Arts + Design
How do artists make a living? An ongoing, almost impossible quest
Only ten percent of art-school graduates make a living from their artwork. Why should this be such a pipe dream?
Continue reading
Monica Byrne
Author and playwright
Novelist, writer, culture critic and playwright Monica Byrne thinks that there's an infinite number of stories to tell, and she intends to tell as many as she can.
Why you should listen
Novelist, writer, culture critic and playwright Monica Byrne deftly avoids the traps of conventional fiction by inventing mold-breaking characters who express themselves in surprising ways. Her first novel, The Girl in the Road, has garnered acclaim both inside and outside the spheres of science fiction.
In addition to her work on her new novel The Actual Star, Byrne is a resident playwright at Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern in Durham, NC. Her story "Blue Nowruz" was commissioned for TED2015 by Neil Gaiman. She holds degrees in biochemistry from MIT and Wellesley.
What others say
“The Girl in the Road represents Byrne’s deeply felt goal to create work based not on cultural appropriation but on 'radical empathy across national and sex and gender and class lines.'” — The Guardian, April 17, 2015