I’ve always been fascinated by Gwendolyn Brooks’ unflinching gaze at the world around her. As a writer, I know that observation is key to crafting compelling stories – but it’s one thing to observe life, and another to bear witness…
I’ve always been drawn to Frederick Douglass, but it’s his humanity that really gets me. His life was a litany of horrors, and yet he wrote about them with such elegance, precision, and compassion. I find myself wondering how someone…
Johannes Brahms. I’ve always been fascinated by him, but it’s not just his music that draws me in – it’s the contradictions and complexities that surround his life. As someone who’s struggled with perfectionism and self-doubt, I find myself drawn…
I’ve been thinking about Simone Signoret a lot lately, ever since I stumbled upon her name while scrolling through an old film database. Something about it resonated with me – the way she spoke about her life, her relationships, and…
Henry James. Where do I even begin? It’s not that he’s a household name for me, but somehow his work has seeped into my consciousness over the years. Maybe it’s because my English lit professor, Dr. Thompson, had an obsession…
I’ve been thinking a lot about Peter Handke lately, trying to understand what draws me to him. It’s not just his writing – though that’s certainly a big part of it. I mean, have you read “Offending the Audience”? The…
I’ve been fascinated by Georges Perec for a while now, but it’s only recently that I started to grasp why he holds such a peculiar allure for me. It began with his novel “A Void”, which I stumbled upon in…
Elaine Scarry’s name keeps popping up in my writing workshops, always in the context of her work on pain and its relationship to language. At first, I found it fascinating – who wouldn’t want to explore the intricate dance between…
I still remember the day I stumbled upon Paul Valéry’s poetry in a dusty corner of the university library. I was browsing through a collection of modernist works, searching for something that resonated with me, and his name kept popping…
Natalie Zemon Davis – the name has a way of sticking with me long after I’ve finished reading about her work on historical events like the French Renaissance and the witch trials. As an English major, I was initially drawn…
I’ve always been fascinated by E.M. Forster’s life, but not in the way you’d expect. I don’t get caught up in his literary successes or the scandal of his relationships – although, I have to admit, those things do pique…
Marguerite Duras. Her name has been lingering in my mind for a while now, like a fragment of a sentence that refuses to be forgotten. I think it started when I stumbled upon her novel “The Lover” in a used…
I still remember stumbling upon Werner Heisenberg’s name while reading about the development of quantum mechanics. At first, I was drawn to the abstract concepts – wave-particle duality, uncertainty principle, and Schrödinger’s cat. But as I delved deeper into his…
I’ve been thinking about Dorothea Lange a lot lately, trying to figure out why her photographs resonate with me on a deep level. It’s not just the way she captured the struggles of migrant workers during the Great Depression –…
I’ll never forget the first time I stumbled upon John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” – a television series he made in 1972, which was later transcribed into a book. I must have been 18 or 19 at the time, wandering…
I’ve been reading Robert Musil’s “The Man Without Qualities” for weeks now, but I still can’t shake the feeling that he’s speaking directly to me. It’s not just his writing style – which is both lyrical and impenetrable at the…
Susan Howe’s writing has been stuck with me for a while now, like a thread I keep tugging on, trying to understand its texture and how it relates to my own thoughts. I’ve read her books multiple times, yet each…
Max Ernst’s Surrealist landscapes have been etched in my mind since I first stumbled upon his work in an art history class during my senior year of college. At the time, I was struggling to find meaning in my own…
I’ll never forget the first time I read Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”. It was a collection of short stories that left me feeling both mesmerized and unsettled, like standing at the edge of…
Carson McCullers. Her name has been floating around my mind for a while now, like a buoy on the surface of a stagnant pool. I’ve read her novels, devoured them almost, and yet she remains an enigma to me. Not…
