Malcolm D. Purkey

Born to Cockney Jewish immigrant parents who were entertainers, Malcolm Purkey is an actor, director, playwright, influential drama lecturer, and theatre administrator. He holds a BA and Honours from University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, an MA in Theatre Studies from the State University New York, is a Fulbright Scholar and he is a Graduate of the British Film School.

His career and contribution to theatre is monumental. It started in the mad bohemian world of Adam Leslie. While still a student he designed and developed The Box and The Nunnery Theatres for Wits and then managed the influential Workshop 71. He surrounded himself with a group of artistic academic friends who met in a house in Junction Avenue, Parktown. They formed the Junction Avenue Theatre Company that created politically conscious plays that had an influence on theatre in South Africa.

Malcolm took a post lecturing drama at Wits (University of Witwatersrand) becoming Head of Department and an associate Professor. He was asked to assist the Market Theatre through a diffiult period and turned it around. Malcolm has been a force in the theatre community and has had an enormous impact on hundreds of students.

Elizabeth Howard, Producer and Host of the Short Fuse Podcast

Elizabeth Howard is the producer and host of the Short Fuse Podcast, conversations with artists, writers, musicians, and others whose art reveals our communities through their lens and stirs us to seek change. Her articles related to communication and marketing have appeared in European Communications, Investor Relations, Law Firm Marketing & Profit Report, Communication World, The Strategist, and the New York Law Journal, among others. Her books include Queen Anne’s Lace and Wild Blackberry Pie, (Thornwillow Press, 2011), A Day with Bonefish Joe (David Godine, 2015) and Ned O’Gorman: A Glance Back (Easton Studio Press, 2016). She leads reading groups at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn, New York. @elizh24 on Instagram

The Arts Fuse

The Arts Fuse was established in June, 2007 as a curated, independent online arts magazine dedicated to publishing in-depth criticism, along with high quality previews, interviews, and commentaries. The publication’s over 70 freelance critics (many of them with decades of experience) cover dance, film, food, literature, music, television, theater, video games, and visual arts. There is a robust readership for arts coverage that believes that culture matters.

The goal of The Arts Fuse is to treat the arts seriously, to write about them in the same way that other publications cover politics, sports, and business — with professionalism, thoughtfulness, and considerable attitude. The magazine’s motto, from Jonathan Swift, sums up our editorial stance: “Use the point of your pen … not the feather.”

The Arts Fuse has published over 10, 000 articles and receives 80,000+ visits a month. This year the magazine is celebrating its 18th birthday - a milestone for a small, independent magazine dedicated to covering the arts.

Assist Arts Fuse in its mission: keep arts and culture hale and hearty through dialogue, and not just marketing.

Serious criticism, by talking about the strengths, weaknesses, and contributions of the arts, plays an indispensable role in the cultural ecology. Smaller, newer organizations need a response. When they are ignored as they are by the mainstream media, they fail to gain an audience. And without an audience, they fold, further weakening the entire ecosystem.

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Sonya Chung is the author of the novels The Loved Ones (Relegation Books, 2016) and Long for This World (Scribner, 2010). She is a staff writer for the The Millions and founding editor of Bloom, and is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize nomination, the Charles Johnson Fiction Award, the Bronx Council on the Arts Writers’ Residency, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, a Key West Literary Seminars residency, a Studios of Key West residency, and an Escape to Create residency. Sonya’s stories, reviews, & essays have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Tin House, The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books, Short: An International Anthology, and This is The Place: Women Writing About Home, among others. Sonya has taught fiction writing at Columbia University, NYU, and Gotham Writers’ Workshop. She is the Director of Film Forum.

Film Forum

Film Forum began in 1970 as an alternative screening space for independent films, with 50 folding chairs, one projector and a $19,000 annual budget. Karen Cooper became director in 1972 and under her leadership, Film Forum moved downtown to the Vandam Theater in 1975. In 1980, Cooper led the construction of a twin cinema on Watts Street. In 1990, Film Forum’s current Houston Street cinema was built at a cost of $3.2 million. In 2018, Film Forum raised $5 million to renovate and expand its Houston Street cinema, upgrading the seating, legroom, and sightlines in all theaters and adding a new, 4th screen. In 2023, Cooper stepped down as Director and was succeeded by Deputy Director Sonya Chung.

We present two distinct, complementary film programs – NYC theatrical premieres of American independents and foreign art films, programmed by Cooper (Advisor to the Director as of 2023), Mike Maggiore, and Sonya Chung; and, since 1987, repertory selections including foreign and American classics, genre works, festivals and directors’ retrospectives, programmed by Bruce Goldstein. Our third and fourth screens are dedicated to extended runs of popular selections from both programs, as well as new films for longer engagements.

Film Forum is open 365 days a year, with as many as 250,000 annual admissions, nearly 500 seats, approximately 60 employees (of which half are full time), 6,500+ members and a $7 million operating budget. Approximately 80% of our budget is spent directly on programs. As a non-profit, we raise approximately 50% of our operating income. Public funders include: The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Council for the Arts, and various NYC agencies including the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. Private donors include individuals, foundations, and corporate entities. Additionally, our members contribute more than $500,000 annually. This allows us to take risks on emerging filmmakers and challenging films. Film Forum has a $6 million endowment, begun in 2000 with a $1.25 million gift from the Ford Foundation.

