Cheers at Five
A.M. Homes on James Esber and Jane Fine
April 24, 2020
“It is about exploration and experimentation, pushing the boundaries.” The writer A.M. Homes first met the “wickedly fun” (in work and in person) Yaddo artists James Esber and Jane Fine at Yaddo in the late 1990s, a story she recounts in today’s excerpt from “Friendships in Arcadia.”
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Alex Halberstadt
April 23, 2020
Listen to Alex Halberstadt read from his latest, Young Heroes of the Soviet Union, the book his fellow Yaddo artist Andrew Solomon called an “urgent and enthralling reckoning with family and history.”
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Lisa Cortѐs and “The Apollo”
April 22, 2020
It’s movie night! Get the 🍿ready to join the virtual watch party for HBO’s documentary THE APOLLO, produced by Yaddo board member Lisa Cortѐs. This wildly entertaining ride through the history of the legendary Harlem theater features clips of performers from Billie Holiday to Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Pharrell Williams, Lauryn Hill, and…
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David Sedaris
April 21, 2020
Today’s pick-me-up: The incomparable #YaddoArtist David Sedaris reads from “Company Man,” an essay in his 2018 collection, Calypso. #TuesdayTreat.
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Alison Kobayashi
April 20, 2020
Interdisciplinary artist Alison Kobayashi first came to Yaddo in 2015, where she worked on the immersive performance piece that became the one-woman Off-Off-Broadway hit Say Something Bunny! In this short episode of the American Theater Wing’s “Working in the Theater,” Alison and her partner Christopher Allen take us on a whirlwind tour of their magical,…
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Amy Hempel
April 17, 2020
“Courage is not the fancy, the big act. It’s the everyday. I’m interested in how people get through very, very difficult situations. How you solve being alive.” Today, a brief throwback interview with #YaddoArtist Amy Hempel. As always, she serves up beautiful sentences.
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Rachel Eliza Griffiths
April 16, 2020
Today, a “lyric short” from poet and multimedia artist Rachel Eliza Griffiths, a guest at Yaddo in 2015. “This Dust Road: Self Portrait,” (for Zora Neale Hurston) is an excerpt from her third book, Mule and Pear. Look for her latest collection, Seeing the Body, on June 9th (says fellow #YaddoArtist Nick Flynn: “These poems are a…
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Jenny Offill
April 15, 2020
#CheersAtFive mood booster: #YaddoArtist Jenny Offill’s interview on Late Night with Seth Myers about her recent book Weather (perfect quarantine reading, btw–pick up a copy at the Yaddo Authors Bookshop), why chewing gum is essential for the end times, and the survival skill every child should know.
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Rick Moody on Julia Jacquette
April 14, 2020
“Love is good, love is difficult, love is impossible, commercial culture is unavoidable, life is short, seize the day.” Today’s prose treat: #YaddoArtist Rick Moody’s incisive appreciation of the visual artist Julia Jacquette, with whom he shared a Yaddo winter in residence. My favorite Julia Jacquette paintings affix stylized renderings of high-calorie, artery-hardening menu items from our…
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Andrew Benincasa
April 13, 2020
Yaddo artist Andrew Benincasa is an animator and illustrator best known for his exquisite stop-motion paper cut videos. Here, one of his animations illustrates the beautiful “God of Loss” by the band Darlingside, taking “a simple idea—a story that unfolds via paper cut with an X-Acto knife and backlit to create intricate and stunning silhouettes—and…
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