,000. He was one of four finalists whose work went on show at the ICA in Boston in November (the exhibition ends March 1). His art work on display, Untitled, 1990, is an installation of carefully arranged personal effects and impersonal furniture. According to the Boston Globe, the “arrangement reflects aspects of the artist's own life, which is both fervently social (he works at the Barbara Krakow Gallery on Newbury Street and has a…
Owen McNally in the Hartford Courant recently profiled jazz vocalist Tierney Sutton ’86, who performed in West Hartford in January for a benefit concert. In the article, McNally describes Sutton as “one of the hottest, hippest singers on today’s jazz scene.” He adds that she is “a bold, inventive improviser with true grit, has an expressive range that can leap from up tempo fervor to lyrical warmth. She makes evergreens sound greener, flag-wavers leaner and blues meaner.” McNally reveals that Sutton came to Wesleyan to master Russian and Russian literature but when she arrived on campus, she discovered the power…
The New York Times’ Michael Cieply recently interviewed Laurence Mark ’71, the producer, and Bill Condon, the executive producer, of the upcoming Academy Awards ceremony, scheduled to be telecast on ABC on Feb. 22, 2009. Mark said he hoped to bring back “a little bit of the party flavor” of past ceremonies and also would welcome “a few shocks and shivers, intended or otherwise.” Both producers expect to make the ceremony more popular with viewers by featuring 2008 films that moved audiences, including films that did not receive nominations. Mark is currently preparing for the release later this year of…
Sharp ’85 Finds Irony in Hebrew Scriptures In her fascinating new study, Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible (Indiana University Press), Carolyn J. Sharp ’85, associate professor of Hebrew Scriptures at Yale Divinity School, suggests that many stories in the Hebrew Scriptures may be ironically intended. By interweaving literary theory and exegesis, she examines the power of the unspoken in a wide variety of texts from the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Writings. Her book considers such themes as foreign rulers and the fear of God, the prostitute as icon of the ironic gaze, indeterminacy and dramatic irony in…
In the Heights, the Tony Award winner for Best Musical 2008, is one of five recordings nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Musical Show Album category. Lin-Manuel Miranda ’02 wrote the music and lyrics for the show. The other Grammy-nominees include the soundtracks for Gypsy, The Little Mermaid, South Pacific and Young Frankenstein. The nominees for the In the Heights album, released by Razor & Tie Entertainment/Ghostlight Records, include Kurt Deutsch, Alex Lacamoire, Andrés Levin, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Joel Moss and Bill Sherman ’02, producers, as well as Miranda as composer/lyricist. The nominations for the 51st annual Grammy Awards…
Jeffrey Richards ’69, along with Jerry Frankel and Steve Traxler, will produce two new Broadway plays in the coming months. First up is a revival of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, scheduled to begin performances at the Shubert Theater in New York City on Feb. 26, 2009. Blithe Spirit is a comedy about Charles Condomine, who with his second wife, Ruth, invites a local medium, Madame Arcati, to his house to do some research into the spirit world for his new book. But trouble arises when Arcati conjures up the ghost of Charles’s first wife, Elvira. The new production has a…
The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin’s Secret Service (W. W. Norton, 2008) by Andrew Meier ’85 was the subject of an article in the New York Times on Nov. 8. A former Moscow correspondent for Time magazine, Meier spent seven years for his new book researching the fascinating tale of Isaiah “Cy” Oggins, an American radical and Columbia University graduate who served in the highest circles of Stalin’s intelligence agency, the NKVD. From the late 1920s through the 1930s, Oggins traveled to Berlin, Paris, and Manchuria on his missions. In 1947, he was poisoned by lethal injection under Stalin’s…
Books William Evans Jr. '40 Is a Figure in World War II Book A new book by Robert Mrazek, A Dawn Like Thunder (Little Brown, 2008), tells a little known story of 35 men in the almost forgotten U.S. Navy Torpedo Squadron Eight that helped change the course of history at the epic World War II battles of Midway and Guadalcanal. These men displayed acts of courage, loyalty, and sacrifice and went on to become the most highly decorated American naval air squadron of the war. Williams Evans Jr. ’40 was one of the heroes in the squadron, and his…