The Creative Process · Arts, Culture & Society: Books, Film, Music, TV, Art, Writing, Creativity, Education, Environment, Theatre, Dance, LGBTQ, Climate Change, Social Justice, Spirituality, Feminism, Tech, Sustainability

Michael Maren is a journalist, filmmaker and former aid worker. He’s written scripts for HBO, Sony Pictures, and many independent producers. His film, A Short History of Decay was a funny and moving examination of a writer Bryan Greenberg visiting his ailing parents, played by Linda Lavin and Harris Yulin. His forthcoming film is an adaptation of Chris Belden’s novel Shriver. It’s a comedy set at...

“We all have things to learn when it comes to these diversity-related issues or issues of identity. We have so much to learn. Just because, let's say, you’re a person of color, it doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to be accepting of transgender individuals. You might have some real hangups. Or you could be transgender and have some hangups around people of color, all around the spectrum....

Marybeth Gasman is the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Endowed Chair, a Distinguished Professor, and Associate Dean for Research at Rutgers University. Her areas of expertise include U.S. history, HBCUs, racism, philanthropy, and leadership. She is the author or editor of 30 books, including Envisioning Black Colleges (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), Educating a Diverse Nation (Harvard University Pre...

“I think humans really need to feel valued and loved. The question is where do you get your value from? And I try to get my value from–faith plays a big part of my life, but not everyone has that way of thinking about the world, so I'm not going to major on that, but that's only part of it, the sense that I believe there's a God who thinks I'm of worth, but it's more than that.  I believe tha...

Jon Yates is Executive Director of the Youth Endowment Fund , a £200 million charitable fund focused on integrating young people into society. After graduating from the University of Oxford, he started his career as a community worker in the London Borough of Newham, before joining McKinsey and Company, where he advised charities, companies and government on strategy and organisational development...

Doug Wright is an award winning playwright whose plays include I am My Own Wife, for which he won a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize, Posterity, and Quills, for which he won an Obie Award. He has written books for the Tony-nominated musical Grey Gardens, the Drama Desk nomination “Hands on a hardbody”, The Little Mermaid, and War Paint. He adapted and directed August Strindberg’s Creditors for the La...

“What we deal with more in the second season is how your online persona and your real-life persona sometimes can't help but be at odds with one another. In the first episode back we get into how women are treated, how women in relationships are treated online. In a later episode, we deal with how women are or are not allowed to express their anger online as content creators. So it’s something we t...

Ali Schouten is a showrunner, executive producer, and writer who is quickly establishing herself as a creative on the rise as her formidable talent and artistic versatility continue to make waves. Schouten currently serves as the showrunner and executive producer of the wildly successful iCarly revival for Paramount+, which set 10 years later, features Miranda Cosgrove reprising her iconic role. T...

Stuart Dryburgh is a British born, New York based cinematographer. His credits include ‘The Great Wall’, ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’, ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’, ‘The Piano’ (AAN 1994) and ‘An Angel at my Table’. Stuart Dryburgh was born in the UK in 1952, and migrated with his family to New Zealand in 1961, where he spent most of his childhood and young adult life. He earned a Bachelor of Archi...

Stuart Dryburgh is a British born, New York based cinematographer. His credits include ‘The Great Wall’, ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’, ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’, ‘The Piano’ (AAN 1994) and ‘An Angel at my Table’. Stuart Dryburgh was born in the UK in 1952, and migrated with his family to New Zealand in 1961, where he spent most of his childhood and young adult life. He earned a Bachelor of Archi...

“Net-zero is a big idea. It’s a big theme. And, unfortunately, what's going up are many ways to look like you're doing net-zero when you're not. So in the ideal world, getting to net-zero means essentially reducing your emissions, and then, where you have residual emissions left, that means you might need to have negative emissions. For example, it's relatively easy to decarbonize the power sector...

Bill Hare is a physicist and climate scientist with 30 years of experience in science, impacts and policy responses to climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion. He is a founder and CEO of Climate Analytics , which was established to synthesize and advance scientific knowledge on climate change and provide state-of-the-art solutions to global and national climate change policy cha...

