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The Dog Star is a novel by American writer Donald Windham, first published in 1950. It tells the story of a young Southern man who is haunted by the suicide of his best friend from reform school. [1] Set in 1930s post-Depression Atlanta, the novel's themes include dysfunctional families, traditionalism, urban anomie, homosexuality, and suicide. [2]
In inner-city Atlanta, 15-year-old Blackie Pride is consumed by the memories of Whitey Maddox, his best friend from reform school who has recently killed himself. Despite their names, both boys are white and endured a period of homoerotic intimacy during their time at school together that may have encouraged Whitey's fatal actions. With Whitey dead, Blackie roams the streets of his poor neighborhood contemplating the feelings of worthlessness and disappointment he attributes to his family and remaining friends. With the realization of inevitable hardships overwhelming him, and the idealization of apathy plaguing any potential motivation for a better life, Blackie commits suicide.
The novel was well received by Windham's contemporaries, including authors E.M. Forster, André Gide, and Albert Camus. [2] German writer Thomas Mann called it the best American novel of the decade. [3] Despite its critical acclaim, particularly in England, the novel found little success in the United States. [3]
Dean Ray Koontz is an American author. His novels are billed as suspense thrillers, but frequently incorporate elements of horror, fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and satire. Many of his books have appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list, with fourteen hardcovers and sixteen paperbacks reaching the number-one position. Koontz wrote under a number of pen names earlier in his career, including "David Axton", "Deanna Dwyer", "K.R. Dwyer", "Leigh Nichols" and "Brian Coffey". He has published over 105 novels and a number of novellas and collections of short stories, and has sold over 450 million copies of his work.
Martin Louis Amis was an English novelist, essayist, memoirist, and screenwriter. He is best known for his novels Money (1984) and London Fields (1989). He received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir Experience and was twice listed for the Booker Prize. Amis served as the Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester from 2007 until 2011. In 2008, The Times named him one of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945.
Barry Lee Levinson is an American filmmaker, comedian and actor. Levinson's best-known works are mid-budget comedy drama and drama films such as Diner (1982); The Natural (1984); Good Morning, Vietnam (1987); Bugsy (1991); and Wag the Dog (1997). He won the Academy Award for Best Director for Rain Man (1988). In 2021, he co-executive produced the Hulu miniseries Dopesick and directed the first two episodes.
William Garrett Walden, known as W. G. Snuffy Walden, is an American musician and composer of film and television soundtracks. Walden is an Emmy Award winner for the theme music to The West Wing (NBC), has been nominated for numerous Emmys throughout his career, and has received 26 BMI Awards.
James Joseph "Whitey" Bulger Jr. was an American organized crime boss who led the Winter Hill Gang in the Winter Hill neighborhood of Somerville, Massachusetts, a city directly northwest of Boston. On December 23, 1994, Bulger fled the Boston area and went into hiding after his former FBI handler, John Connolly, tipped him off about a pending RICO indictment against him. Bulger remained at large for sixteen years. After his 2011 arrest, federal prosecutors tried Bulger for nineteen murders based on grand jury testimony from Kevin Weeks and other former criminal associates.
Donald Patrick Conroy was an American author who wrote several acclaimed novels and memoirs; his books The Water is Wide, The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini were made into films, the last two being nominated for Oscars. He is recognized as a leading figure of late-20th-century Southern literature.
Tsitsi Dangarembga is a Zimbabwean novelist, playwright and filmmaker. Her debut novel, Nervous Conditions (1988), which was the first to be published in English by a Black woman from Zimbabwe, was named by the BBC in 2018 as one of the top 100 books that have shaped the world. She has won other literary honours, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the PEN Pinter Prize. In 2020, her novel This Mournable Body was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2022, Dangarembga was convicted in a Zimbabwe court of inciting public violence, by displaying, on a public road, a placard asking for reform.
Etzel von Oeringen, better known as Strongheart, was a male German Shepherd that was one of the early canine stars of feature films.
Howard Louis Carr Jr. is an American conservative radio talk-show host, political author, news reporter and award-winning writer.
Boston Blackie is a fictional character created by author Jack Boyle (1881–1928). Blackie, a jewel thief and safecracker in Boyle's stories, became a detective in adaptations for films, radio and television—an "enemy to those who make him an enemy, friend to those who have no friend."
Sigrid Nunez is an American writer, best known for her novels. Her seventh novel, The Friend, won the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction. She is on the faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Hunter College (CUNY).
The Talented Mr. Ripley is a 1955 psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith. This novel introduced the character of Tom Ripley, who returns in four subsequent novels. It has been adapted numerous times for screen, including Purple Noon (1960) starring Alain Delon and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) starring Matt Damon.
Donald McKinley Glover Jr., also known by his stage name Childish Gambino, is an American actor, comedian, singer, rapper, writer, director, and producer. After working in Derrick Comedy while studying at New York University, Glover was hired at age 23 by Tina Fey as a writer for the NBC sitcom 30 Rock. He later rose to fame for portraying college student Troy Barnes on the NBC sitcom Community from 2009 to 2014. From 2016 to 2022, Glover starred in the FX series Atlanta, which he created and occasionally directed. For his work on Atlanta, Glover won various accolades, including two Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards.
Donald Windham was an American novelist and memoirist. He is perhaps best known for his close friendships with Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Windham moved with his then-boyfriend Fred Melton, an artist, to New York City in 1939. In 1942 Windham collaborated with Williams on the play, You Touched Me!, which is based on a D. H. Lawrence short story with the same title. Windham received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1960.
Yiyun Li is a Chinese-born writer and professor in the United States. Her short stories and novels have won several awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award and Guardian First Book Award for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, and the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for Where Reasons End. She is an editor of the Brooklyn-based literary magazine A Public Space.
Confessions of Boston Blackie is a 1941 American crime film directed by Edward Dmytryk and starring Chester Morris and Harriet Hilliard. A woman consigns a family heirloom to a pair of unscrupulous art dealers in order to raise money to help her sick brother. This film is the second in the series of 14 Columbia Pictures Boston Blackie films, all starring Morris as the reformed crook. It was preceded by Meet Boston Blackie (1941) and followed by Alias Boston Blackie (1942).
Atlanta is an American comedy-drama television series created by Donald Glover. The series follows college dropout and music manager Earnest "Earn" Marks (Glover) and rapper Alfred "Paper Boi" Miles as they navigate a strange, seemingly otherworldly, Atlanta hip hop scene. Atlanta also stars LaKeith Stanfield as Darius, Earn and Alfred's eccentric friend, and Zazie Beetz as Vanessa "Van" Kiefer, Earn's on-again-off-again girlfriend and the mother of his daughter.
The Grizzlies is a 2018 Canadian sports drama film, directed by Miranda de Pencier. Based on a true story, the film depicts a youth lacrosse team that was set up to help combat an onslaught of youth suicide in the community of Kugluktuk, Nunavut.
The Friend is a novel by the American writer Sigrid Nunez published by Riverhead Books in 2018. The book concerns an unnamed novelist who adopts a Great Dane that belonged to a deceased friend and mentor.
Emblems of Conduct is a book by American writer Donald Windham, first published in 1963. It is a personal memoir, an account of his early life in Atlanta.