Actress, Choreographer, Artistic Director - Neo-Political Cowgirls
I care very deeply about the arts, theater arts. So I had a choice to make, either leave entirely or be the change, as they say. So I started Neo-Political Cowgirls to embrace women in their story, in our story.
Actress, Choreographer, Artistic Director - Neo-Political Cowgirls
I care very deeply about the arts, theater arts. So I had a choice to make, either leave entirely or be the change, as they say. So I started Neo-Political Cowgirls to embrace women in their story, in our story.
Writer
I don’t start off to create a moral in telling a story, but there are certainly consequences to the decisions that we make and some of those will inevitably have what we call a moral dimension. I don’t respond enthusiastically to fiction when I can see a thumb on the scales, when I can see that it’s a sermon in disguise. I’m more interested in writing that explores rather than proclaims.
Writer
I don’t start off to create a moral in telling a story, but there are certainly consequences to the decisions that we make and some of those will inevitably have what we call a moral dimension. I don’t respond enthusiastically to fiction when I can see a thumb on the scales, when I can see that it’s a sermon in disguise. I’m more interested in writing that explores rather than proclaims.
The New Museum
When you're looking, really look very, very hard at the new. Look very, very hard at what challenges you. If you're bothered by it, go deeper. So it was "Don't take the easy way out and say 'I love that'. 'Why do you love it?' 'I just feel it.' No, unacceptable. Just feeling it is not enough, if you're a responsible party. If you're a member of the public, fine, have whatever kind of experience you want, but if you're a professional, know why you're doing it.
The New Museum
When you're looking, really look very, very hard at the new. Look very, very hard at what challenges you. If you're bothered by it, go deeper. So it was "Don't take the easy way out and say 'I love that'. 'Why do you love it?' 'I just feel it.' No, unacceptable. Just feeling it is not enough, if you're a responsible party. If you're a member of the public, fine, have whatever kind of experience you want, but if you're a professional, know why you're doing it.
Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and most recently, The Last Hundred Years Trilogy: Some Luck, Early Warning, and Golden Age. She is also the author of several works of nonfiction and books for young adults. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has also received the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. She lives in Northern California.
Photo: © Derek Shapton
Artistic Director · John Drew Theater · Guild Hall of East Hampton
And the era of the actor-manager has probably passed, but in a curious way, I feel like I've been living that life as an actor-manager because I will both act, direct or produce and they all inform each other. You know, they're all part of the same creative language. And I think, having been an actor and first and foremost loving being an actor, I think I know how to speak and communicate with other actors at various levels.
Artistic Director · John Drew Theater · Guild Hall of East Hampton
And the era of the actor-manager has probably passed, but in a curious way, I feel like I've been living that life as an actor-manager because I will both act, direct or produce and they all inform each other. You know, they're all part of the same creative language. And I think, having been an actor and first and foremost loving being an actor, I think I know how to speak and communicate with other actors at various levels.
Artist
The whole thing is to get them to feel like no matter where their background is from, the difficulty they have in their personal lives, the isolation that they feel in relationship to that, that within the art community they are embraced, they are welcomed. All they have to do is just keep getting better at it, but the community is there. I think that something we're all looking for is where we belong.
Artist
The whole thing is to get them to feel like no matter where their background is from, the difficulty they have in their personal lives, the isolation that they feel in relationship to that, that within the art community they are embraced, they are welcomed. All they have to do is just keep getting better at it, but the community is there. I think that something we're all looking for is where we belong.
Writer · Critic · Artist
it is wonderful to have more than one culture, as you know. It's a great thing in life. It's a wonderful thing in life.
If you know other languages, it's stupendous because it gives you some access, both in reading and fluidity of places, but also to know that you can have two exciting places to be in. Two exciting languages and two exciting cultures and two exciting places to visit. That's what I love, mostly. I don't think I was born in the wrong country. I wasn't really born in America. I was born in the Bronx.
