Joelle Biele discovered Elizabeth Bishop's poetry while studying at Tufts University. Ten years, one marriage, and three kids later, Biele found herself poring through manuscripts at the New York Public Library—letters between the Pulitzer Prize winner and her editors at The New Yorker about her frequent, and sometimes infrequent, submissions. Biele read through every letter, [...]

Somewhere in Kenya, during a six-hour bus ride from Mombasa to Nairobi this fall, the Kenya-based, Uganda-born Doreen Baingana’s laptop was stolen. In an Oct. 21 e-mail, her devastation was clear: “I am in shock right now. I will just have to use my memory. Terrible.”
That laptop has every interview that Baingana, who for the [...]

Correction appended
The clock is ticking for Corin Tucker. Her 9-year-old son Marshall's piano lesson is just wrapping up, and she only has 10 minutes to spare. “This is my only time to talk,” she laughs.
Fortunately, brevity is her strong suit. As frontwoman of the legendary ‘90s Riot Grrrl outfit Sleater-Kinney, Tucker only needed two or [...]

In 2009, for one week, Sharon Van Etten locked herself up in the basement of her Brooklyn apartment complex, armed with votes of confidence—from critics, from TV on the Radio's Kyp Malone, from The Antlers, who even invited her to contribute vocals to last year's critical darling, Hospice. She also had a harmonium.
Van Etten once feared [...]