Deborah Gans Studio works on the landscapes of refugee camps and is featured alongside the CLUI in the U.S. Pavilion at the 2008 Venice Biennale. Much of the work generated by the Gans Studio is devoted to re-thinking how architecture can participate in the invention of new social forms, often by focusing on extreme situations that yield insights for everyday life. She is a professor in the architecture school at Pratt Institute.

Matthew Coolidge is a founder and director of The Center for Land Use Interpretation, an organization dedicated to improving the collective understanding about humans and the landscapes that they inhabit. The Center makes exhibits, publications, tours, and web resources about the built landscape of the Unites States at museums and other non-commercial venues. Matthew is the author of several books, three of which include Overlook: Exploring the Internal Fringes of America with the Center for Land Use Interpretation, The Nevada Test Site: A Guide to America’s Nuclear Proving Ground, and Upriver: Points of Interest on the Hudson from the Battery to Troy. He teaches in the graduate Curatorial Practice Program at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. BOMB thanks the Pratt Institute for hosting this conversation and Deborah Gans for organizing it.

Chris Albani, a Nigerian novelist and poet living in political exile here in the US, is the author of the novels Master of the Board, The Virgin of Flames, and Gracelend, which won the 2005 PEN Hemingway Prize. He has also written several poetry collections and the novellas Song for Night and Becoming Abigail, a poets novella in its dream-like juxtapositions and stepladder flow. His other prizes include a PEN Freedom-to-Write Award, a Prince Claus Award, a Hurston/Wright Literary Fellowship and a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship. He Lives and teaches in California.

Colm Tóibìn is an Irish novelist, journalist and playwright. His novels include The South, The Heather Blazing, The Story of the Night, and The Blackwater Lightship, which was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize. His latest novel, The Master, aptly titled in reference to its protagonist, Henry James, and for the masterful writing deployed in conjuring him, was shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize and named the Los Angles Times Novel of the Year. It won France's Prize of Best Foreign Novel in 2005.

Novelist Peter Carey has a conversation with poet Robert Polito in which they discuss Ned Kelly, Australian history, and Carey’s book, True History of the Kelly Gang, at The New School in the fall of 2001.

Rackstraw Downes is a British painter and author whose obsessively detailed realist landscapes have earned him a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He’s had work published in The New York Times, Art in America, Art News, and The New Criterion, among others.

Phillip Lopate is an author and media critic whose work has appeared in numerous publications. His most recent essay collection, Notes on Sontag, was published by Princeton University Press in 2009.

“The Figure in Narrative” series paired a prominent novelist or poet with an acclaimed visual artist for an intimate discussion about the creative process. Novelist A.M. Homes interviewed painter Eric Fischl in Manhattan on Oct. 26, 2005.

Listen to a BOMBLive! podcast of Thelma Golden interviewed by Glenn Ligon & Betsy Sussler at The New Museum for Contemporary Art in the Fall of 2002. Part of the BOMBLive! Artists & Curators' Series.

Tom Kalin is a filmmaker, teacher, writer, and activist, based in New York. His film credits include directing Swoon, executive producing I Shot Andy Warhol, and Co-Writing with Cindy Sherman Office Killer. Kalin has also created short film and video pieces which are held in the collections of Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and MoMA, New York. His critical writings have been published in a wide range of publications. Bette Gordon is a New York based filmmaker, and teacher at Columbia.

Kalin's 2007 film Savage Grace, tells the tale of socialite Barbara Daly Baekeland's infamous 1972 slaying and the incestuous family dynamics surrounding her murder. Kalin discusses the film with his colleague and BOMB contributing editor Bette Gordon, in front of an audience of Columbia University film students. A Q&A session with the director followed the interview.

Rick Moody is an author, musician, and blogger who is best known for his novel The Ice Storm. He is the recipient of PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir for his 2002 Memoir The Black Veil. He has also received the Addison Metcalf Award, the Paris Review Aga Khan Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Conjunctions, Harper’s, Details, The New York Times, and Grand Street. Most recently, his short story “Some Contemporary Characters” was published via Twitter through a number of literary publications' Twitter feeds.

Darcey Steinke is a journalist and the author of four novels and a collection of essays, which she co-edited with Rick Moody. blindspot, her web project, was featured in the 2001 Whitney Biennial.

Honor Moore's father, the Bishop Paul Moore, captivated the nation by bringing political activism into the priesthood even while he struggled with a deeply guarded secret. Victoria Redel's fictional father, Itzaak, escaped from Nazi-occupied Belgium with his own haunting secret to keep, most especially from his daughter, Sarah.

The two authors spoke about their books, The Bishop’s Daughter, a memoir, and The Border of Truth, a novel, before a live audience in lower Manhattan at Housing Works Bookstore, a non-profit organization that provides housing, health care, job training, advocacy, and other services for homeless New Yorkers living with HIV and AIDS.

“The Figure in Narrative” series paired a prominent writer with an acclaimed visual artist for a discussion about the creative process. Sculptor and writer Lorenzo Pace was interviewed by poet Patricia Spears Jones in Manhattan on November 9, 2005. The New York Academy of Art co-sponsored the event.