I’ve never really written a roman à clef, you know, something directly from my experience. [...] And yet again, you are always writing about yourself. Even if you’re not writing about something you’ve actually lived, you’re dealing with your own internal weather system, as I’ve said, and we all have one. And you’re also dealing with the things that keep you up at night, the things that worry you, the things you haven’t been able to get right. Your fears. And everyone has fears and they all come into play.
I’ve never really written a roman à clef, you know, something directly from my experience. [...] And yet again, you are always writing about yourself. Even if you’re not writing about something you’ve actually lived, you’re dealing with your own internal weather system, as I’ve said, and we all have one. And you’re also dealing with the things that keep you up at night, the things that worry you, the things you haven’t been able to get right. Your fears. And everyone has fears and they all come into play.
Alice Fulton’s books include Barely Composed, a poetry collection; The Nightingales Of Troy, linked stories; and Cascade Experiment: Selected Poems. Her book Felt received the Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress, awarded to the best book of poems published within a two-year period. She has received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, and Ingram Merrill Foundation. Her other books include Sensual Math, Powers Of Congress, Palladium, Dance Script With Electric Ballerina, and an essay collection, Feeling As A Foreign Language. She lives in Ithaca, NY.
Alice Fulton’s books include Barely Composed, a poetry collection; The Nightingales Of Troy, linked stories; and Cascade Experiment: Selected Poems. Her book Felt received the Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress, awarded to the best book of poems published within a two-year period. She has received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, and Ingram Merrill Foundation. Her other books include Sensual Math, Powers Of Congress, Palladium, Dance Script With Electric Ballerina, and an essay collection, Feeling As A Foreign Language. She lives in Ithaca, NY.
Robert Olen Butler has published sixteen novels, amongst them A Small Hotel and Perfume River, as well as A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
In 2013, he became the seventeenth recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. His stories have appeared widely in publications such as The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, The Paris Review, and many more. Butler's works have been translated into twenty-one languages, a few of which include Vietnamese, Serbian, Farsi, Estonian, and Chinese. He is a Krafft Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University. He lives in Florida with his wife, poet Kelly Lee Butler.
Robert Olen Butler has published sixteen novels, amongst them A Small Hotel and Perfume River, as well as A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
In 2013, he became the seventeenth recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. His stories have appeared widely in publications such as The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, The Paris Review, and many more. Butler's works have been translated into twenty-one languages, a few of which include Vietnamese, Serbian, Farsi, Estonian, and Chinese. He is a Krafft Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University. He lives in Florida with his wife, poet Kelly Lee Butler.
Interview Highlights
Executive Director · Pilobolus Dance Company
And so, I think that that's an extremely important way to think about a growing idea of art, which has to do really with the stuff that enhances the senses and speaks to play in some way. Pushes the imagination. In the old days, we used to say it's metaphor, but in a way, I'm not sure that metaphor is physical enough to describe the kind of play that is required to engage people in a way that makes them feel something when they're living in a world that is so equalizing.
Executive Director · Pilobolus Dance Company
I think that what they don't realise often is that the skills of the people that are sitting in those jobs are deeply in conflict with the skills required to perform well in our our time. I think there is an enormous amount of change that needs to happen in education. And I think, in some instances, it's beginning to, but we're really working and teaching our future using systems that are antiquated and don't really relate.
The Creative Process: Podcast Interviews & Portraits of the World’s Leading Authors & Creative Thinkers
Inspiring Students – Encouraging Reading - Connecting through Stories
The Creative Process exhibition is traveling to universities and museums. The Creative Process exhibition consists of interviews with over 100 esteemed writers, including Joyce Carol Oates, Hilary Mantel, Neil Gaiman, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Tobias Wolff, Richard Ford, Junot Díaz, Marie Darrieussecq, Michel Faber, T.C. Boyle, Jay McInerney, George Saunders, Geoff Dyer, Etgar Keret, Douglas Kennedy, Sam Lipsyte, and Yiyun Li, among others. Artist and interviewer: Mia Funk.
