The best person to really explain Spalding Gray is Spalding Gray. The man who transformed his life experience into art, into revelatory performance and theater, is one of the most difficult writers or artists to sum up on this Writers Bloc website. We can’t possibly.
On October 27, 2011 Andrea Grossman, founder of Writers Bloc, had the wonderful opportunity to moderate a Q & A with George Clooney and Grant Heslov, following a Writers Guild of America screening of The Ides of March, for which Clooney and Heslov wrote the screenplay.
For years, we have read Jerome Groopman’s Medical Dispatch and Annals of Medicine in The New Yorker. He has shared stories about how he, as a Harvard oncologist, thinks as a doctor when diagnosing a patient. He has shared stories about how he, as a Harvard oncologist, thinks as a doctor when diagnosing a patient. Dr. Groopman studies an issue of public relevance, and in his careful parsing and almost Talmudic discussion, leads us through the complex process of how medical professionals arrive at a medical conclusion. In Your Medical Mind, Dr. Groopman and his physician wife, Dr. Pamela Hartzband, turn the tables a bit, and have written a book that guides patients to arrive at medical decisions that make sense for them.
It can be terrifying – and electrifying–when a radical thinker turns out to be right. Especially a radical Roman philosopher who wrote almost 2100 years ago. No one writes cultural, intellectual and literary history like Stephen Greenblatt. It can be terrifying – and electrifying–when a radical thinker turns out to be right. Especially a radical Roman philosopher who wrote almost 2100 years ago. No one writes cultural, intellectual and literary history like Stephen Greenblatt. William Shakespeare, (or just “Will,” as we know him in Greenblatt’s fabulous Will In The World) becomes flesh and blood as Greenblatt explains him, and his plays, through the prism of 16th and 17th century England. Greenblatt’s histories are, simply, thrilling.
If you are familiar with Russell Banks’ novels, then you are a fan. It is as simple as that. If you are not yet a Russell Banks reader, then come and hear him talk about his ideas. His novels change the way you look at the world. The fiction of Russell Banks is beautiful, lyrical, and addictive. His stories are based in social realism, and achieve what only the best art and literature can do—they make us better understand the world in which we live.
Writers Bloc is delighted to present Calvin Trillin with Kevin Nealon. We love Calvin Trillin for his very serious musings on food; for his rhyming poetry about presidential (and decidedly non-presidential) candidates and the news of the moment; for his fiction; for his beautiful and moving nonfiction books that bring broad and profound understanding to the reader about topics intimate and personal; and for his hilarious essays in The New Yorker, Time and The Nation.