Arts

The Sweet Escape Of 'Sayonara Wild Hearts,' Where Pop Music Is Recovery

4:46pm September 14, 2020

by Daoud Tyler-Ameen

The 2019 video game presents a world where shiny synth-pop is the key to unbreaking your own heart. One unthinkable year later, its comforts are more welcome than ever.

Books
Arts

Home Sweet Labyrinth: Susanna Clarke's Mysterious 'Piranesi' Will Lock You In

3:50pm September 14, 2020

by Ari Shapiro

It's been 16 years since Clarke wrote Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. "The pressure of all the years when I hadn't written, and all the stories I hadn't written, weighed very heavily on me," she says.

Architects say making the office more like the outdoors — with filtered air and good ventilation — will be a priority post-pandemic. This living wall in the Danielle N. Ripich Commons at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine, is one such a

Redesigning The Office For The Next 100-Year Flu (Yes, It's Coming)

2:23pm September 14, 2020

by Emily Vaughn

Architects are already looking beyond COVID-19 to imagine the office of 2025 and beyond — an office that will keep us safe on the job, whatever pandemic virus strikes next.

Books
Arts

'Homeland Elegies' Novelist Reflects On Homesickness And The Immigrant Experience

1:40pm September 14, 2020

by Dave Davies

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar centers his new novel on a Muslim man who, like Akhtar, is the son of Pakistani immigrants living in Wisconsin.

Queue Listen Now

Caitlin (Jordan Kristine Seamon) and Fraser (Jack Dylan Grazer) see the sea in We Are Who We Are.

Arts

In Teen Drama 'We Are Who We Are,' We're Still Figuring Out Who We Are

7:00am September 14, 2020

by Glen Weldon

Director Luca Guadagnino brings his searching, emotionally intimate sensibility to HBO with this series about two American kids on a military base in Italy.

Ayad Akhtar won a Pulitzer Prize for Disgraced, his play about a conflicted American Muslim man living in New York after Sept. 11.

Books
Arts

It's Real, It's Fiction, It's A Paradox: Ayad Akhtar On His 'Homeland Elegies'

6:02am September 14, 2020

by Noel King

The narrator's name in the novel is also Ayad Akhtar, and the book reads like memoir. Akhtar says he had to "pilfer" from his own life to write a novel that had the "addictive thrill" of reality TV.

Queue Listen Now

Hanging Tree Guitars: The Wood's 'Not Good, Not Bad, Not Ugly — Just Strange'

1:26pm September 13, 2020

by Debbie Elliott

Freeman Vines is an African American luthier who creates what have been called "contemporary art sculptures hidden as guitars" out of old wood, some of it from a tree used for a lynching.

Queue Listen Now

Alan Alda On The Importance Of Empathy During The COVID-19 Pandemic

7:53am September 13, 2020

NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks to actor Alan Alda, who started a center focused on communicating scientific information to the public, on how the dearth of empathy is affecting pandemic messaging.

Books
Arts

'The Contradictions' Chronicles A Classic College Experience

7:00am September 13, 2020

by Etelka Lehoczky

Sophie Yanow's new graphic novel chronicles her time studying abroad in Paris; it's not suspenseful or eventful, but Yanow's combination of perception and humility makes for an engaging read.

U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo has authored numerous books of poetry, two children's books and a memoir, Crazy Brave. She is a member of the Mvskoke Nation.

Books
Arts

Anthology Of Native Nations Poetry Is A 'Doorway,' Says Editor Joy Harjo

5:10pm September 12, 2020

by Michel Martin

When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through collects the work of more than 160 poets. "A poem opens up time, it opens up memory, it opens up place," says Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate.