Marc Scott Zicree has written and produced hundreds of hours of TV for most of the major studios and networks, including Paramount, Universal, Disney, Sony/Columbia Tri-Star, MGM, New Line, CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, WB, UPN, Showtime, PBS, Turner, USA Network, Syfy, Discovery, Nickelodeon, the BBC, Marvel, and NPR. Credits include Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, Sliders, Friday the 13th: The Series, He-Man, The Real Ghostbusters, The Smurfs, and many others, as well as numerous network pilots.
Regarded as one of the country’s top media experts, Zicree has been interviewed by hundreds of newspapers, magazines, and TV and radio shows, including The Today Show, American Masters, All Things Considered, Entertainment Tonight, E! True Hollywood Story, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Variety, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. Beyond his three-year stint as a commentator on NPR’s Morning Edition, he is a regular guest on Coast to Coast, one of the country’s top-rated nighttime radio shows.&nbsp;
He has lectured at many colleges, professional conferences, and museums in America, Europe, and Asia, including USC, UCLA, Stanford, and Ithaca College, where he was a keynote speaker. Zicree’s landmark book, The Twilight Zone Companion, has been credited with creating the modern genre of books on TV series and inspiring a generation of series creators and filmmakers, including J. J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof. The Companion was an instant best-seller (over a half million copies sold to date) and was named in 2006 one of The New York Times’s ten “Science Fiction Books for the Ages”—the only nonfiction book on the list.&nbsp;
In addition, Zicree is a lauded novelist with the best-selling Magic Time trilogy, published by HarperCollins and Blackstone Audio. His most recent book, co-written with director Guillermo del Toro, is Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities for HarperCollins. Beyond this, Zicree is the founder and, for the last twenty-two years, has run The Table, which has provided a supportive community to thousands of entertainment industry professionals in Hollywood at no charge.&nbsp;
(The 2011 documentary about this support group, The Table, won a Best Documentary Award at the SoCal Film Festival and has been screening on Hulu and Netflix and via iTunes.) Nominated for the American Book Award, the Humanitas Prize, and Diane Thomas Screenwriting Award, Zicree has won the Hamptons Prize and the Rondo and Saturn awards and was named by the Writers Guild a 2014 WGA Diversity Honoree.&nbsp;
One of his recent credits is the Star Trek: New Voyages episode “World Enough and Time,” starring George Takei, which Zicree executive-produced and directed. He co-wrote its script with Emmy winner Michael Reaves, and it won a TV Guide Award and was nominated for science fiction’s top two prizes, the Hugo and Nebula awards. He also produced and provided fifty episode commentaries for the Twilight Zone Blu-ray release.
Along with his wife, Elaine, Marc is currently writing, directing, and producing Space Command, an epic science-fiction series starring Doug Jones, Mira Furlan, Bill Mumy, Robert Picardo, Faran Tahir, James Hong, and Mike Harney. You can learn more about Marc at www.marczicree.com, www.spacecommandmovie.com, on his Facebook page, or on his Mr. Sci-Fi YouTube channel. He lives in West Hollywood with his marvelous wife and little dog.

Mark

Stephen King is an American author known for his horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, science fiction, and fantasy novels. He was born in Portland, Maine, in 1947 and began writing at a young age. He published his first novel, "Carrie," in 1974, which was a success and later adapted into a film. He has since published over 60 novels and 200 short stories, many of which have been adapted into movies, television shows, and comic books. Some of his most famous works include "The Shining," "It," "Salem's Lot," "The Stand," and "Misery."&nbsp;
Stephen King began his career as a writer in the early 1970s while working as a teacher. His first short story, "The Glass Floor," was published in 1967. However, his first novel, "Carrie," was not published until 1974. Nevertheless, it was a success and was adapted into a film in 1976. This success encouraged him to continue writing and publishing novels. In the 1970s and 1980s, he published a string of successful horror and supernatural stories, including "Salem's Lot," "The Shining," "The Stand," "Firestarter," "Pet Sematary," "It," and "Misery."
His novels have been adapted into films, television shows, and comic books. Some of the most famous adaptations of his work include the movie "Carrie," "The Shining," "Stand by Me," "Misery," "The Shawshank Redemption," and "It." He also wrote several non-fiction books and short story collections.
In recent years, he has continued to publish novels, including "Doctor Sleep," "Under the Dome," "Joyland" and "Revival." He is considered one of his generation's most successful and famous authors and has sold over 350 million copies of his books worldwide.

Stephen

Michael Bierut is an American graphic designer, author, and educator. His career in graphic design began in the 1980s when he began working at Vignelli Associates, a New York-based design firm. In 1990, he joined Pentagram as a partner in the firm's New York office. At Pentagram, Bierut works on many projects, including branding, packaging, and environmental design, for clients such as Saks Fifth Avenue, The New York Times, and the Smithsonian Institution.
Throughout his career, Bierut has also been a frequent speaker and author on design-related topics. He has written for publications such as Print, Communication Arts, and Eye and has been a regular contributor to the design website Design Observer. He has also taught at the Yale School of Art and the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
Michael Bierut has received numerous awards and accolades throughout his career as a graphic designer. Some of his notable awards include:
<ul>
<li>AIGA Medal: The highest honor given by the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), which recognizes exceptional achievements in the field of graphic design.</li>
<li>Smithsonian National Design Award for Communication Design: Presented by the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in recognition of outstanding communication design achievements.</li>
<li>Type Directors Club Medal: Presented by the Type Directors Club in recognition of outstanding achievement in typography.</li>
<li>Gold Medal from the Society of Publication Designers: Presented in recognition of outstanding design in magazine and newspaper design.</li>
<li>Gold Medal from the Art Directors Club of New York: Presented in recognition of outstanding design in advertising and graphic design.</li>
<li>Gold Medal from the New York Type Directors Club: Presented in recognition of outstanding achievement in typography.</li>
<li>The Design Mind Award: Presented by the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum for his exceptional work in design and his contributions to the design community</li>
</ul>
Bierut has also been honored with several lifetime achievement awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Type Directors Club, and the Graphic Design USA awards. He is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI).
Bierut has also been involved in several other design-related ventures, such as co-founding the design education non-profit Design Observer and serving on the board of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts and the Type Directors Club.

Michael

Amy Whitaker is a writer, artist, and researcher working at the intersections of business, politics, and art. She is an assistant professor at NYU in visual arts administration and the author of two books, Art Thinking and Museum Legs. Amy's research on fractional equity for artists has been featured in Artsy, The Art Newspaper, and Artforum. Her general work has been featured in the Financial Times, Boston Globe, Atlantic, Harpers, Inside HigherEd, and many other outlets.&nbsp;
She has spoken widely including at the Rhode Island School of Design, University of Minnesota Duluth, Google, the Aspen Ideas Festival, the Fast Company Innovation Festival, the Barnes Foundation, the Conference Malmo (Sweden), The Next Web (Amsterdam), and TEDx. Amy has taught the business to artists and art to business people for more than fifteen years--since she was studying for her MFA in painting after already having an MBA.&nbsp;
She has taught in the original Trade School and at Trade School at the Whitney and Museum of Arts and Design. She taught Stock Market Basics outdoors at the original Occupy Wall Street. She taught studio art and design classes, in business, at RISD, the School of Visual Arts, Williams College, and California College of the Arts. She also used to lead the Principles of Business course at the Sotheby's Institute. Amy is trained as a painter.&nbsp;
Collector Charles Saatchi commended her large-scale group portraits by professional affiliation, and a curator of a large London museum collected her print Museum Director Action Heroes. She also wrote "Amy Whitaker Invites Six Investment Bankers," in which she invited lawyers and economists to make artwork for a group show. Starting with Art Thinking, she has illustrated her own books with line drawings.
Amy began her career in art museums, including the Guggenheim, MoMA, and Tate. She has also worked for the artist Jenny Holzer and for the finance companies Locus Analytics and D.E. Shaw &amp; Co., L.P., one of the largest investment firms in the world. She is named on Locus patents for economic classification systems and also holds a Series 7 license.

Acclaimed as “the guru of all screenwriters” (CNN), Syd Field (1935-2013) is still regarded by many Hollywood professionals to be the leading authority in the art and craft of screenwriting. The Hollywood Reporter called him “the most sought-after screenwriting teacher in the world.”Field's internationally acclaimed best-selling books "Screenplay:&nbsp;
The Foundations of Screenwriting," "The Screenwriter’s Workbook," and "The Screenwriter’s Problem Solver" have established themselves as the “bibles” of the film industry. "Screenplay" and "The Screenwriter’s Workbook" are in their fortieth printing and are used in colleges and universities across the country. They have been translated and published in more than 25 languages.
The field was also a special consultant to the Film Preservation Project for the famed Getty Center, was the first inductee into the prestigious Screenwriting Hall of Fame of the American Screenwriting Association, and is a recipient of the distinguished Final Draft Hall of Fame Award. Field chaired the Academic Liaison Committee at The Writer’s Guild of America, west; was on the faculty at the USC Master’s of Professional Writing Program; taught at Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, the AFI, and many other noted institutions.&nbsp;
He was a Special Script Consultant to 20th-Century Fox, Disney Studios, Universal, and Tristar Pictures. He was a creative screenwriting consultant to the governments of Austria, Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, and Norway and collaborated with such noted filmmakers as Alfonso Cuaron (Gravity, Y Tu Mama Tambien), James L. Brooks (Broadcast News, As Good As It Gets), Luis Mandoki (When A Man Loves A Woman), Roland Joffe (The Killing Fields, The Mission), and Tony Kaye (American History X).
Field taught screenwriting workshops in Berlin, Bombay, Brussels, and Buenos Aires, the Canadian Film Industry in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Edmonton, in Frankfurt, Johannesburg, London, Madrid, Mexico City, Munich, Oslo, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, South Africa, Sydney, Warsaw, and by special invitation of the Ministries of Culture in Vienna and Zurich. He was the Keynote Speaker at the International Film Festivals in Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, and Oslo, Norway, and the President of the International Film Jury at the Flanders International Film Festival, Ghent, Belgium.
Some of Field’s former students include Golden Globe-nominated writer/director Judd Apatow (The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling, Bridesmaids, Girls), Oscar-winning filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron (Gravity, Y Tu Mama Tambien), Oscar-nominated writer/producer Frank Darabont (Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile), Oscar-nominated writer Anna Hamilton Phelan (Mask, Gorillas in the Mist), Oscar-nominated writer/director John Singleton (Snowfall, Boyz N the Hood), Randi Mayem Singer (Mrs. Doubtfire), Laura Esquivel (Like Water For Chocolate), and Kevin Williamson (The Vampire Diaries, Scream 1 – 4).

Field Marshal Archibald Percival Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell, GCB, GCSI, GCIE, CMG, MC, KStJ, PC (5 May 1883 – 24 May 1950) was a senior officer of the British Army. He served in the Second Boer War, the Bazar Valley Campaign, and the First World War, during which he was wounded in the Second Battle of Ypres. In the Second World War, he served initially as Commander-in-Chief Middle East.&nbsp;
In that role, he led British forces to victory over the Italians in western Egypt and eastern Libya during Operation Compass in December 1940, only to be defeated by the German Army in the Western Desert in April 1941. He served as Commander-in-Chief of India from July 1941 until June 1943 (apart from a brief tour as Commander of ABDACOM). Then he served as Viceroy of India until his retirement in February 1947.
Born the son of Archibald Graham Wavell (who later became a major-general in the British Army and military commander of Johannesburg after its capture during the Second Boer War) and Lillie Wavell (née Percival), Wavell attended Eaton House, followed by the leading preparatory boarding school Summer Fields near Oxford, Winchester College, where he was a scholar, and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.&nbsp;
His headmaster, Dr. Fearon, had advised his father that there was no need to send him into the Army as he had "sufficient ability to make his way in other walks of life" After graduating from Sandhurst, Wavell was commissioned into the British Army on 8 May 1901 as a second lieutenant in the Black Watch, and joined the 2nd battalion of his regiment in South Africa to fight in the Second Boer War.
The battalion stayed in South Africa throughout the war, which formally ended in June 1902 after the Peace of Vereeniging. Wavell was ill and did not immediately join the battalion as it transferred to British India in October of that year; he instead left Cape Town for England on the SS Simla at the same time.&nbsp;
In 1903 he was transferred to join the battalion in India, and having been promoted to lieutenant on 13 August 1904, he fought in the Bazar Valley Campaign of February 1908. In January 1909 was seconded from his regiment to be a student at the Staff College. He was one of only two in his class to graduate with an A grade.&nbsp;&nbsp;
In 1911, he spent a year as a military observer with the Russian Army to learn Russian, returning to his regiment in December of that year. In April 1912, he became a General Staff Officer Grade 3 (GSO3) in the Russian Section of the War Office. In July, he was granted the temporary rank of captain and became GSO3 at the Directorate of Military Training. On 20 March 1913, Wavell was promoted to the substantive rank of captain.&nbsp;
After visiting maneuvers at Kiev in the summer of 1913, he was arrested at the Russo-Polish border as a suspected spy, following a search of his Moscow hotel room by the secret police, but managed to remove from his papers an incriminating document listing the information wanted by the War Office.

Lord

Amanda Palmer is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and performance artist. Born in 1976 in New York City, Palmer developed a love for music and art at an early age. She began playing piano at age five and went on to study classical piano, theater, and modern dance in her youth.
In her teenage years, Palmer began writing her own songs. She went on to attend Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where she further honed her songwriting skills and earned a degree in theater. After college, she joined the Boston-based street performance duo The Dresden Dolls.
The Dresden Dolls soon gained a cult following and released two albums, The Dresden Dolls (2003) and Yes, Virginia (2006). The duo toured extensively, performing at music festivals, theaters, and clubs around the world. After the duo separated, Palmer embarked on a solo career.
Her debut solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer, was released in 2008 to critical acclaim. The album featured a variety of musical styles, from piano-driven rock to cabaret-style ballads. Palmer's songs often explore personal and political topics, such as death, love, loss, and gender.
In 2012, Palmer released her second solo album, Theatre Is Evil, which was produced by John Congleton. The album was a commercial success and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Recording Package. She followed it up with two more albums: There Will Be No Intermission (2019) and A Collection of Poems You Can’t Unread (2020).
In addition to her musical career, Palmer is also an accomplished writer. She has written two books, The Art of Asking (2014) and The Bedroom Tour (2020), which explore the power of human connection and the importance of asking for help. She has also written a number of essays and articles.
Outside of her music and writing, Palmer is an outspoken advocate for the rights of artists. She has been a vocal opponent of record labels and streaming services, which have been accused of taking advantage of musicians. She is a strong supporter of independent artists and has encouraged performers to take control of their own careers.
Amanda Palmer is an incredibly talented and inspiring artist. She is a gifted musician, songwriter, and writer, and her commitment to social justice and the rights of independent musicians is admirable. Her music, books, and advocacy have made a real impact on the world, and she is an inspiration to many.

Amanda

Daniel Pink is an award-winning author and speaker whose books on business and professional success have sold millions of copies in dozens of countries and been translated into over 35 languages. His latest book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, is a deep dive into the science of timing.
Pink has written six books, including four New York Times bestsellers. His first book, Free Agent Nation, set off a national debate on the changing nature of work and was praised by former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter. His second book, A Whole New Mind, predicted the rise of right-brain thinking in the workplace and spent six months on the New York Times bestseller list.&nbsp;
His third book, Drive, a No. 1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, explored the science of motivation and revealed the surprising truth about what really drives us to succeed. His fourth book, To Sell is Human, looked at the changing nature of sales, and was named one of the best books of the year by Amazon, Apple, and the Financial Times. His fifth book, When, is a deep dive into the science of timing.&nbsp;
As well as writing books, Pink is a leading business speaker and consultant. He has been described by the American Management Association as “one of the most influential business thinkers in the world,” and millions of people around the world have watched his talks. He has advised a range of leading organizations, including the United States and British governments, Microsoft, Pixar, and the NFL.&nbsp;
Pink has also been a contributing editor at Wired, a columnist for the Sunday Telegraph, and a frequent commentator on National Public Radio. He was a top-ranking student at Northwestern University, where he won a Goldman Sachs Global Leadership Award, and he holds a degree in philosophy from Yale University.&nbsp;
Pink’s books have been praised by a wide range of business, academic, and political leaders. Former U.S. President Barack Obama said of Pink’s book Drive, “It’s a book that every leader in America should read.”&nbsp;
Daniel Pink’s books, talks, and consulting services have inspired millions of people around the world. He is widely recognized as one of the leading authorities on business, motivation, and success.

Daniel

Alicia Keys is an American singer, songwriter, pianist, and actress. She was born on January 25, 1981, in Manhattan, New York City, and began playing the piano at the age of seven.
Keys began her music career in the late 1990s and early 2000s, releasing her debut album, "Songs in A Minor," in 2001. The album was a commercial success, selling over 12 million copies worldwide and winning five Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist and Song of the Year for "Fallin'."
In addition to her successful music career, Keys is also known for her activism and philanthropy. She is the co-founder of Keep a Child Alive, an organization that provides medication and healthcare to children and families affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa and India. She is also a member of the board of directors for the Harlem Children's Zone. This non-profit organization provides education and support services to children and families in Harlem, New York.
Keys has also acted in several films, including "The Nanny Diaries" (2007) and "Smokin' Aces" (2006). She also made guest appearances in several TV shows.
Alicia Keys has won numerous awards throughout her career. In addition to the five Grammy Awards she won for her debut album "Songs in A Minor," she has won a total of 15 Grammys, including Best R&amp;B Album for "The Diary of Alicia Keys" (2004) and "As I Am" (2008), and Best R&amp;B Song for "No One" (2008).
She has also won numerous other awards, including multiple BET Awards, MTV Video Music Awards, and American Music Awards. Keys has also been honored with several humanitarian awards for her work with Keep a Child Alive and other charitable organizations.
In addition to her music awards, Keys has received numerous accolades for her activism and philanthropy. She was honored with the "Keep A Child Alive Black Ball Award" in 2007 and was named one of Glamour magazine's "Women of the Year" in 2008.
In 2013, Keys was honored with the "Billboard Women in Music's Powerhouse Award." In 2019 she received an award from the "She Is the Music" organization which works to empower female songwriters, composers, and producers.
It's worth mentioning that her recognition goes beyond the music industry. She has also been honored by various organizations for her philanthropy and activism, such as the "Keep A Child Alive Black Ball Award" in 2007 and the "Harlem School of Arts Visionary Leadership Award" in 2010.
Keys continues to be one of the most successful and respected musicians of her generation and has sold over 65 million records worldwide. She is also known for her powerful and soulful voice, as well as her skillful piano playing. She continues to release albums, tour, and do philanthropic work and activism.

Alicia

Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. (born June 7, 1943) is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. One of the world's most well-known African-American poets, her work includes poetry anthologies, poetry recordings, and nonfiction essays and covers topics ranging from race and social issues to children's literature. She has won numerous awards, including the Langston Hughes Medal and the NAACP Image Award.&nbsp;
She has been nominated for a Grammy Award for her poetry album, The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. Additionally, she has been named one of Oprah Winfrey's 25 "Living Legends." Giovanni gained initial fame in the late 1960s as one of the foremost authors of the Black Arts Movement. Influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement of the period, her early work provides a strong, militant African-American perspective, leading one writer to dub her the "Poet of the Black Revolution."&nbsp;
During the 1970s, she began writing children's literature and co-founded a publishing company, NikTom Ltd, to provide an outlet for other African-American women writers. Over subsequent decades, her works discussed social issues, human relationships, and hip-hop. Poems such as "Knoxville, Tennessee" and "Nikki-Rosa" have been frequently re-published in anthologies and other collections.
Giovanni has received numerous awards and holds 27 honorary degrees from various colleges and universities. She has also been given the key to over two dozen cities. Giovanni has been honored with the NAACP Image Award seven times. One of her more unique honors was having a South American bat species, Micronycteris giovanniae, named after her in 2007.
Giovanni is proud of her Appalachian roots and works to change the way the world views Appalachians and Affrilachians. Giovanni has taught at Queens College, Rutgers, and Ohio State and was a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech until September 1, 2022. Following the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, she delivered a chant poem at a memorial for the shooting victims.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, to Yolande Cornelia Sr. and Jones "Gus" Giovanni. Soon after her birth, the family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where her parents worked at Glenview School. In 1948, the family moved to Wyoming, Ohio, and sometimes in those first three years, Giovanni's sister, Gary, began calling her "Nikki." In 1958, Giovanni moved to Knoxville, TN, to live with her grandparents and attend Austin High School.
In 1960, she began her studies at her grandfather's alma mater, Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, as an "Early Entrant," which meant that she could enroll in college without having finished high school first. She immediately clashed with the Dean of Women, Ann Cheatam, and was expelled after neglecting to obtain the required permission from the Dean to leave campus and travel home for Thanksgiving break. Giovanni moved back to Knoxville, where she worked at a Walgreens drug store and helped care for her nephew, Christopher.&nbsp;
In 1964, Giovanni spoke with the new Dean of Women at Fisk University, Blanche McConnell Cowan ("Jackie"), who urged her to return to Fisk that fall. While at Fisk, Giovanni edited a student literary journal (titled Élan), reinstated the campus chapter of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee), and published an essay in Negro Digest on gender questions in the Movement. In 1967, she graduated with honors with a B.A. degree in history.
Soon after graduation, she suffered the loss of her grandmother, Louvenia Watson, and turned to writing to cope with her death. These poems would later be included in her collection Black Feelings, Black Talk. In 1968, Giovanni attended a semester at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work toward an MSW and then moved to New York City. She briefly attended Columbia University School of the Arts toward an MFA in poetry and privately published Black Feeling, Black Talk.&nbsp;

Nikki

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he created and popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories.&nbsp;
Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Born into a middle-class family in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald was raised primarily in New York state. He attended Princeton University, where he befriended future literary critic Edmund Wilson.&nbsp;
Owing to a failed romantic relationship with Chicago socialite Ginevra King, he dropped out in 1917 to join the United States Army during World War I. While stationed in Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, a Southern debutante who belonged to Montgomery's exclusive country club set. Although she initially rejected Fitzgerald's marriage proposal due to his lack of financial prospects, Zelda agreed to marry him after he published the commercially successful This Side of Paradise (1920).&nbsp;
The novel became a cultural sensation and cemented his reputation as one of the eminent writers of the decade. His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), propelled him further into the cultural elite. He wrote numerous stories for popular magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire to maintain his affluent lifestyle. During this period, Fitzgerald frequented Europe, where he befriended modernist writers and artists of the "Lost Generation" expatriate community, including Ernest Hemingway.&nbsp;
His third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), received generally favorable reviews but was a commercial failure, selling fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year. Despite its lackluster debut, some literary critics now hailed The Great Gatsby as the "Great American Novel." Following the deterioration of his wife's mental health and her placement in a mental institute for schizophrenia, Fitzgerald completed his final novel; Tender Is the Night (1934).
Struggling financially because of the declining popularity of his works amid the Great Depression, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood, where he embarked upon an unsuccessful career as a screenwriter. While living in Hollywood, he cohabited with columnist Sheilah Graham, his final companion before his death. After a long struggle with alcoholism, he attained sobriety only to die of a heart attack in 1940 at 44. After Fitzgerald's death, his friend Edmund Wilson edited and published an unfinished fifth novel, The Last Tycoon (1941).

Walter Francis Kerr was an American writer and Broadway theatre critic. He also was the writer, lyricist, and/or director of several Broadway plays and musicals and the author of several books, generally on the subject of theater and cinema. Kerr was born in Evanston, Illinois, and earned both a B.A. and M.A. from Northwestern University., after graduation from St. George H.S. also in Evanston.
He was a regular film critic for the St. George High School newspaper while a student there and was also a critic for the Evanston News Index. He was the editor of the high school newspaper and yearbook. He taught speech and drama at The Catholic University of America. After writing criticism for Commonweal, he became a theater critic for the New York Herald Tribune in 1951. When that paper folded, he then began writing theater reviews for The New York Times in 1966, writing for the next seventeen years.
He married Jean Kerr (née Collins) on August 9, 1943. She was also a writer. Together, they wrote the musical Goldilocks (1958), which won two Tony Awards. They also collaborated on Touch and Went (1949) and King of Hearts (1954). They had six children. Kerr died from congestive heart failure on October 9, 1996. David Niven portrayed him pseudonymously in the 1960 film Please Don't Eat the Daisies, based on Jean Kerr's best-selling collection of humorous essays.&nbsp;
Kerr was one of his era's harshest New York theatre critics, giving the fewest favorable reviews. He was well known for musically ambitious panning musicals. Notoriously he is credited with one of the world's shortest reviews, "Me no Leica," for John Van Druten's I Am a Camera in the New York Herald Tribune, December 31, 1951. Many of the shows he critiqued were those of Stephen Sondheim.&nbsp;
About Sondheim's Company, Kerr wrote that it was too cold, cynical, and distant for his taste, though he "admitted to admiring large parts of the show." About Sondheim's Follies, he wrote, " 'Follies' is intermissionless and exhausting, an extravaganza that becomes tedious for two simple reasons: Its extravagances have nothing to do with its pebble of a plot; and the plot, which could be wrapped up in approximately two songs, dawdles through 22 before it declares itself done. Mr.&nbsp;
Sondheim may be too much a man of the seventies, too present-tense and sophisticated. The effort to bind it up inhibits the crackling, open-ended, restlessly varied surges of sound he devised with such distinction for Company." He praised A Little Night Music, saying, "The score is a gift, the ladies are delightful, and producer Harold Prince has staged the moody meetings with easy skill."
He expressed mixed sentiments about Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, praising the music but deeming it too lilting for the show's grisly subject; his conclusion- "What is this musical about?" He wrote a follow-up article on his observation that the musical contained a plot from Molière's The School for Wives, posing the question of who, of all of the authors who had revised the tale of Sweeney Todd over the years, had put the plot into the story.
Nevertheless, in 1977, he wrote of Sondheim, "I needn't tell you that Stephen Sondheim is, both musically and lyrically, the most sophisticated composer now working for the Broadway theater." In reviewing Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, he focused on the dancing: "the most savage, restless, electrifying dance patterns we've been exposed to in a dozen seasons... The dancing is it. Don't look for laughter or—for that matter—tears."
In his review of the original 1956 Broadway production of Candide, he wrote that it was a "really spectacular disaster." However, in reviewing the 1973 revival of Candide, he wrote that it was a "most satisfying resurrection. 'Candide' may, at last, have stumbled into the best of all possible productions... The show is now a carousel, and we are on it quite safely... The design of the unending chase is so firm; the performers are so secure in their climbing and tumbling...that we are able to join the journey and still see it with the detachment that Voltaire prescribes."
Of Frank Loesser's "musical with a lot of music" [sic. Opera], The Happiest Fella, he wrote: "the evening at the Imperial is finally heavy with its own inventiveness, weighted down with the variety and fulsomeness of a genuinely creative appetite. It's as though Mr. Loesser had written two complete musicals—the operetta and the haymaker—on the same simple play and then crammed them both into a single structure."
Kerr was also notable for his lack of enthusiasm regarding the plays of Samuel Beckett. For instance, in Beckett's Waiting For Godot, he wrote, "The play, asking for a thousand readings, has none of its own to give. It is a veil rather than a revelation. It wears a mask rather than a face."
Walter Kerr won a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1978 for "articles on the theater". In 1983, Kerr was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. In 1990, the former Ritz Theater on West 48th Street in the Theater District, New York, was renamed the Walter Kerr Theatre in his honor.

Walter

Donald Arthur Norman is a professor emeritus of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego, and a Professor of Computer Science at Northwestern University. He also co-directs the dual degree MBA + Engineering degree program between the Kellogg School and Northwestern Engineering. Norman is on numerous company advisory boards, including the editorial board of Encyclopædia Britannica.&nbsp;
He currently splits his time between consulting, teaching, and writing. He co-founded the Nielsen Norman Group, a consulting group on matters of usability, which also includes Jakob Nielsen and Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini. Many of Norman's books deal mostly with usability or with cognitive psychology. He loves products that are enjoyable to use, a feature that he attributes to putting together emotion and design, or heart and mind.

Christopher Vogler (born 1949, Missouri/US) is a Hollywood development executive, screenwriter, author, and educator, best known for working with Disney and his screenwriting guide, The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers, from 2007.
He studied filmmaking at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts - formerly the USC School of Cinema-Television, otherwise known as CNTV, the alma mater of George Lucas. Like him, he was inspired by the writings of mythologist Joseph Campbell, particularly The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which detailed the Hero's Journey archetype in classical mythology.
Vogler used Campbell's work to create a 7-page company memo for Hollywood screenwriters, A Practical Guide to The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which Vogler later developed into The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters in 1992, and then The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers.
Vogler has since spun off his techniques into worldwide Masterclasses. He has worked for Disney studios, Fox 2000 pictures, and Warner Bros. in the development department. He contributed story material to the Disney animated feature The Lion King (1994).
He has also taught in the USC School of Cinema-Television (known today as USC School of Cinematic Arts), Division of Animation and Digital Arts, as well as at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) extension. He is the President of the company Storytech Literary Consulting. It was founded in 1999, and its Vice President, Brad Schreiber, consults on scripts and books, utilizing Vogler's approach.

Christopher

A breakout literary phenomenon and #1 New York Times Bestselling Author, Rupi Kaur wrote, illustrated, and self-published her first poetry collection, 'milk and honey' in 2014. Next came its artistic sibling, 'the sun and her flowers', in 2017. These collections have sold more than 10 million copies and have been translated into over 40 languages. Her latest poetry collection, 'home body', debuted at #1 on bestseller lists across the world. As she has done from the very beginning, Rupi self-produced Rupi Kaur Live, the first poetry special of its kind, which debuted on Amazon Prime Video in 2021.&nbsp;
Rupi Kaur has also graced the stage across the globe on world tours, performing her poetry across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the UK, Europe, and more. Intertwined with visuals, music, comedy, and anecdotes, Rupi performs her classic poems and unpublished pieces, tailoring each show to the city she visits.&nbsp;
Rupi’s work touches on love, loss, trauma, healing, femininity, and migration. She feels most at home when creating art, performing her poetry onstage, and spending time with family and friends.

Rupi

Sheila Heti is the author of ten books, including the novels Pure Colour, Motherhood, and How Should a Person Be? She recently published her second children’s book, A Garden of Creatures, illustrated by Esme Shapiro. In early 2024, Alphabetical Diaries will be published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Knopf Canada.
The book, which was excerpted over 10 weeks in the New York Times, has been optioned for a television series by Hulu. This fall, she is in residence at Yale as the Franke Visiting Fellow and as Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer in Religious Studies.&nbsp;
She was named one of "The New Vanguard" by The New York Times, a list of fifteen writers from around the world who are "shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century." Her books have been translated into twenty-five languages.&nbsp;
Motherhood was chosen by the book critics in the New York Times as one of the top books of 2018, and New York magazine chose it as the Best Book of the year. How Should a Person Be? was named one of the 12 “New Classics of the 21st century” by Vulture. It was a New York Times Notable Book, the best book of the year in The New Yorker, and was cited by Time as "one of the most talked-about books of the year.” Pure Colour is the recipient of the 2022 Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction.
Women in Clothes, a collaboration with Leanne Shapton, Heidi Julavits, and 639 women from around the world, became a New York Times bestseller. She is also the author of a children’s book titled We Need a Horse, with art by Clare Rojas. Her play, All Our Happy Days are Stupid, had sold-out runs at The Kitchen in New York and Videofag in Toronto.&nbsp;
She was Interviews Editor at The Believer magazine and has conducted many long-form print interviews with writers and artists, including Joan Didion, Elena Ferrante, Agnes Varda, Sophie Calle, Dave Hickey, and John Currin. Her fiction and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Bookforum, n+1, Granta, The London Review of Books, and elsewhere.&nbsp;
A six-hour writing class and lecture, delivered in the Spring of 2021, can be purchased through the Shipman agency. She is the founder of the Trampoline Hall lecture series and appeared in Margaux Williamson’s 2012 film Teenager Hamlet and in Leanne Shapton’s book, Important Artifacts. She lives in Toronto and Kawartha Lakes, Ontario.

