Atelier@Large: Conversations on Art-making in a Vexed Era — Andrey Kurkov, Alan Lightman & Cara Reichel

About Alan Lightman

Photo by Michael Lionstar

Alan Lightman is an American writer, physicist, and social entrepreneur. He received his PhD in theoretical physics in 1974. Since then, Lightman has done fundamental research on the astrophysics of black holes, astrophysical radiation processes, and stellar dynamics.

Lightman has served on the faculties of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and was the first person at MIT to receive dual faculty appointments in science and in the humanities. He is currently professor of the practice of the humanities at MIT. He is the author of numerous books, both nonfiction and fiction, including Einstein’s Dreams, an international bestseller; The Diagnosis, a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction; and Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine, the basis of a three-part series titled “SEARCHING: Our Quest for Meaning in the Age of Science,” which premiered on public television in January 2023. Lightman has won numerous awards for his work and has six honorary degrees.

About Andrey Kurkov

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Born near Leningrad in 1961, Andrey Kurkov was a journalist, prison warder, cameraman and screenplay-writer before he became well known as a novelist. His novel Death and the Penguin, his first in English translation, became an international bestseller, translated into more than 30 languages. As well as writing fiction for adults and children, he has become known as a commentator and journalist on Ukraine for the international media. Kurkov’s novel Grey Bees, translated by Boris Dralyuk, was awarded the 2023 National Book Critics Circle award. His most recent book, Diary of an Invasion (Deep Vellum, 2023), a collection of Kurkov’s writings and broadcasts from Kyiv, is a remarkable record of a brilliant writer at the forefront of a 21st-century war.

About Cara Reichel

Photo by Diane Phelan

Cara Reichel is the founding Producing Artistic Director of New York City’s critically-acclaimed, OBIE and Drama Desk Award-winning Prospect Theater Company. For more than two decades she has been a leader in the field of new musical theater development. She collaborates frequently with fellow founding Prospect artist, composer/lyricist Peter Mills. They have created over a dozen new musicals including: The Hello Girls (2019 Outer Critics Circle Award nominations for Outstanding Direction, Book, Score, and Production; three Drama Desk Award nominations including Outstanding Production), Death for Five Voices, The Underclassman, Golden Boy of the Blue Ridge, The Flood and Illyria. Reichel directed the NYC premiere of Einstein’s Dreams, a musical based on the book by Alan Lightman, which received multiple 2020 Drama Desk Award nominations.