As an artist, is it better to earn your living in a field related to your creative work? Unrelated to your creative work? Solely through your creative work? In our conversations with artists, we've asked: What's the best/worst day job you've ever had? Artists' answers often provide insight to the conundrum of how to make money while thriving as an artist. Among some of … [Read more...]
Page to Screen
The National Endowment for the Arts has a nifty Writers' Corner page that lists movies adapted from the books of past NEA fellows. Authors like Sherman Alexie, Jane Smiley, and Tobias Wolff all received NEA support over the years, and at some point saw their work transformed for the silver screen. When I saw the list, I thought, cool, let's steal from the Feds. Well, … [Read more...]
Elizabeth Benedict on memoir and Michael Downing
On the Huffington Post's book page, author Elizabeth Benedict has written a thoughtful and probing review of Michael Downing's (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Finalist '08) memoir Life with Sudden Death (as you may recall, we interviewed Michael about the book on ArtSake). I enjoyed how the review deeply engages the book on its own terms. From the review: ... it's a compelling … [Read more...]
Michael Downing, writing for his life
What do you do when the discovery of a genetic heart condition threatens not only your life (its first symptom: sudden death) and your health (thanks to a string of medical disasters) but also the very authority to tell your own life story? If you're Michael Downing, whose memoir Life with Sudden Death has just been published, you address all threats with the same … [Read more...]