Art on Fire is the apparent biography of subversive painter Francesca deSilva, the founding foremother of "pseudorealism," who lived hard and died young. But in the tradition of Vladimir Nabokov's acclaimed novel Pale Fire, it's a fiction from start to finish. It opens with Francesca's early life. We learn about her childhood love, the chess genius Lisa Sinsong, as well as her rivalry with her brilliant sister Isabella, who publishes an acclaimed...

Includes: Found a Peanut, The Loman Family Picnic, The Model Apartment, What's Wrong with This Picture?, and Sight Unseen.. With a palpable affection for the traditions of the stage and a taste for surreal comedy…

In Collected Stories, playwright Donald Margulies explores the vexed emotional and legal question of a writer's right to create art from the biographical material of another person's life--particularly when that other person is also a writer. Meditating upon the recent, real-life conflict between poet Stephen Spender and novelist David Leavitt, Margulies has created two of the most vivid and moving fictional characters of his career: Ruth Steiner,...

Donald Margulies offers up a vivid new adaptation of Sholom Asch's 1906 Yiddish melodrama, reset on the Lower East Side of New York at the turn of the century. The original English language edition first appeared on Broadway in 1923, but was closed down and the cast arrested for its portrayal of a lesbian love affair on stage. "Teasing out the pesky questions of spirit, love, family and commerce at the heart of Asch's play, Margulies has achieved...