More on: interview

You can read something spoken or written by somebody from a very different place or time or background or state of being—and it can feel true anyway.

Our current issue features a profile of innovative theater director Karin Coonrod, whose projects range from Shakespeare and medieval mystery plays to adaptations of Flannery O’Connor. Her latest play, now running in New York, is an adaptation of the classic Isak Dinesen short story “Babette’s Feast” (famous for the 1987 film version), the story of…

Margaret Gibson is the author of eleven collections of poetry, most recently Broken Cup, and a memoir, The Prodigal Daughter. Her second book, Long Walks in the Afternoon, was a Lamont Selection (now the James Laughlin Award) of the Academy of American Poets in 1982, and Memories of the Future in 1986 was co-winner of…

Joy Kogawa, born in British Columbia in 1935, has authored poetry, novels, children’s fiction, and a memoir. Her first books were poetry collections—The Splintered Moon, A Choice of Dreams, and Jericho Road—published between 1967 and 1977. During World War II, when Kogawa was six, the Canadian government confiscated her family’s home, and they were sent…

In the conversation around faith and film, Ron Austin is an elder statesman. He has worked a lifetime in the entertainment industry, and his essays and books, including In a New Light: Spirituality and Media Arts, have influenced generations of filmmakers (much of his writing is also on his website). His seminal essay “The Spiritual…

Fathers & Sons, Divine & Human Writer-director Rodrigo García makes film and television about human connection, or the lack thereof. The movie Mother and Child (2009), episodes of his shows In Treatment (2008–10) and Carnivàle (2003–05), and others reflect on the question of how to find love, give it, and figure out what we’re really…

Mira Nair describes herself as “an Indian filmmaker at home in the world.” Odisha born, Harvard educated, and living in Uganda, she brings a vibrant multiculturalist sensibility to exuberant, humane, and honest tales of people trying to get along in a world where joy and struggle meet by the minute. Best known for her films…

Van Gessel has been Shūsaku Endō’s primary English translator since the 1970s. He has translated eight of his novels and worked as a consultant on Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Silence. We asked him about the previously untranslated Endō story in Image issue 92, and about what Endō’s work has to say to the West. Can…

James McMichael was born in Pasadena, California, in 1939. After earning a doctorate at Stanford University, he taught at the University of California Irvine for over forty years. McMichael’s early work consists largely of shorter lyrics and sequences notable for their restraint, subtle musicality, and clarity of perception. These same qualities mark the more expansive…

A former marine biologist, cook, speechwriter, and White House policy advisor, Michael Gruber is a New York Times–bestselling writer who work infuses genre fiction with philosophical and supernatural themes. His books include the Jimmy Paz trilogy (Tropic of Night, Valley of Bones, and Night of the Jaguar) and thrillers about Shakespeare (The Book of Air…