Co-directors of the Ford, Citibank and Omidyar foundation-backed “U.S. Financial Diaries” project, NYU economist and co-author of current Facebook “A Year of Books” pick Portfolios of the Poor Jonathan Morduch, and Center for Financial Services Innovation SVP Rachel Schneider’s Out of Sync: Income, Cash Flow, and the Future of Working America, revealing how households cope with the hidden, vital factor of income volatility and offering policy changes and private sector innovations to address these challenges, to Seth Ditchik at Princeton University Press in a very nice deal after a multi-day auction.
Month: September 2015
A conversation with classical composer Nathaniel Stookey about writing for children and adults, how to fight loneliness with artistic collaborations (and lots of time in local bars and cafes), finding joy in urban planning and other areas outside the arts, and bringing humor to the classical music world.
First commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony when he was 17-years old, Nathaniel’s best known work is “The Composer is Dead,” a collaboration with the children’s book author known as Lemony Snicket, which has become one of the most widely performed classical works of the 21st century. He has had works commissioned by Frederica von Stade and the Kronos Quartet and spent several months at the San Francisco city dump’s Artist in Residence program, where he wrote the music and created instruments from discarded trash for the work he titled “Junkestra“.
Listen to the full interview:
[download]
(Recorded September 23, 2015)
The complete series of conversations is available at The Work of Art. You can subscribe to future interview episodes via RSS, iTunes or email.
The Work of Art: Charlie Varon
A conversation with theater artist Charlie Varon about the differences between storytelling and solo performance, artistic bravado versus artistic bravery, how writing and playing different characters helps him see the world better through others’ eyes, the “necessary narcissism” to create works of art, and much more.
Charlie is a playwright, performer, director and teacher. One of the driving forces at San Francisco’s solo performance theater The Marsh, some of his best known shows include “Rabbi Sam,” and “Rush Limbaugh in Night School,” which won 2 Bay Area Critics Circle Awards and the American Theater Critics Association’s Osborn Award. As a director, he has shaped hit shows including Dan Hoyle‘s “Tings Dey Happen” and “The Real Americans.” He teaches workshops on solo performance and writing for the theater, and he is currently working with cellist Joan Jeanrennaud, formerly of the Kronos Quartet, on a new work, “Duet for Cello and Storyteller.”
Listen to the full interview:
[download]
(Recorded September 17, 2015)
The complete series of conversations is available at The Work of Art. You can subscribe to future interview episodes via RSS, iTunes or email.
The Hustle Economy
Cartoonist and author of Indexed, How to be Interesting and The Art of War Visualized, Jessica Hagy and I Love Charts creator and producer Jason Oberholtzer‘s The Hustle Economy, with essays and illustrations offering career advice from some of the most dynamic and successful young writers, artists, designers, directors, creatives, hustlers, and media personalities, with a combined audience of more than 2 million social media followers, who have managed to thrive in the “gig economy,” in a very nice deal to Jordana Tusman at Running Press.
The Work of Art: Rafael Yglesias
A conversation with novelist and screenwriter Rafael Yglesias about the different pleasures in writing for the page versus the screen, growing up in a family of writers, the importance of patience, the best sources of input for revising one’s own writing, and why he considers autobiographical fiction more deeply honest than memoir.
Rafael is a novelist and screenwriter for feature films and television. He is the author of ten novels, including his most recent, The Wisdom of Perversity. His previous novel, A Happy Marriage, won the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction.
As a screenwriter, he was nominated for a Bram Stoker award for his screenplay for the Johnny Depp/Heather Graham thriller “From Hell.” Other screenplay adaptations he has written include Roman Polanski’s movie of Ariel Dorfman’s stage play “Death and the Maiden,” and the 1998 film of “Les Misérables,” starring Liam Neeson. He is currently a writer and executive producer of the NBC television series “Aquarius,” starring David Duchovny.
Listen to the full interview:
[download]
(Recorded September 5, 2015)
The complete series of conversations is available at The Work of Art. You can subscribe to future interview episodes via RSS, iTunes or email.