“The political struggle is really hard today and I feel like we haven't been winning, but I think it's important not to think of this as either we win it, or there's catastrophe and that's the end. We win or lose, and there’s this big tidal wave that kills us all. That's not the way the climate crisis is going to play out. It’s going to be a long, slow, attritional crisis punctuated by forms of na...

Ashley Dawson is currently Professor of Postcolonial Studies in the English Department at the Graduate Center , City University of New York (CUNY), and at the College of Staten Island/CUNY . He currently works in the fields of environmental humanities and postcolonial ecocriticism. He is the author of three recent books relating to these fields:  People’s Power  (O/R, 2020),  Extrem...

“The figure in my work is me. The figure in my work is you. It's me placing objects. It’s me putting things together. It’s you standing near it. It’s you in proximity moving back and forth, moving around it. It’s  us . One of the reasons I make the things I do the way I make them is because I can't imagine them. I make things that I couldn't draw or even think about clearly. I can only look a...

John Powers was born in Chicago. He is a sculptor. After doing an apprenticeship on the West Coast with the sculptor Tom Jay, he moved to New York where he studied at Pratt and Hunter College. His artwork has been shown at MoMA PS1, the Brooklyn Museum, the Bruges Triennial, and PostMasters Gallery, among others. He was recently featured in the New York Times after injuring his...

Robert Nathan is an award-winning television producer, screenwriter, journalist, and novelist. Best known for his work on the Law & Order television franchise and his novel The White Tiger. He has worked in politics, broadcast and print journalism, film, and television. Nathan joined the original writing staff of Law & Order, working on three series in the franchise. Nathan’s script for the episod...

Robert Nathan is an award-winning television producer, screenwriter, journalist, and novelist. Best known for his work on the Law & Order television franchise and his novel The White Tiger. He has worked in politics, broadcast and print journalism, film, and television. Nathan joined the original writing staff of Law & Order, working on three series in the franchise. Nathan’s script for the episod...

“Is this true that we test for fewer than 100 chemicals in water, but in fact, there are thousands that go untested?” “There are thousands just like there are in air, just like there are in food. We sometimes compartmentalize too much. We forget, but what is food? Food is made up of chemicals. And I think we need to be broader in our understanding because, for example, we all have on us and within...

Dr. Linda Birnbaum is a scientist emeritus and former director of the National institute of Environmental Health Sciences and of the National Toxicology Program. She is also a Scholar in Residence at the Nicholas School of the Environment of Duke University, and an adjunct full professor at Duke, University of North Carolina, and Yale University School of Public Health. She is the author...

“So, if we study transportation, then we need to study urban development and infrastructure. Suddenly, we need to think about housing. We need to think about the co-location of jobs and shops, and you realize it's all connected. That might be one of the challenges of urban sustainability. It's all connected. So the way we move around is connected to the way we built the city. And I think the intri...

Roland Geyer is a Professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California at Santa Barbara, and the author of The Business of Less. Since 2000 he has worked with a wide range of governmental organizations, trade associations, and companies on environmental sustainability issues. His overarching goal is to help develop the knowledge, tools, and methods necessa...

David Auburn's plays include Proof (Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award®, New York Drama Critics Circle Award), An Upset and Amateurs (EST Marathons) and Skyscraper. Films include The Girl in the Park (writer/director) and The Lake House. Recent directing credits include A Delicate Balance for BTF. His short plays have been collected in the volume “Fifth Planet and Other Plays” (DPS). His work has been pub...

“In Edo Japan, basically life was pretty good, and they recycled everything. Everything was reused, upcycled. Waste was considered taboo. A person who was wasting was considered an ugly person. So there is a lot that we could talk about: design, the layout, scale. Buildings were rarely taller than two stories. Very good use of environmental features, microclimates, use of wind for cooling, passive...

Azby Brown is a leading authority on Japanese architecture, design, and environmentalism and the author of several groundbreaking books, including Just Enough, Small Spaces, The Japanese Dream House , The Very Small Home, and The Genius of Japanese Carpentry . He is lead researcher for Safecast, a global citizen-science organization that pioneered crowdsourced environmental monitoring. Azby Brown...