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Tatler Asia
07-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Tatler Asia
Celine Song breaks down modern love in ‘Materialists'
Julianna has been interested in leading a literary life since she first read Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess at eight. Before working with Tatler , she was an archive intern at The Center for Fiction in Brooklyn, New York. She is a textbook Pisces who devotes most of her spare time to her crochet projects, watching classic films, and going through her never-ending pile of unread books. She studied creative writing, global literature and art history at Sarah Lawrence College, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2022. Toni Morrison, Nora Ephron, Clarice Lispector and Jia Tolentino are among her all-time favourite writers. Work Julianna writes about fashion, beauty, sustainability, and the arts. She is always keen on conducting interviews with talented women who are changing the game in their respective fields. For event invites and story leads, hit her up at
OC Media
06-08-2025
- Entertainment
- OC Media
No More Bazaar — photographer Elene Glonti on the death of Georgia's street markets
Sign in or or Become a member to unlock the audio version of this article The Caucasus is changing — and not for the better. With authoritarianism on the rise across the region, the threat to independent journalism is higher than ever. Join our community and help push back against the hardliners. Become a member For the last five years, Georgian photographer and multimedia artist Elene Glonti has been tracking the decline of Georgia's market culture with a photo project titled No More Bazaar. Glonti is a sharp and spirited woman in her late twenties, with a keen interest in the marginalised sectors of Georgian society. She began the project in 2020, with a visit to the Eliava bazaar in Tbilisi. She was immediately taken by the people she met there, by their pragmatism and resilience, and took a lot of photographs, writing down what she learnt through conversations with her subjects. 'I don't like to exoticise anything, especially working class communities', she tells OC Media, 'but it is also true that they are very honest, they stand firmly on the ground, their heads are not in the clouds, so it's all real'. Of men and women. Photo: Elene Glonti. Since then, Glonti's photographed in the Navtlugi, Dezerter, Marmeuli, and Sachkhere Central Bazaars in order to create a multi-media display consisting of photos and interviews. She wants these people to be named, to tell their stories, but also to not dehumanise her subjects by using them as symbols in service of a narrative about contemporary Georgia. In this sense, her work can better be described as archivism. 'I'm always interested in preserving the memory of something that right now feels irrelevant to the world' she says. Asked how the vendors responded to her presence and her camera, Glonti replies that they are generally mistrustful. They've had bad experiences with the media before. 'It takes time', she says. 'You need to go back often, you need to communicate, and you never walk away if someone isn't happy, you go up to them and delete the photo in front of them. You never steal.' Advertisement She always makes sure to stay in touch with her subjects, emailing them the photographs she has taken. Card players. Photo: Elene Glonti. Glonti's approach to photography and her relationship with her subjects was forged abroad. From 2015–2018, Glonti studied at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, majoring in Visual Arts. This was where she began taking photos (she'd been a painter before) under the auspices of renowned American photographer and educator Joel Sternfeld. Sternfeld, now 81, was a titan of early colour photography, best known for his 1987 photo book American Prospects which documented ordinary life all over the US. At her first seminar, Sternfeld told Glonti to just 'go and shoot', to ignore the technical aspects of the camera. She returned with some pictures of the Bronxville police station — she'd taken them at sunset and, not knowing how to adjust the ISO (the camera's sensitivity to light), the pictures had come out in extraordinary violet tones. Sternfeld loved them. Bronxville Police Station. Photo: Elene Glonti. 'You just took the camera and you really made it your own', he told her. In this way, Sternfeld helped Glonti to lean into her own subjectivity. 