Randolyn Zinn is a writer and choreographer (original Broadway production of Sunday In The Park with George) residing in NYC. Her fiction and poetry have been published by Carve, Best of Carve, Maisonneuve, South Dakota Review, Rhapsoidia, Driftwood, Naugatuck River Review and Vox. One story was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Having earned an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School, the opening chapters of her just-completed novel The Giselle Room won the program's first Chapbook Competition. This past year she spent a month in Spain on a travel grant from the Jerome Foundation for a collection of prose poems she's writing about flamenco. Zinn has taught actors at Juilliard, Circle In The Square Theatre School and most recently undergrad literature and writing at Pace University. Email: [email protected]
by Randolyn Zinn Read Jeffrey Renard Allen’s masterful novel Song of the Shank (published by Greywolf Press) and you'll meet Thomas Greene Wiggins, a 19th century slave and musical genius who performed as Blind Tom. The book earned rave reviews, was named a New York Times’ Notable Book of 2014, and was a finalist for…
by Randolyn Zinn Walking down from the cathedral, our feet hurt from the rocky Andalusian pavement that bites into your soles with every step. When a café appeared in the middle of the piazza we stopped to rest and fortify ourselves with a thimble of fino. The slow and regular tapping we heard seemed to…
by Randolyn Zinn Is travel a cure or a placebo? Maybe just a place to be. Sometimes when I close my eyes, the towers of the Alhambra stand gleaming beyond our hotel garden where we picked a lime from a low-hanging bough. Other times, the noisy crush of Bodega Castenada comes back, how its neighborhood…
by Randolyn Zinn Flipping through photos of a recent trip to Spain, I was struck by this one. A typical tobacco drying barn a few miles from Granada, Spain, in the fields of Fuento Vaqueros — Federico Garcia Lorca’s birthplace. In town we toured the Lorca family house and museum (no photos allowed) to ogle…
by Randolyn Zinn Meditative Rose by Salvador Dali Owen He walks into a millinery shop in Back Bay, looking for a straw Panama. “Do you have any Persian lamb Papakhas?” he asks, just for the hell of it. “We don’t work with skins,” the milliner replies, coiling a cloth measuring tape between his fingers. In…
by Randolyn Zinn Last week Martin Moran performed a private run-thru of All The Rage at a midtown rehearsal room for his director Seth Barrish, stage managers, assistants, a friend, and — me. Photo by M. Sussman Moran is a well-known actor and memoirist who goes public with his private musings, seeking where the disparate…
by Randolyn Zinn Ed Bilous, the composer and teacher, met me the other day at Juilliard where he has created the Center for Innovation in the Arts. Last month he was awarded the William Schuman Chair at Juilliard and you will be able to watch a video of his stirring speech at the end of…
by Randolyn Zinn Last week on a cold afternoon in New York City, Helen Schulman and I met at a café for a bracing talk about her new book. You may have seen that The New York Times chose This Beautiful Life as one of their Notable Books of 2011 or perhaps you've read her…
by Randolyn Zinn Despite being a fan of Wim Wender’s previous films, I was frankly dubious when I heard about his latest project. Really, I wondered, the work of legendary choreographer Pina Bausch shot in 3D? Admittedly, my limited experience with this technology was a passing glimpse of computer-generated fantasy fluff for kids…but still, what…
Actors, Accents, Imaginary Ice Cream, a Chair Ballet, Music and the Stars By Randolyn Zinn Alexandra Jennings, Richard Howe, Katherine Stevenson, Jim Staudt in Our Town This past February, after a three-hour drive north from Manhattan, Allen McCullough and I found ourselves in an eerie New England landscape. A white opaque sky slid seamlessly at…
by Randolyn Zinn “This week we are remembering things too terrible…” Note: In the first week of September of 2001, I enrolled in the MFA graduate program in Creative Writing at the New School in New York City, excited to finish a collection of short stories set in the world of dance. A few days…
by Randolyn Zinn This past spring I arranged to meet Karen Swenson at The Century Club in Manhattan. As I climbed McKim, Mead and White’s splendid marble Beaux Arts staircase to the second floor, I saw her sitting at the far side of the library, catching up with The New York Times. Her long braid…
Jonathan Dee is the author of four previous novels, most recently Palladio. He is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, a frequent contributor to Harper’s, and a former senior editor of The Paris Review. He teaches in the graduate writing programs at Columbia University and the New School. Provocative and Prescient The…
A Glimpse Into The Work of Pina Bausch By Randolyn Zinn Beatrice Libonati, Meryl Tankard in Walzer Photo by Gert Weigelt On June 30, 2009, dance devotees from around the world mourned the untimely death of choreographer Pina Bausch. At 69 years of age and just four days after a diagnosis of cancer, she left…
By Randolyn Zinn Rehearsal is everything and Frederick Wiseman knows it. As usual for this eminent American documentarian, his interest lies in the workaday world, but in his latest project he finds the harmony of place serving the artistic process. The opening shot fills the screen with a bird’s eye view of the rooftops of…