Susan Dormady Eisenberg

"Where do you get your ideas?" is a question writers often hear, and I've learned that pinpointing the source of my inspiration is not an exact science. But when it comes to my debut novel, The Voice I Just Heard, I was stunned by the death of one young soldier...

ABC executives have been mostly mum about the late-season arrival of James Purefoy, the hunky British actor who joins the cast of Revenge as the show returns from hiatus on April 18.

It was announced in January that Purefoy would portray Dominik Wright, the mysterious old flame of the...

Frank Langella's Dropped Names: Famous Men and Women As I Knew Them offers shrewd and often poignant observations that linger in the mind long after each chapter ends--and there are 66 vignettes to savor. Published this week by Harper Collins, Langella's memoir is a tour-de-force debut that, in the...

In his role as showrunner for HBO's Boardwalk Empire, Terence Winter usually gets a fast response from any agent he calls. This was not the case in 1990, however, when he was 29 and trying to break into television. As a newly minted lawyer, a Brooklyn native transplanted to L.A.,...

Is it possible to live in a city and never see its most famous landmark?

I spent 11 years in the former mill town of Cohoes, whose namesake is the Cohoes Falls, the second most powerful waterfall in New York State. But when I was coming of age in...

HBO's Terence Winter loves to dazzle viewers with plots that take both surprising and truthful turns. "Storyteller" should be Winter's middle name, and as executive producer, head writer, and creator of Boardwalk Empire, his commitment to narrative integrity fuels the show's success.

Winter has reason to feel proud because...

"Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago."

It's my favorite opening in fiction, the first two lines of Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory (1956), which I return to each December the way someone else might revisit O'Henry's The Gift of...

When Louise Nayer was four in 1954, she and her parents and her six-year-old sister Anne took their first family vacation, traveling from their Manhattan apartment to a Cape Cod rental cottage. Tragedy soon struck when Nayer's physician-father and nurse-educator mother tried to light a gas water heater that exploded....

There's a new leading man in town--Canada's Paul Gross--who's appearing in the New York revival of Private Lives. Noel Coward's timeless comedy opened last week at the Music Box Theatre, and if you have the privilege of seeing Gross's long-awaited Broadway debut, you'll enjoy a nuanced, charismatic star turn. Acclaimed...

Patricia Racette, a soprano renowned for her vocal radiance and skilled acting, returns to Washington National Opera this Saturday as the company launches its first season under the aegis of the Kennedy Center. Making her local debut as Tosca, Racette will portray...

The Wolf Trap Opera Company was one of the first young artist programs in the nation and has always ranked among the best. Founded in 1971, Wolf Trap Opera gives emerging singers both performing experience and mentoring to help them transition from college or conservatory training to their professional careers....

Lena Horne would've turned 94 on June 30, and it's been more than a year since the world lost this ground-breaking singer whose sultry voice and stylish phrasing made her a legend. But when I think of Ms. Horne, I remember her as the unflappable diva who rescued a crucial...

Author M.J. Rose wears two hats in publishing with enviable panache.

As a former creative director at a NYC ad agency and the founder of AuthorBuzz.com, she spends her mornings helping other writers boost the sales of their books. Then each afternoon, Rose turns off the phone and writes...

Stephanie Cowell writes lush and compelling fictional portraits of the world's greatest artists, writers, and composers: their struggles, their liaisons, their failures and successes. Claude and Camille, her book about Monet's star-crossed marriage to his enigmatic muse, will be released in trade paperback this week after selling well in hardback...

Ana Maria Martinez is a quintessential modern diva, juggling opera and concert dates along with her busy family life. Agile enough to do back flips in a recent Glyndebourne Rusalka, she's acclaimed for her rich, radiant, gleaming soprano and keen acting, which she has displayed at the world's top opera...

Alice McDermott will celebrate three decades of literary achievement in 2012, a year in which she will likely publish her seventh novel. But this month marked a new phase in her career as Charming Billy, her best-known work and winner of the 1998 National Book Award, moved from page to...

Broadway saw the birth of a musical legend 50 years ago this week when Lerner and Loewe's Camelot premiered at the Majestic Theatre. But as the overture began on December 3, 1960, the cast and creative team never imagined that Camelot would run 873 performances, closing on January 5, 1963,...

Francesca Zambello, the new general and artistic director of Glimmerglass, has ambitious plans for the 35-year-old opera company in Cooperstown, New York.

Appointed in March as successor to Michael MacLeod, Zambello's first decision was to change the name to Glimmerglass Festival because, as she says, "I think a festival...

On Maryland's quaint eastern shore in the city of Cambridge stands the only surviving residence of American sharpshooter, Annie Oakley. It's a two-story Colonial Revival home whose red-brick façade and glossy black shutters look nearly...

Not many divas can move easily between the lofty heights of opera and the gleeful climes of musical theater, but Deborah Voigt hopes to conquer both during the next ten months.

It's...