I was tenth in a family of 12 children. My mother was a secretary and seamstress. My father was a bricklayer who was in the ...

We tend to view “bohemia” through a hagiographic lens, but its inception, as depicted by the French writer Henri Murger in a series of vignettes entitled Scenes of Bohemian Life (1851), was hardly ...

We read Stuart Sheppard’s recent piece for Pittsburgh Quarterly, “Is it Time to Stop Wearing Our Art on Our Sleeves?” with interest, and a fair amount of disagreement. Centering on Kara Walker’s ...

My twin brother, Allan Block, and I are the third generation in a family business that’s more than 100 years old. My grandfather, Paul Block, was an immigrant from East Prussia, and grew up, through ...

Often when I walk through a gallery of contemporary art, I can hear a murmuring between the works that echoes journalist Herbert Morrison’s voice describing the crash of the Hindenburg in 1937: “Oh, ...

It’s a hell of a thing to know your birth coincides with a line of demarcation in your hometown. On one side is prosperity. On the other, ruin. I was born in Youngstown in 1977. At the time, it was an ...

Butler street in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood wears the face of a young adult enclave. Seven breweries and counting, a cider house, a craft beer store attached to an independent movie ...

Like it or not, the Carnegie International eclipses everything the Carnegie Museum of Art does. Every director has grumbled about how it commandeers all available resources. But it’s a time-honored ...

One of the great areas to explore and hike in Pennsylvania is what’s known as the PA Wilds. This beautiful, remote part of north-central Pennsylvania is home to vast forests, magnificent mountain ...

Ghost Park The dog took off near the backhoe stuck in its rutand I followed through tan brush,watching his white shape zip up the mud path. A plateau halfway up the city mountain:an abandoned ...

Everyone is born with a gift from God. Some people discover their gift, and use it to a positive end. Some discover their gift, but squander it. And others, for one reason or another, never discover ...

I was born in Tlemcen, Algeria, a small city on the border with Morocco. My family is Jewish, of Spanish ancestry, and had been in Algeria for centuries. Both sides of my family were poor and ...