Marylynne Pitz

Feb 5, 2024 | pittsburghquarterly.com | Stuart Sheppard |Vicky A. Clark |Ben Moyer |Marylynne Pitz

The conceit of the “what if” story has always fascinated us: what if Ebenezer Scrooge hadn’t been visited by his ghosts in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” or if George Bailey hadn’t had the intervention of the angel Clarence in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” or if Marty McFly hadn’t gone back in time to make sure his mother was kissed by his father at the school dance in “Back to the Future”?

Dec 20, 2023 | lebomag.com | Marylynne Pitz

Artificial intelligence programs are altering the creative process. Many people wonder and worry about how this rapidly changing technology, which generates images and text, will affect the careers of artists, architects, filmmakers, game designers and interior decorators. Programs like DALL-E 2, DreamUp, Midjourney and Stability Diffusion can help and hurt the creative class, but your view of this technology may depend on if you are already established or an aspiring newcomer.

Nov 27, 2023 | pittsburghquarterly.com | Stuart Sheppard |Ben Moyer |Marylynne Pitz |Vicky A. Clark

In trying to describe the essence of strong writing – and ultimately, all art — the poet Wallace Stevens said, “A grandiose subject is not an assurance of a grandiose effect, but most likely, the opposite.”  What we have in David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” (1975) is the embodiment of this ethos, as the play brings us into the lives of three of the most mundane people imaginable.

Sep 27, 2023 | pittsburghquarterly.com | Ben Moyer |Stuart Sheppard |Marylynne Pitz |Douglas Heuck

When Rachel Sager bought a house, she didn’t know it came with a coal mine. Obscured by woods in her “backyard,” and flanking the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) bike trail, are the sprawling ruins of the once robust Banning No. 2 coal mine: a labyrinth of crumbling brick and weathered concrete, wedged between bluffs and the Youghiogheny River’s floodplain at Whitsett, Fayette County. The house she bought was once the mine’s office.

Sep 14, 2023 | post-gazette.com | TNTaco Meatloaf |MIGreen Beans |Marylynne Pitz

NEW YORK — Prize-winning fiction writer Deesha Philyaw, who struggled to find a publisher for what became her acclaimed debut “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies,” has a 7-figure deal for her next two books. Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, announced Thursday that it had signed up Ms. Philyaw and will publish her novel “True Confessions” in 2025.