She applies that precision to the “where” part of her stories. Johnson wants the settings to stand out to the reader, to bring readers into the world alongside the characters. So when the New York native decided to write her newest series about Oklahoma, she recruited some local help to make sure she got all […]
Nonfiction
Posted inArts & Culture
Ghost writer
A local author will detail mysterious graves, ransacking outlaws and a religious cult in his latest nonfiction work, disclosing the little-known history of two Oklahoma towns. David A. Farris, resident of Oklahoma City, reached back as far as 127 years in the state’s history to write Edmond and Guthrie, a Little Off the Tracks, his […]
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The Best Film You’ve Never Seen: 35 Directors Champion the Forgotten or Critically Savaged Movies They Love — Robert K. Elder
Luckily for Elder and his readers, there’s plenty more. A companion of sorts to Elder’s 2011 book The Film That Changed My Life, the Chicago Review Press paperback operates on several levels, from learning tool to reference guide to Netflix queue-filler. As with the earlier work, the author leans on 35 directors to build its […]
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Nice Guys Don’t Work in Hollywood: The Adventures of an Aesthete in the Movie Business — Curtis Harrington
Unlike so many Tinseltown true tales, Nice Guys Don’t Work in Hollywood doesn’t begin with a tumultuous childhood. Although the only child grew up in the throes of the Great Depression, Harrington’s upbringing was happy. He found escape (and influence) in the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, the pages of Esquire magazine and the flicker […]
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Hopper: A Journey into the American Dream — Tom Folsom
Folsom traces the life of Dennis Hopper through its four distinct phrases: Kansas farm boy, Method actor/James Dean worshipper, pharmaceutical madman, comeback kid. That he had a fourth at all continues to amaze me, especially after reading all the details. The kinder, gentler Hopper was hardly one to shy away from admitting his battles with […]
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The reading dead
The actor, best-known for playing the now-deceased T-Dog in TV’s smash-hit series The Walking Dead and Alton in the Oscar-winning drama The Blind Side, was all smiles as he walked into the Barnes & Noble at 13800 N. May this afternoon to promote his book, Blindsided by the Walking Dead. A line of waiting fans […]
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The Man Who Created Halloween — Irwin Yablans
This self-published paperback is his story — emphasis on The Man, not Halloween. The making of that 1978 now-classic movie is only a small part of the autobiography, which covers his entire life. Luckily, Yablans is an engaging storyteller who’s full of amusing anecdotes — some of which are intentional (John Wayne declaring his wish […]
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Of Dolls & Murder
What are nutshell studies? CSI viewers might recall season seven’s year-long arc of dollhouse miniatures of the crime scene left at each crime scene (“I think Malibu Barbie did it”). Those were based on the real-life models ranging from 1-inch- to 1-foot-scale, made with an über-meticulous attention to detail in the 1930s by the unheralded […]
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Brace for ‘Impact’
As a retired teacher, Stephney-Roberson knows firsthand how difficult it is to obtain material about Oklahoma’s black history. “During my years of teaching, I tried to find tools to use, but it was a topic that we were unable to acquire much information on,” she said. Impact highlights the men and women who played pivotal […]
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The Lowbrow Reader Reader
Thirteen years later, my zine became the victim of its own success: The process simply ceased to be fun for me, so after 37 issues — or was it 38? — an exhausted one-man publisher called it quits. I only tell you this because as I was wrapping up, a New York-based zine called The Lowbrow […]