Arts & Life

"I've had my eye on that job for a long time," the actor and director said recently. Nearly 250,000 people have signed a petition backing his dream.

When you come back inside after celebrating Earth with a walk or by planting some trees, check out these ways NPR's Arts & Culture team has connected with our Mother Earth via the arts.

"Drawings show the hand of the artist," says Nicola Lorenz, Executive Director of Manhattan's Forum Gallery and curator of this exhibition. "No two artists make their marks in the same way,"

Three former students and a publishing executive have alleged sexual misconduct by award-winner Blake Bailey, with two accusing the author of rape, according to reports. Bailey denies the allegations.

An older woman living on a remote farm turns to an emotional-support hen for company. Sacha Naspini's newly translated novella is a slim volume, packed with unexpected secrets and epiphanies.

Writer and cartoonist Jonny Sun's new book is a collection of essays, reflections and illustrations that consider everything from Tetris to succulent plants to dealing with loneliness.

Erdrich's novel — about a Chippewa tribal elder working as a night watchman while battling government efforts to the tribe's treaties and land ownership rights — was based on her own grandfather.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with cookbook writer Nigella Lawson about her latest book Cook, Eat, Repeat and how to stop viewing cooking as tedious and, instead, find peace in the kitchen.

Vance played the charismatic and show-stopping attorney Johnnie Cochran in The People v. O.J. Simpson. Now he takes to the pulpit as Aretha Franklin's father, Rev. C.L Franklin, in Genius: Aretha.

The former president's book features his portraits of 43 immigrants — athletes, public servants, business leaders, educators — in an effort to join those saying, "The system's broken. Let's fix it."

In 1904, Cassandra Lane's great grandfather Burt Bridges was lynched. In telling his story, Lane offers her own memoir — and lessons on family and American history for her future child and readers.

Zhanna Slor's debut novel, set in a funky neighborhood of Milwaukee, follows two Russian immigrant sisters on very different paths. one now searching for the other after her mysterious disappearance.