Author Archives: Mike Sula

On December 13, 1994, Ted Anton was in Romania lecturing about the murder of Ioan Culianu, a history of religions professor at the University of Chicago. The murder, which happened on campus two and a half years ago, was unsolved. The room was packed with people taking notes, and in the middle of Anton’s talk […]

Stephanie McCanles had just broken up with her boyfriend when she came across Adrian Tomine’s comic book Optic Nerve. Floored by Tomine’s acerbic humor and starkly illustrated stories about alienated urbanites, McCanles–the artistic director of the Milwaukee avant-garde theater group Inertia Ensemble–knew she had to get the latest issue. Unable to find it in Milwaukee, […]

When Ruby Harris steps up to play a solo he looks small, shy, and entirely out of place as he chins a 166-year-old electrified violin. But when he starts sawing out Muddy Waters’s “You Can’t Spend What You Ain’t Got,” the notes pour out with demonic intensity–a blistering glissando that somehow sounds both eerily exotic […]

Flurin Spescha grew up in a small village in the Swiss Alps speaking a dying language. Today less than 1 percent of the country’s population know Switzerland’s fourth national language, but for five years the 37-year-old writer has published plays, stories, and novels in Romansh anyway. “I often wonder for whom am I writing?” says […]

Growing up in Iran in the 50s and 60s, filmmaker Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa remembers praying with her mother and experiencing a profound sense of magic underlined by a profound sense of despair. “I would go to mosques with all these mirrors and silver doors and become overwhelmed with the beauty. But then I would see women, […]

On September 13 for two years running members of a New York writers’ collective have lined up along the Brooklyn Bridge and recited erotic poetry to passersby. “Once you get past the first two poets you get used to it,” says Sharon Mesmer, a former Chicagoan and member of the collective. “Most people are pretty […]

“Attacking a pinata is a lot like attacking life,” says Governor Lewis. “You go in blind, and there aren’t very many rules. You sort of have to swing at it, and if you hit it just the right way you get all the rewards of life. If you screw up and don’t use your instincts, […]

Marc Alan Jacobs is constantly playing Spot the Jew. “Sometimes I’ll go in real close and see if they are wearing a chi or a Star of David. There are certain facial features or hairstyles people associate with Jews, but it’s a look that actually may or may not exist.” Jacobs, a recent graduate of […]

In 1988 the small magazine Albert French had been publishing folded, and he suddenly found himself with a lot of time on his hands. Over the next three years, he says, he left his apartment only to buy cigarettes and food. “I woke up 46 years old and jobless. My life was completely destroyed. I […]