Search results for

Poet Ouyang Yu imagines an Olympic event in which he lifts up just one extraordinary word. "The magic of the word is that, when well lifted, it has the power to transform," Yu says.

Growing up near Atlanta, Karin Slaughter learned that tragic crimes can happen to anyone — even children. She says she sets her crime fiction in Atlanta as a way to honor the city's people and turning points, from the election of its first black mayor to the 1996 Olympics.

Wall Street Journal economics writer David Wessel's new book, Red Ink, lays out in unsparing terms the way the U.S. government spends money, who pays what in taxes, and why politicians can't seem to agree on ways to reduce the potentially catastrophic deficit.

Supermodels open up about aging in a youth-obsessed industry in the HBO documentary About Face: The Supermodels Then and Now. "I really insisted that I not be retouched in Playboy," says Carol Alt. "... I'm 49 years old, and that was the point ... I let every bump and flaw show."

Presentations from ABC and CBS showed critics that CBS is sticking with what works, while ABC is trying to figure out some new angles.

Slovenian poet Ales Steger says that the Olympics are for everyone, even "bankers with pacemakers" to "naked sumo wrestlers." The poem is a playful, "lightly humorous call to action," says Brian Henry, Steger's award-winning translator.

Vidal wrote more than two-dozen novels and an equal number of nonfiction books in a career that spanned six decades. He was also a screenwriter, playwright and political activist, and his outspoken views made him a favorite on television talk shows. Vidal, 86, died Tuesday at home in the Hollywood Hills.

An 80s hairband and American cooking doyenne Julia Child are an unlikely combo, and yet, in this tribute video mash-up by our colleagues at WGBH, it works. Child would have turned 100 on August 15.

Total Recall, a remake of the 1990 sci-fi film, stars Colin Farrell as a man who learns of a past life when he begins to have recurring dreams of an alternate existence. Critic Mark Jenkins says the film empties the scenario of any intelligent thoughts in favor of continuous, mindless action.

Poet Mbali Vilakazi pays tribute to South African swimmer Natalie du Toit, the first female amputee ever to qualify for the Olympic Games. For Vilakazi, du Toit's accomplishment is "everything the Olympics represent ... the triumph of the human spirit."