'You are in a way really penetrating the world with a camera,' she says, 'you extend your presence beyond yourself, and you change your surroundings'. End of a long, hot day. Photo: Elene Glonti. US President Donald Trump was inaugurated for the first time while Glonti was at Sarah Lawrence, and there was, she says, 'a lot of discussion about who was allowed to photograph what'. To Glonti these debates mostly felt like 'academic drama', and anyway, she says, 'as a person coming from an ancient country which has been overlooked by the world for centuries, I can't relate to the mainstream perspective […] I am colonised, my body is colonised, I am a woman, so I relate to the outcasts'. Indeed, women and their lives are one of Glonti's primary concerns. 'I'm really a very hardcore feminist', she says, grinning, 'this is my lifelong topic'. On the position of women in Georgia, she says: 'from one point of view it's very patriarchal, very macho, but there is an underlying matriarchate — every Georgian family is run by a woman, especially after three wars […] women had to really step up and carry this country on their backs'. The living. Photo: Elene Glonti. The dead. Photo: Elene Glonti. Older women make up a good part of Georgia's bazaar vendors, often combining their work with more traditional domestic duties. Now that bazaar culture is being decimated by supermarkets and eager developers, it's growing ever more difficult for these women to feed themselves and their families. According to Georgia's National Statistics Office for Georgia, the number of bazaars (counted as permanent spaces, organised and rented by a legal entity, as opposed to street vendors) has declined by 11% in the last ten years, falling from 218 in 2014 to 194 in 2023. Survival. Photo: Elene Glonti. Tbilisi's largest bazaar, Deserter, was the site of protests in the summer of 2024 after the announcement of plans to turn the market into a shopping mall and car park. The protests seem thus far to have successfully halted the project, although the situation appears precarious. Several bazaars have seen fires destroy huge quantities of stock, like the fire in Station Square market in April 2025. In the markets that have yet to be closed, vendors now struggle to scratch out a living. Counting coins. Photo: Elene Glonti. One woman Glonti photographed in the small bazaar surrounding Tbilisi's Ghrmaghele station, an IDP from Abkhazia selling counterfeit men's Versace underwear, told Glonti she had to borrow ₾20 ($8) to come to work that day. 'People have become so poor I cannot sell anything,' she told Glonti. 'It will be a very nice day if I'm able to just return this ₾20.' As markets fade. Photo: Elene Glonti. Glonti's project 'No More Bazaar' is a translation of the Georgian slang phrase 'bazaari ara', meaning 'agreed'. 'Ara' is Georgian for 'no', so the term references the market, as a place of haggling and broader social interaction, to mean 'no discussion'. The English slang version might be rendered as 'say less.' For Glonti, the death of the bazaar is massively contributing to social alienation in Georgia. Bazaars were social hubs above all, places where a myriad of lives would intersect, where you would come not only to buy your cheese but to chat with the woman selling you the cheese about her grandson's studies, or her husband's bad back. Glonti quotes 19th century Georgian historian Ekvtime Takaishvili as saying that before the proper establishment of media, people would come to certain corners of bazaars to hear the news being announced. Their disappearance spells greater class isolation between the working and middle classes, and between Georgians and ethnic minorities, Glonti says. Even in supermarkets interactions with staff have been replaced by self-service machines. 'It's so anti-humane', she says. 'It's anti-you.' Silence louder than trade. Photo: Elene Glonti. According to the United Nations Development Programme, around 41% of Georgia's population depends on agriculture for their livelihood, yet many supermarkets fill their shelves with imported goods from places such as Russia, Turkey, and Central Asia. With no strong farmers' unions and a weak distribution network, local producers struggle to compete. 'People are exhausted', Glonti says. 'You walk into a supermarket and end up buying Russian products, even as Russia is occupying your country.' Nature morte. Photo: Elene Glonti. A married man. Photo: Elene Glonti. In Eliava, Glonti once came across a particularly striking vendor, a very tall man with mournful eyes. She asked if she could take a photograph, and he assented and took off his hat. He told her he'd fought in all Georgian wars. 