Arts Jan 11 Poetry helps youth at a juvenile detention center find peace Free Write Jail Arts and Literacy aims to help troubled youths in Chicago’s Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center address their personal issues by writing poetry about their circumstances and upbringing. Jeffrey Brown talks with poet Reginald Dwayne Betts, who…
Poetry Jan 11 Poet Reginald Dwayne Betts returns to the city that nearly broke him Betts' new book touches on the way he believes institutions -- schools, the police, the judicial system -- helped create a lost generation of young black men.
Arts Jan 05 MacArthur fellow LaToya Ruby Frazier captures the town that survived Braddock, Pennsylvania, was once a thriving steel town before the town’s industry collapsed. It's where LaToya Ruby Frazier grew up, like her mother and grandmother before her, and it's where the visual artist and 2015 MacArthur fellow has returned to…
World Dec 14 Italian olive trees are withering from this deadly bacteria The Salento region in southern Italy is synonymous with its renowned olive groves, some of which are thousands of years old. But a deadly bacteria, which causes trees to wither, is threatening a critical part of Salento's livelihood and very…
Arts Oct 27 The crumbling, picture-perfect Italian town that’s making a comeback There are just seven year-round residents -- and who knows how many cats -- in the Medieval Italian town of Civita di Bagnoregio, also known as the dying city. The picturesque hilltop town, visited by droves of tourists, is built…
Arts Oct 27 Photos: Visit a crumbling medieval town that’s slowly falling off a cliff There is something attractive about a place slated to disappear. At first glance, Civita di Bagnoregio is just that.
Arts Oct 26 Decades after Florence’s great flood, an art hospital renews still-damaged treasures It's part museum, part workshop, part hospital for threatened treasures. At the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, Italy, conservators work to restore cultural and artistic masterpieces, some of which still bear the damage of a devastating flood nearly 50…
Arts Oct 26 Photos: Inside the Florence lab saving priceless works of art In the 14th century, Florence was the center of the Italian Renaissance, but after a devastating flood in the 1960s, it became something else: one of the world’s foremost centers of art preservation and restoration.
Arts Sep 09 Why Salman Rushdie is probably quitting Twitter Salman Rushdie will be the first to tell you that free expression is imperative to society. But there's one way the award-winning author does not always enjoy speaking out: on Twitter.
Arts Sep 08 Salman Rushdie unleashes the genies in his new novel In "Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights," the genies are out of the bottle and on the loose in New York City. Author Salman Rushdie combines magic and reality, myth and history in his latest novel. Jeffrey Brown interviews…