In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Anne Truitt and Frank Stella. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction against abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary postminimal art practices, which extend or reflect on minimalism's original objectives.
Donald Barthelme Jr. was an American short story writer and novelist known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Barthelme also worked as a newspaper reporter for the Houston Post, was managing editor of Location magazine, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston (1961–1962), co-founder of Fiction, and a professor at various universities. He also was one of the original founders of the University of Houston Creative Writing Program.
Kmart realism, also termed "low-rent tragedies", is a form of minimalist literature found in American short fiction that became popular in the 1980s.
Amy Hempel is an American short story writer and journalist. She teaches creative writing at the Michener Center for Writers.
The Red Krayola is an American avant rock band from Houston, Texas formed in 1966 by the trio of singer/guitarist Mayo Thompson, drummer Frederick Barthelme, and bassist Steve Cunningham.
Mayo Thompson is an American musician and visual artist best known as the leader of the experimental rock band Red Krayola.
Steven Barthelme is the author of numerous short stories and essays. His published works include And He Tells the Little Horse the Whole Story, Double Down: Reflections on Gambling and Loss, and The Early Posthumous Work. His brothers Donald and Frederick also became notable authors. His father, Donald Barthelme, Sr., was a well-known modernist architect in Houston.
Art punk is a subgenre of punk rock in which artists go beyond the genre's rudimentary garage rock and are considered more sophisticated than their peers. These groups still generated punk's aesthetic of being simple, offensive, and free-spirited, but essentially attracted audiences other than the angry, working-class ones that surrounded pub rock.
Gordon Lish is an American writer. As a literary editor, he championed many American authors, particularly Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Rick Bass, and Richard Ford. He is the father of the novelist Atticus Lish.
Louise Hawes is an American academic and author of more than a dozen novels and several short story collections. She has served as Writer in Residence at the University of New Mexico and The Women's University of Mississippi, and as a John Grisham Visiting Writer at the University of Mississippi. She has been a guest lecturer at the University of South Florida, Staten Island College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Meredith College, and Duke University.
Lorian Hemingway is an American author and freelance journalist. Her books include the memoir Walk on Water, the novel Walking Into the River, and the non-fiction book A World Turned Over, about the devastation of her hometown of South Jackson, Mississippi, by the Candlestick Park Tornado in 1966. Her articles have appeared in GQ, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, The Seattle Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and Rolling Stone.
The Parable of Arable Land is the first studio album by the Red Crayola. The title was coined by bassist Steve Cunningham. The album was considered psychedelic music when it was introduced, but later assessments describe it as a forerunner to avant/noise rock. With this album as introduction, Ritchie Unterberger assessed the band as a precursor to industrial rock. The album features free improvised pieces involving industrial power tools and a revving motorcycle dubbed "Free Form Freak-Out" played by a group of over 50 people known as "the Familiar Ugly" as well as notable instrumental cameos by label mate and 13th Floor Elevators frontman Roky Erickson.
Mary Cennamo Robison is an American short story writer and novelist. She has published four collections of stories, and four novels, including her 2001 novel Why Did I Ever, winner of the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction. Her most recent novel, released in 2009, is One D.O.A., One on the Way. She has been categorized as a founding "minimalist" writer along with authors such as Amy Hempel, Frederick Barthelme, and Raymond Carver. In 2009, she won the Rea Award for the Short Story.
Corky's Debt to His Father is the only solo LP by Red Krayola leader Mayo Thompson. Recorded in 1970, it was released on the small independent label Texas Revolution but barely distributed at the time; some copies were made available in the 1970s via mail order.
James Robison is an American novelist, short story writer, poet and screenwriter. The author of The Illustrator (1988) and Rumor and Other Stories (1985), his work has frequently appeared in The New Yorker and numerous other journals. He is a recipient of the Whiting Award for his short fiction and a Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has held teaching posts at numerous universities across the United States, including the University of Houston and Loyola University Maryland.
Experimental rock, also called avant-rock, is a subgenre of rock music that pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique or which experiments with the basic elements of the genre. Artists aim to liberate and innovate, with some of the genre's distinguishing characteristics being improvisational performances, avant-garde influences, odd instrumentation, opaque lyrics, unorthodox structures and rhythms, and an underlying rejection of commercial aspirations.
God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It is the second commercially released studio album by the American avant-rock band Red Krayola. It was released in May 1968 by the independent record label known as International Artists.
Coconut Hotel is an album originally recorded in 1967 by the American avant rock band Red Krayola. The intent was for it to be the band's second album after the release of The Parable of Arable Land, but it was rejected and shelved indefinitely by International Artists. Coconut Hotel would not hit stores till 1995 when it was finally issued by Drag City.
Peter Schwed (1911–2003) was an American editor and the editorial chairman and a trade book publisher for Simon & Schuster. Among the authors he edited were P.G. Wodehouse, Irving Wallace, Harold Robbins, David McCullough and Cornelius Ryan. Schwed also authored or contributed to more than a dozen books. Schwed specialized in sports publications and was either an editor or ghostwriter for such sports figures as Jack Nicklaus, Rod Laver, Bill Tilden, Chris Evert, Bjorn Borg, Roger Angell and Ted Williams. He was the co-author of golfer Nancy Lopez's The Education of a Woman Golfer.
Elizabeth Inness-Brown is an American novelist, short story writer, educator, and contributing editor at Boulevard. She is a retired professor of English at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont and lives in South Hero, Vermont—one of three islands comprising Grand Isle County—with her husband and son. Inness-Brown has published a novel, Burning Marguerite, as well as two short story collections, titled Here and Satin Palms. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, North American Review, Boulevard, Glimmer Train, Madcap Review, and various other journals. Inness-Brown received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for Writing in 1983 and has done writing residencies at Yaddo and The Millay Colony for the Arts. In 1982, her short story "Release, Surrender" appeared in Volume VII of the Pushcart Prize.