Film Forum is the only autonomous nonprofit cinema in New York City and one of the few in the U.S. The success of our distinctive position is evidenced by our over 50-year tenure, during which our programs and fiscal resources have grown steadily. Sadly, since the 1970s, dozens of NYC art-house theaters (and a great number throughout the U.S.) have closed their doors.

As a cinema of ideas, Film Forum is committed to presenting an international array of films that treat diverse social, political, historical and cultural realities. Unlike commercial cinemas that primarily “book” high-grossing, Hollywood films, Film Forum’s programs are thoughtfully selected, with attention to unique cinematic qualities, historical importance individually or within a genre and – particularly for documentaries – relevance to today’s world.

Elizabeth Howard

Elizabeth Howard is the Host of the Short Fuse Podcast.

Arts Fuse

The Arts Fuse was established in June, 2007 as a curated, independent online arts magazine dedicated to publishing in-depth criticism, along with high quality previews, interviews, and commentaries. The publication’s over 70 freelance critics (many of them with decades of experience) cover dance, film, food, literature, music, television, theater, video games, and visual arts. There is a robust readership for arts coverage that believes that culture matters.

Adam Kuper

Professor Adam Kuper is an anthropologist and public intellectual. He has held positions at a number of universities and is a recipient of the Huxley Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Kuper is the author or editor of 19 books and has published over 100 journal articles focusing on anthropological theory, the history of anthropology in the US and Britain, and southern African societies and cultures. He has made numerous appearances on BBC TV and radio, and reviewed regularly for the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Wall Street Journal.

The Museum of Other People

Published by Penguin Random House, in this deeply researched, immersive history, Adam Kuper tells the story of how foreign and prehistoric peoples and cultures were represented in Western museums of anthropology. Originally created as colonial enterprises, their halls were populated by displays of plundered art, artifacts, dioramas, bones, and relics. Kuper reveals the politics and struggles of trying to build these museums in Germany, France, and England in the mid-19th century, and the dramatic encounters between the very colorful and eccentric collectors, curators, political figures, and high members of the church who founded them. He also details the creation of contemporary museums and exhibitions, including the Smithsonian, the Harvard’s Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, and the famous 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago which was inspired by the Paris World Fair of 1889.

Listen to an excerpt from The Museum of Other People

Elizabeth Howard

The Short Fuse Podcasts, hosted and produced by Elizabeth Howard, are conversations with artists, writers, musicians, and others who have a lens on contemporary thought and stir us to seek change. With their art, their music, their performances, and their vision they lead us through the social and environmental transformations sweeping across the globe.

“Artists are here to disturb the peace.” James Baldwin.

The Short Fuse is distributed through the Arts Fuse, a journal of arts criticism and commentary.

Yoknapatawpha and Faulkner Conference in Oxford, Mississippi

This is the longest continually running literary conference in the United States dedicated to the work of one author. This is the 50th Anniversary of the Conference, first held in 1974.

Square Book Store, Oxford, Mississippi

Square Books is a general independent bookstore in three separate buildings (about 100 feet apart) on the historic town square of Oxford, Mississippi, home of the University of Mississippi and many great writers, including William Faulkner, Barry Hannah, Larry Brown, and, for a time, both Willie Morris and John Grisham. The main store, Square Books, is in a two-story building with a cafe and balcony on the second floor; Off Square Books is a few doors down from the main store and has lifestyle sections such as gardening and cookbooks; Square Books, Jr., the children's bookstore, is in a building on the east side of the square; above it (in the site of the original bookstore) is the more recently opened Rare Square Books, which feature collectible, vintage, first edition books across a broad price range. Square Books is known for its strong selection of literary fiction, books on the American South and by Southern writers, a large inventory of reduced-price remainders, and its emphasis on books for children. The store hosts the popular Thacker Mountain radio show and over 150 author events a year.

University Press of Mississippi

University Press of Mississippi tells stories of scholarly and social importance that impact our state, region, nation, and world. We are committed to equality, inclusivity, and diversity. Working at the forefront of publishing and cultural trends, we publish books that enhance and extend the reputation of our state and its universities.

Dr. Jay Watson

Howry Professor of Faulkner Studies Jay Watson, a native of Athens, Georgia, received his B.A. degree from the University of Georgia (1983) and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University (1985, 1989). He joined the English department at the University of Mississippi in 1989, was promoted to Professor of English in 2007, and became UM’s second Howry Professor in 2010. During the 2002-2003 academic year he served as Visiting Fulbright Professor of American Studies at the University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland, and he has since been honored with the UM Faculty Achievement Award (2012), the UM Liberal Arts Professor of the Year award (2014), and the UM Humanities Teacher of the Year award (2014). In 2013 he was a finalist for the Southeastern Conference Professor of the Year Award, and in 2018 he was the fall convocation speaker at UM.

Elizabeth Howard, Producer and Host of the Short Fuse Podcast

Elizabeth Howard is the producer and host of the Short Fuse Podcast, conversations with artists, writers, musicians, and others whose art reveals our communities through their lens and stirs us to seek change. Her articles related to communication and marketing have appeared in European Communications, Investor Relations, Law Firm Marketing & Profit Report, Communication World, The Strategist, and the New York Law Journal, among others. Her books include Queen Anne’s Lace and Wild Blackberry Pie, (Thornwillow Press, 2011), A Day with Bonefish Joe (David Godine, 2015) and Ned O’Gorman: A Glance Back (Easton Studio Press, 2016). She leads reading groups at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn, New York. @elizh24 on Instagram