Must art always promote a particular idea or ideology? Jed Perl argues that “the artist in the act of creation must stand firm in the knowledge that art has its own laws and logic.”

Katy Carl's debut novel traces the slow growth of love between two people thirsting for something more out of life.

Lara Bazelon's 'Ambitious Like a Mother' raises (perhaps unintentionally) some interesting questions about gender, work, family and ambition—and how individual women (and men) who are blessed with options might want that four-way intersection to look.

He is a color I have never thought of.

Above pew, ambo, and altar Escape into pungent relief.

A violent assault on a famous author revives an ugly history: the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.