one of my favourite writers, who also happens to be a dear friend 💕🦢

Recently on Notebook: 🔹Oscar-winning sound designer Johnnie Burn (THE ZONE OF INTEREST, POOR THINGS) discusses his craft with Rachel Pronger, Claire Simon introduces OUR BODY, animator Flora Anna Buda shares visual research behind 27, Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman share

If you are a faculty member in an institution that still has faculty governance, now is the time to show up. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never shown up before, if you don’t know how administrative things work, if you fundamentally disagree with your administration. 1/5

Hell Gate spoke to Columbia students about why they're protesting, whether they fear discipline from the university, and how this action fits into a tumultuous series of months. hellgatenyc.com/columbia-prote…

Wendy S. Walters Here's the link where faculty affiliates can sign the letter: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…

I wrote about "main character syndrome" and frontal lobe formation for NYT Magazine nytimes.com/2024/05/16/mag…

In Washington Free Beacon, Dominic Green reviews a collection of Anthony Burgess’ writing on music. Ross Barkan on “the vanishing male novelist”. And in The New York Times, Kim Hew-Low on making a narrative out of life. All these and more, in your inbox and ready to read now! (2/2)

Thrilled to have an essay on Notebook today about Barren Lives, the novel by Graciliano Ramos and the movie by Nelson Pereira dos Santos. Featuring many thoughts on little Baleia –– a staple character of my high school education mubi.com/en/notebook/po…

Our #2 favorite bird of Spring 2024 migration was this Little Blue Heron, the first adult of the species we have seen in Manhattan, a strikingly elegant bird in morning light on April 26 that soon flew onward. 💙

Resisting AI; John Ganz faces the ghosts of resistance and exile in Cologne; Pauls Harijs Toutonghi among the ruins of Aleppo; fiction by Nicolette Polek and Joy Williams; Kim Hew-Low on the political history of The Olympic Games pictograms; Donna Tartt, Simone Weil, Hari Kunzru, and more, in

“Though devised in the spirit of international camaraderie, Olympic pictograms have also come to express the particular aspirations and anxieties of their host nation.” Kim Hew-Low on the on the political history of The Olympic Games pictograms

For Literary Hub, I considered Claire Messud’s oeuvre as melodrama — on Sirk, marriages, and literature: lithub.com/brief-encounte…

I will never back down in speaking truth to power. The apartheid government of Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. Palestinians will not be erased. Solidarity with all those outside of these walls in the streets protesting and exercising their right to dissent.

"What 'Mobility' offers is a model for centering the personal in a way that amplifies, rather than obfuscates, its political context." Kim Hew-Low on Lydia Kiesling’s “Mobility” clereviewofbooks.com/writing/lydia-…

realclearbooks.com Friday reads: Oliver Traldi for FUSION: In the Tradition of Liberty, John Byron Kuhner for First Things @HansZeiger for Modern Age, Britt Menjivar for Los Angeles Review of Books, Kim Hew-Low for Cleveland Review of Books, Justin Shubow for Tom Klingenstein, and many others.

I wrote about the mysterious intimacy of my favorite painter for the Financial Times's Fantasy Home series