JUNG CHANG

JUNG CHANG

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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.

CAROLYN WATERS BROE

CAROLYN WATERS BROE

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Founding Conductor of the Four Seasons Orchestra
Principal Violist of the Scottsdale Philharmonic

I feel that the earth is like a classroom for soul growth and we’re put here to overcome challenges, and we may be working on something like humility or compassion or love of humanity. The challenges might be something like war or cancer. Everybody gets a challenge to work on in their lives, but they also get a great gift to help them through those challenges. You just have to know how to use those gifts.

GEORGE MANGINIS

GEORGE MANGINIS

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Academic Director of the Benaki Museum

If we are to use a few words to characterise the Benaki, we can say it is the only museum in the world that presents Greek culture from the history to the 21st century, and culture seen holistically, so not just fine art, but also applied arts and historical documents, literature, photography, and architecture. It’s a very inclusive perception of art, but also in relation to global art and world cultures.

AVRA SIDIROPOULOU

AVRA SIDIROPOULOU

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Author & Artistic Director of Athens-based Persona Theatre Company

Unless it starts from within you, then you’re not going to set the same amount of investment. So there are moments when I feel I’m suffocating within the limits of those roles I have to play, and sometimes I feel like I’m failing them all. I’m always on the lookout for the next thing to quench the desire to create.

JOHARY RAVALOSON

JOHARY RAVALOSON

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My books tell the story of Madagascar, its legends and mysteries, the insular island, its nature and the history of contact with the other, with other people. I wanted to show that Madagascar is inhabited. Westerners discover Madagascar in history books (through Marco Polo, then Diogo Dias in 1500). I wanted readers to discover the humans who live there, with their contradictions and complexities. I just wish to write in the stories of the world, my part of bricks. I am part of the world, too.

BARBARA BAERT

BARBARA BAERT

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Winner of the Francqui Prize
Art Historian and Professor

My work never avoids large-scale questions. My work links knowledge and questions from the history of ideas, cultural anthropology, philosophy, and in some measure also from psychoanalysis, and shows great sensitivity to cultural archetypes and their symptoms in the visual arts.

JANE OHLMEYER

JANE OHLMEYER

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Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History at Trinity College Dublin
Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity’s research institute for advanced study in the Arts & Humanities

In fact, some of the biggest issues of the contemporary world can be better understood through the prism of the Arts and Humanities because these disciplines have important things to say about every aspect of human existence. The list is endless but some pressing examples that come to mind are terrorism and war; migration and multi-culturalism; security; privacy and freedom; environmental and digital issues; and mental and physical well-being. The Arts and Humanities both celebrate and challenge the expression of the human condition in its numerous manifestations and place human values at the centre of our world.

T.C. BOYLE

T.C. BOYLE

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Writer

All artists are seeking to create a modified world that conforms to their emotional and artistic expectations, and I am one of them, though, of course, as we grow and age those expectations are continually in flux. [...] Yes, like all of us, I have experienced disillusionment with the limits of human life and understanding.

JOYCE CAROL OATES

JOYCE CAROL OATES

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Writer

Characters begin as voices, then gain presence by being viewed in others' eyes. Characters define one another in dramatic contexts. It is often very exciting, when characters meet-- out of their encounters, unanticipated stories can spring.