Tom Vitale

The Nobel Prize winner celebrated his Caribbean homeland and described its brutal colonial history. "You didn't make yourself a poet," he said. "You entered a situation in which there was poetry."

The Poetry Project celebrates its 50th year of supporting contemporary poets. For the 43rd time, it held a marathon poetry reading on New Year's Day at St. Mark's Church-In-The Bowery.

In 2010, the acquisition of William Savory's legendary collection of almost 1,000 live recordings had jazz fans salivating. Now, 40 restored tracks from the Savory archives are available on iTunes.

The jazz pianist and composer's career has been defined by creative collaborations — and he hasn't stopped. He's celebrating his 75th birthday with a marathon of performances.

After Forrest Gump became a best-seller, Winston Groom says he ran out of good ideas for novels — until now. His new book, El Paso, is set during the Mexican Revolution.

The Quartet's Fifty for the Future project will commission 50 pieces by as many composers. Then the scores and instructional videos will be free online.

The author — who wrote more than three dozen books, including the novels Dalva and True North and many collections of poetry — found freedom in the outdoors. He died Saturday in Patagonia, Ariz.

"We came together to invigorate Erroll's musical legacy," says Susan Rosenberg, who inherited Garner's archive. The project will release unheard material from the pianist and composer.

Shuffle Along, Or, The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed tells the story of an overlooked smash hit created and performed by African-Americans.

The best-selling author of The Prince of Tides died Friday evening at the age of 70. At his death he was concluding work on his latest book, Aquarius.

It's been 60 years since the Japanese musician moved to the U.S., changed the sound of the big band, and counted Oscar Peterson and Charles Mingus among her fans. It wasn't an easy road.

In 1964, near the end of his career, Billy Strayhorn accompanied himself on a live recording of one of his best-known songs. It starts:

I used to visit all the very gay places

Those come-what-may places

Where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life

...

In Arthur Miller's 1949 masterpiece, Death of a Salesman, we're never told what lead character Willy Loman sells — but he's spent a lifetime "on a shoeshine and a smile." His luck finally runs out when his boss lets him go.

"I put 34 years into this firm, Howard, and ...

A collection of first drafts, letters, outtakes and photos on display in New York City illuminate the inner workings of Ernest Hemingway's meticulous writing process — failures, flaws and all.

Saul Bellow, one of the 20th century's great writers, was born 100 years ago next month. The publishing world is marking the anniversary with a flurry of books — a Library of America edition of Bellow's fiction, a hefty tome of collected nonfiction, and a big new biography.

Another way ...

In 2006, the Nobel prize-winning author of The Tin Drum admitted that as a teen during World War II, he had served with the Waffen-SS — the combat unit of the Nazi Party's elite military police force.

It's Friday afternoon in the back room of the Wharf, a fisherman's watering hole on the south shore of Long Island, N.Y. The bar looks out across the Great South Bay towards Fire Island. It's a special place for writer Matt Sumell.

"This is the first bar I got into," ...

Philip Levine revealed the poetry in the lives working people, and especially the people and places of his youth — in the auto factories and working class homes of urban Detroit. In a career that spanned six decades, he was a United States Poet Laureate, and winner of two National ...

For the late poet Amiri Baraka, poetry was about the sound of the words — that the poems should come alive when they were read aloud. "I'm trying to make the poems as musical as I can — from the inception," he said in 1980. "So that whether they're read ...

Writer Cynthia Ozick attended readings at the Y in the 1950s. "You saw these icons standing in a blaze of brilliant spotlight," she says, "and you felt that you were at the crux of all civilization."