Would you leave your job working as a T-shirt designer for a major denim company in Istanbul to move to Atlanta with no money and no plan-- only talent? A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to interview an artist named Hirut Yosef, and that is exactly what she did. She designed jerseys and graphic tees for Mavi…
Last Monday I interviewed international playwright Dominique Morisseau about her play Detroit 67. It runs at Atlanta's Southwest Arts Center, February 10 - March 8. We chatted a lot about her hometown of Detroit, and how she aspires to be the scribe for the people she grew up with. Below is a teaser of our conversation. Click the link…
On Sunday, January 18, just before MLK Day, OWN aired the documentary Light Girls. The film is a follow-up to the documentary Dark Girls, which toured the indie film circuit a couple of years ago. I attended a special luncheon in 2012 where I had the opportunity to interview D. Channsin Berry, one of the directors/producers of Dark Girls, and…
I interviewed actress, singer, and comedian Rain Pryor, daughter of famed comedian Richard Pryor, about her one-woman show Fried Chicken and Latkes. Here's a taste of our conversation: ArtsATL: Do you remember your first school play? Rain Pryor: The first school play I ever did was Winnie the Pooh and I played the ass Eeyore, because — this should be…
Millennials are less tolerant than you think "The fact of the matter is that millennials who are white — that is, members of the group that has always had the most regressive racial beliefs, and who will constitute a majority of U.S. voters for at least another couple of decades — are, on key questions involving race, no more open-minded…
*CONTAINS SPOILERS* I went to see the movie SELMA last night, and it excelled at serving as an agent of empathy, an educational resource, a reminder of the struggle for Civil Rights, and it put a soul to the names that history has memorialized. Much praise has been given to David Oyelowo, whose best moment is in his rendering of King's…