Nell is a 1994 American drama film directed by Michael Apted from a screenplay written by William Nicholson. The film stars Jodie Foster as Nell Kellty, a young woman who has to face other people for the first time after being raised by her mother in an isolated cabin. Liam Neeson, Natasha Richardson, Richard Libertini, and Nick Searcy are featured in supporting roles. Based on Mark Handley's play Idioglossia, the script for Nell was developed by co-producer Renée Missel and was inspired by Handley's time living in the Cascade Mountains in the 1970s, and the story of Poto and Cabengo, twins who created their own language. Partway through the movie, the other characters discover that Nell is actually speaking English, just mispronouncing all the words. As an example, when Nell says "Nay Cay Chickabay," she is actually saying "Don't Cry Chickadee."
Floriography is a means of cryptological communication through the use or arrangement of flowers. Meaning has been attributed to flowers for thousands of years, and some form of floriography has been practiced in traditional cultures throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa. Plants and flowers are used as symbols in the Hebrew Bible, particularly of love and lovers in the Song of Songs, as an emblem for the Israelite people and for the coming Messiah. In Western culture, William Shakespeare ascribed emblematic meanings to flowers, especially in Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Similarly, in a scene in his Henry VI, Part 1, English noblemen pick either red or white roses to symbolize their allegiance to the Houses of Lancaster or York.
Meg Tilly is an American actress.
Steven Alan Inskeep is an American journalist who is currently a host of Morning Edition and Up First on National Public Radio. Prior to being host of Morning Edition, Inskeep covered the Pentagon, the 2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush, the U.S. Senate, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and was host of Weekend All Things Considered.
Janet R. Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as a Times film critic from 1977 to 1999 and as a book critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000 Maslin helped found the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York. She is president of its board of directors.
Ron Currie Jr. is an American author.
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto is a 2008 book by journalist and activist Michael Pollan. It was number one on the New York Times Non-Fiction Best Seller List for six weeks. The book grew out of Pollan's 2007 essay Unhappy Meals published in the New York Times Magazine. Pollan has also said that he wrote In Defense of Food as a response to people asking him what they should eat after having read his previous book, The Omnivore's Dilemma.
Malena Watrous is an American novelist, essayist, short story writer, educator, and author of numerous magazine articles.
Norb Vonnegut is an American author of Wall Street thrillers and a financial commentator on his blog entitled "Acrimoney". He attended Phillips Exeter Academy, and received bachelor's and Master of Business Administration degrees from Harvard University. His business career began in the Philippines and took him to Australia, South Carolina, and Rhode Island before he settled into the wealth management profession in New York City.
Carol Edgarian is an American author, editor, and publisher. She is known for her novels, Rise the Euphrates and Three Stages of Amazement. She is also co-founder, editor and publisher of Narrative Magazine, an online literary magazine.
Habibi is a black-and-white graphic novel by Craig Thompson published by Pantheon in September 2011. The 672-page book is set in a fictional Islamic fairy tale landscape and depicts the relationship between Dodola and Zam, two escaped child slaves, who are torn apart and undergo many transformations as they grow into new names and new bodies, which prove to be obstacles to their love when they later reunite. The book's website describes its concept as a love story and a parable about humanity's relationship to the natural world that explores themes such as the cultural divide between first world countries and third world countries, and the commonality between Christianity and Islam.
Adam Levin is an American fiction author. His short fiction has been published in places like Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and Tin House. Currently, he resides in Chicago, where he teaches Creative Writing and Literature at the School of the Art Institute. His first novel, The Instructions, was published in 2010 by McSweeney's.
The Shining Girls is a novel by South African author Lauren Beukes. The book centers on a time-traveling Depression-era drifter who must murder the "shining girls" in order to continue his travels.
The Paris Wife is a 2011 historical fiction novel by Paula McLain which became a New York Times Bestseller. It is a fictionalized account of Ernest Hemingway's marriage to the first of his four wives, Hadley Richardson. McLain decided to write from Hadley's perspective after reading A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's 1964 posthumously published account of his early years in Paris. McLain researched their biographies, letters, and Hemingway's novels. The Sun Also Rises is dedicated to Hadley and their son.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh is the American author of the novel The Language of Flowers and the nonfiction A Victorian Flower Dictionary.
Eye Candy is an American thriller television series that premiered on MTV on January 12, 2015. The series was developed by Christian Taylor, and is based on the 2004 novel of the same name by R. L. Stine. Eye Candy stars Victoria Justice as Lindy Sampson, a tech genius who goes on the hunt for a serial killer in New York while searching for her lost sister Sara. On February 11, 2014, Eye Candy was picked up for a 10-episode first season. Justice revealed on April 18, 2015, that the series had been cancelled.
House of Holes: A Book of Raunch is a 2011 novel by American writer Nicholson Baker. It consists of a series of chapters that are more or less connected which tell of the sexual and emotional experiences of a variety of characters in a kind of sexual fantasy land, the titular "House of Holes". The third "dirty novel" by Baker after Vox and The Fermata, it is praised by many reviewers for the inventiveness of its language.
Lord of Misrule is a 2010 novel by Jaimy Gordon. The book is divided into four sections, each concerned with one of four horse races at a "down on the luck" racetrack.
Noah S. Diffenbaugh is an American climate scientist at Stanford University, where he is the Kara J Foundation Professor of Earth System Science and Kimmelman Family Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and an affiliate at the Precourt Institute for Energy. From 2015-2018, he served as editor-in-chief of the peer-review journal Geophysical Research Letters. He is known for his research on the climate system, including the effects of global warming on extreme weather and climate events such as the 2011-2017 California drought.
Jane Harper is a British/Australian author known for her crime novels The Dry, Force of Nature and The Lost Man.
