The Presidents of the United States of America were an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1993. The three-piece group's initial lineup consisted of vocalist and bassist Chris Ballew, drummer Jason Finn, and guitarist Dave Dederer. The band became popular in the mid-1990s for their hits "Lump" and "Peaches"—released in 1995 and 1996, respectively—which helped their self-titled debut album go triple Platinum.
The Wild Bunch is a 1969 American epic revisionist Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Ben Johnson and Warren Oates. The plot concerns an aging outlaw gang on the Mexico–United States border trying to adapt to the changing modern world of 1913. The film was controversial because of its graphic violence and its portrayal of crude men attempting to survive by any available means.
Susan Kay Quatro is an American singer, bass guitarist, songwriter and actress. In the 1970s, she scored a string of singles that found success in Europe and Australia, with both "Can the Can" (1973) and "Devil Gate Drive" (1974) reaching No. 1 in several countries.
John Stephen Piper is an American theologian and pastor in the Reformed Baptist tradition. He is also chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Piper taught biblical studies at Bethel University for six years (1974–1980), before serving as pastor for preaching and vision of Bethlehem Baptist Church (Converge) in Minneapolis for 33 years (1980–2013).
Rickie Lee Jones is an American singer, musician, and songwriter. Over the course of a career that spans five decades and 15 studio albums, she has recorded in various musical styles including rock, R&B, pop, soul, and jazz. A two-time Grammy Award winner, Jones was listed at No. 30 on VH1's 100 Greatest Women in Rock & Roll in 1999. AllMusic stated: "Few singer/songwriters are as individual and eclectic as Rickie Lee Jones, a vocalist with an expressive and smoky instrument, and a composer who can weave jazz, folk, and R&B into songs with a distinct pop sensibility."
Mark Bowden is an American journalist and writer. He is a former national correspondent and longtime contributor to The Atlantic. Bowden is best known for his book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War (1999) about the 1993 U.S. military raid in Mogadishu, which was later adapted into a motion picture of the same name that received two Academy Awards.
Susan Orlean is an American journalist, television writer, and bestselling author of The Orchid Thief and The Library Book. She has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1992, and has contributed articles to many magazines including Vogue, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Outside. In 2021, Orlean joined the writing team of HBO comedy series How To with John Wilson.
Walter Ellis Mosley is an American novelist, most widely recognized for his crime fiction. He has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. They are, perhaps, his most popular works. In 2020, Mosley received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, making him the first Black man to receive the honor.
Dennis Cooper is an American novelist, poet, critic, editor and performance artist. He is best known for the George Miles Cycle, a series of five semi-autobiographical novels published between 1989 and 2000 and described by Tony O'Neill "as intense a dissection of human relationships and obsession that modern literature has ever attempted." Cooper is the founder and editor of Little Caesar Magazine, a punk zine, that ran between 1976 and 1982.
Richard Rohr, is an American Franciscan priest and writer on spirituality based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was ordained to the priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church in 1970, founded the New Jerusalem Community in Cincinnati in 1971, and the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque in 1987. In 2011, PBS called him "one of the most popular spirituality authors and speakers in the world".
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks is a novel by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. It was written in 1945, a full decade before the two authors became famous as leading figures of the Beat Generation, and remained unpublished in complete form until 2008.
Christian hedonism is a Christian doctrine believed by some evangelicals. The term was coined by John Piper in his 1986 book Desiring God based on Vernard Eller's earlier use of the term hedonism to describe the same concept. Piper summarizes this philosophy of the Christian life as "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him."
Now in its 28th year the Big Apple Comic Con is the longest-running comic book/speculative fiction/pop culture convention in New York City. It was started by retailer Michael "Mike Carbo" Carbonaro in March 1996 in the basement of the St. Paul the Apostle Church. Having grown out of the church, between 1999 to 2008, the Big Apple Comic Con often featured multiple shows per year, with a large three-day "national" convention held in November, at the Metropolitan Pavilion and later at the Penn Plaza Pavilion. The show was sold to Wizard Entertainment in 2009 but was reacquired 2014 by Big Apple CC Corp in 2014. Mr. Carbonaro says Wizard could not produce a successful show in NYC.
David Elliot Grann is an American journalist, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and author.
Adam Davidson is an American journalist. He was a co-founder of NPR's Planet Money program. Previously he has covered globalization issues, the Asian tsunami, and the war in Iraq, for which he won the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. He and Adam McKay were former co-hosts of Surprisingly Awesome from Gimlet Media. Davidson worked as an economics columnist for The New York Times Magazine and in 2016 took a position at The New Yorker.
Peter Trachtenberg is an American writer of fiction, nonfiction, and memoir.
Meditations in an Emergency is a book of poetry by American poet Frank O'Hara, first published by Grove Press in 1957. Its title poem was first printed in the November 1954 issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse.
Works by or about James Wood, English critic and writer.
Claire Dederer is an American writer who regularly contributes essays, reviews and criticism to publications including The New York Times. She has written three books, Love and Trouble, Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, and Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma.
Jami Attenberg is an American fiction writer and essayist. She is the author of a short story collection, six novels, including the best-seller The Middlesteins (2012), and a memoir, I Came All ThisWay to Meet You (2022).
