"Happily married and in the flush of hard-earned professional success, with her first play opening on Broadway, Sarah Ruhl has just survived a high risk pregnancy and given birth to twins when she discovers the left side of her face entirely paralyzed. Bell's palsy. Ninety percent of Bell's palsy sufferers see spontaneous improvement and full recovery. Like Ruhl's mother. Like Angelina Jolie. But not like Sarah Ruhl. Sarah Ruhl is in the unlucky ten...

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...

"With more than 55 plays to his credit, including the 1979 Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child, Sam Shepard's impact on American theater ranks with the greatest playwrights of the past half-century. Critics have enthused that he "forged a whole new kind of American play," while younger playwrights venerate him -- Suzan Lori Parks, herself a Pulitzer winner, calls Shepard her "gorgeous north star." As an actor who's appeared in more than 50 feature...