This Month on
Live Culture:
Super Cold
+
Scorching Hot

This month on Live Culture the tables get turned as Yale Quantum Institute Manager Florian Carle interviews Martha Willette Lewis about her work in the exhibit The Quantum Revolution: Made In New Haven, up now at the New Haven Museum. The show features Martha's original notebook drawings and artifacts from the quantum labs at Yale University, where Martha was artist-in-residence.To find out more about The Quantum Revolution visit here

In the second half, things shift back to normal and disentangle, as Martha interviews visual artist and writer Brahna Yassky about her new memoir Slow Dancing With Fire: A Memoir of Resilience, a story of rebuilding a new life after the previous one is suddenly and painfully destroyed. Brahna started writing this memoir thirty years after literally catching on fire, an event which altered the course of her destiny. As an emerging young painter in New York City, she lived her dream, supporting herself painting full time. At night, she attended openings, cultural events and clubs.

In 1982, a flame burned 55% of her body, including her painting arm. She spent months in the burn unit, and the next year in physical and occupational therapy. As Brahna healed, her priorities shifted from the aspiration of art-world fame to more collaborative creative interactions. She worked as an art therapist in a hospital program for abused children, in nursing homes and in schools. She did large-scale public projects for The New York City Department of Health and joined The Guerrilla Girls, a women’s artist-activist collective, fighting injustices in the art world. She has turned her life experiences into a film and now this book.

Slow Dancing With Fire: A Memoir of Resilience is available now through Shanti Press.

About the Author:
Brahna Yassky won honorable mention for the 2018 Doheny Prize from the Center for Fiction and finalist for the 2019 Brooklyn Nonfiction Prize. Her essays have been published in The Plentitudes Journal, The American Writers Review 2020 (San Fedele Press), Wired, Salon, The Independent, among others. Trained as a visual artist at California College of the Arts and San Francisco State University her work has been widely exhibited, including The Bali Purnati Center, MOMA, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Hudson River Museum and The Painting Center, NYC.
More about Brahna can be found here