Sheila

Alexandra

Enter the world of interiors by Atelier AM, where classical proportions, varied finishes, and exquisite furnishings are masterfully combined. A deft hand at creating interiors that mix materials, both rough-hewn and luxurious, antique and modern, marks the work of Alexandra and Michael Misczynski, the husband-and-wife team behind the Los Angeles–based firm Atelier AM.&nbsp;
Only ten years after establishing their business, the couple has garnered a keen reputation for creating environments that are sensory experiences—visually sublime interiors enhanced with subtle, textural palettes. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century furniture commingle with modernist pieces and ancient objects. Background colors and materials are muted and refined.

Ellen DeGeneres is an American comedian, television host, actress, writer, and producer. She is best known for hosting her eponymous daytime talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and for her comedic roles in films such as Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), and Mr. Wrong (1996). DeGeneres has hosted the Emmy Awards, the Academy Awards, and the Grammy Awards. She is also an LGBTQ rights advocate, a judge on American Idol, and a mentor on So You Think You Can Dance.
DeGeneres began her career in the comedy clubs of New Orleans, Louisiana, before moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in stand-up comedy. She quickly rose to prominence and became a well-known figure in the entertainment industry. In 1994, she was cast in her own sitcom Ellen, which ran for five seasons. The sitcom was a rating success and earned DeGeneres numerous awards and recognition, including an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.
In 1997, DeGeneres launched her talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, which has since become one of the most popular talk shows in the world. The show has been nominated for dozens of awards and has won multiple Daytime Emmy Awards. DeGeneres has also used her platform to champion numerous causes, ranging from LGBTQ rights to animal rights.
In addition to her work in television, DeGeneres has starred in a number of films, including Mr. Wrong (1996), EDtv (1999), and The Love Letter (1999). She has also voiced characters in several animated films, including Finding Nemo (2003) and The Incredibles (2004).
DeGeneres has also written two books: My Point...And I Do Have One (1995), and Seriously...I'm Kidding (2011). The former was a best-seller and became a New York Times Best Seller.
DeGeneres has received numerous awards and honors throughout her career, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, and multiple People's Choice Awards. She has been praised for her work in LGBTQ advocacy and for using her platform to promote various philanthropic initiatives.
In 2020, DeGeneres launched her lifestyle brand, ED by Ellen, which includes clothing, home decor, and accessories. The brand seeks to “make the world a kinder, more connected place” and encourages people to be their “authentic selves.”
DeGeneres has also been active in philanthropy, supporting causes such as animal rights, environmental conservation, education, and cancer research. She has donated to numerous charities, including St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, The Humane Society of the United States, and Stand Up to Cancer.

Ellen

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In Interiors, Michael Misczynski emphasizes the importance of context in interior design. He believes that the surroundings of a space, its history, and its purpose should all play a role in its design. This is a great reminder to consider the bigger picture when designing your own spaces.

Understanding the Importance of Context

Misczynski shows us that simplicity can be powerful in design. He often opts for clean lines and minimalistic styles, proving that less can indeed be more. If you're feeling overwhelmed by clutter, this book might inspire you to embrace a more streamlined look.

The Power of Simplicity

One of the key takeaways from Interiors is the idea of blending old and new elements. The author skillfully combines antique and modern pieces to create spaces that feel both timeless and fresh. So, don't be afraid to mix and match in your own home!

Mixing Old and New

He also highlights the importance of personal taste in interior design. Misczynski encourages readers to trust their instincts and choose pieces that they love, rather than following trends. This book will inspire you to create spaces that truly reflect who you are.

The Role of Personal Taste

In Interiors, you'll see how the author incorporates natural elements into his designs. From plants to natural light, these elements can bring a sense of calm and balance to a space. If you're looking to bring a bit of the outdoors in, you'll find plenty of inspiration in this book.

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