"Here is the first and only manual for playwrights ever designed to draw directly from the wisdom of leading contemporary dramatists. Interwoven with hundreds of quotations from the author's own in-depth interview series at the Dramatists Guild, in New York City, The Playwright's Process offers a fresh and lively discussion of the indispensable ingredients of strong dramatic writing. Every essential step the writer must take to create a well-written,...

Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, The Sunshine Boys -- Neil Simon's plays and movies have kept many millions of people laughing for almost four decades. Today he is recognized not only as the most successful American playwright of all time, but also as one of the greatest. More than the humor, however, it is the humanity of Neil Simon's vision that has made him America's most beloved playwright and earned him such enduring success. Now, in Rewrites,...

Here, celebrated drama critic John Lahr gives intimate access to the mind of one of the most brilliant dramatists of his century, whose plays reshaped the American theater and the nation's sense of itself. This astute, deeply researched biography sheds light on Williams's warring family, his guilt, his creative triumphs and failures, his sexuality and numerous affairs, his misreported death, even the shenanigans surrounding his estate. With vivid...

"The brutes and the belles. The gadflies and the good ol' boys. The taboos and the profound truths. They're all part of a Tennessee state of mind -- a realm of places, personalities and ideas. Williams is front and center for this exploration, reading from his works, placing them in the context of his life, and serving as guide in visits to his career-shaping refuge in New Orleans and his latter-day writing quarters in Key West. Also dramatizations...

"Seminal moments, rites of passage, crystalline vignettes--a memoir about growing up brown at the U.S./Mexico border"-- Solis's memoir about growing up brown at the U.S./Mexico border. As he examines seminal moments and rites of passage, Solis looks at them as a series of paintings, capturing events survived thanks to the intercession of the Divine. The result is a kind of flash-fiction account of his life: not so much autobiography as an "poetic...