'He was a war hero', she says, 'lost in Eliava market with his scrap metal.' Glonti sees the bazaars as a sort of condensation of all of Georgia's tragedies — 'these kinds of spaces bring all these traumas together.' Eliava war hero. Photo: Elene Glonti. As she sees it, the decimation of the bazaars is part of an ongoing attempt at historical erasure, a break with Georgia's troubled past and a decisive move into the brave new world of unchecked capitalism. Her subjects 'do not know how to adapt to the new world order, so they are being left behind'. Among the weight of harvest. Photo: Elene Glonti. Glonti's conversation is peppered with references, mostly to female artists or thinkers. She paraphrases the Joan Didion line from Slouching Towards Bethlehem: 'I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4:00 of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.' For her, this impulse to turn away from, even erase, the Soviet past, is more than just a cultural shift. It has tangible consequences for Georgia's most vulnerable, who are cast adrift in a society eager to reinvent itself. Glonti sees it as a kind of exile from the present. Forgotten corners. Photo: Elene Glonti. 'Exile' is also the title of Glonti's next project, which is about elderly women. 'They've ceased to exist in the public eye,' she says, 'so I photograph them in their homes.' There's a counter-intuitive benefit to this public disregard, she says. Having largely outlived their use value as objects and carers, 'they do not have to put on this whole spectacle, these multiple faces, this being who has to please everyone in her life, finally they can be themselves […] there's a rare freedom in that.' The desire to cultivate a space in which women can enjoy this freedom is partly what drove Glonti to found the Caucasian Art Circle (named in reference to the Brecht play, Caucasian Chalk Circle) in 2021. It's also 'another form of resistance to isolation', she says. Reflections. Photo: Elene Glonti. The Caucasian Art Circle is an organisation open to both men and women of all ages and backgrounds. Glonti's goal was to make art accessible to everyone: 'art has to be available because it is a form of therapy, of exchange, of community, of memory.' Participation is the point; the group engages in acting workshops, scriptwriting, photography, and choir singing. Glonti organises screenings of films by directors like Agnès Varda and Chantal Ackerman, as well as works from the broader tradition of avant-garde cinema, followed by group discussions, creating a space for participants to engage with unconventional forms of storytelling and explore perspectives often overlooked in mainstream film. Many women in their sixties come, she says, 'and you cannot imagine how they act, the stories that they bring with them, the characters that they create, and the whole energy that is in the room, the openness, the vulnerability, the way each of the groups appreciate each other'. 'I'm not proud of any of my work', she says, 'I feel like it all needs to get better and better, but I'm so proud of this project'. 'Those who don't consider themselves artists are the best artists,' she says. 'There is so much suppressed energy in them'. Death in the vitrage. Photo: Elene Glonti. Glonti has yet to find proper funding for the Caucasian Art Circle project, but it's obvious she is determined to keep it alive. Her grandfather was famous theatre director and teacher Ghizo Zhordania, who she says raised generations of Georgian actors. 'Teaching was always part of my family, and I know how much it means'. Though Glonti probably wouldn't characterise what she's doing with the Caucasian Art Circle as teaching per say — more like facilitating — she does feel that art is 'a world that you need someone to guide you to'. She wants to affirm, in people who've been unable financially or psychologically to justify dedicating time to creativity, that making art has an unquantifiably curative value. All of Glonti's projects are ongoing, she says, though she is planning to release a photo book of her No More Bazaar project. In her parting words, she asked that this article be dedicated to Manana Darakhvelidze, a street vendor and one of the two people killed in the collapse of a building on Station Square on 14 July 2025.
Irish Examiner
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Beginner's pluck: Full-time writer and mother Daria Lavelle
From a creative family, literature has always played a large part in Daria's life. 'I was an imaginative child,' she says. 'I invented stories and games, and at 15, I started writing seriously.' She won some teenage writing awards for short stories, and had a play performed when she was at college. 'From the start my writing had a speculative element, of fantasy and magic.' Daria worked in advertising as a brand strategist for 10 years, but she didn't stop writing. I continuously wrote novels. An agent sent out two YA novels, but they died. She started writing Aftertaste in 2019. 'It was my thesis project,' she says. 'During the MFA they matched students with agents. Lucy Carson showed great passion about the novel.' It has sold to 15 territories, and the movie rights sold to Sony. Who is Daria Lavelle? Date/ place of birth: 1987/ Kyiv, Ukraine. 'I was 2 when we emigrated.' Education: Public school in New Jersey; Princeton University, creative writing and comparative literature; Sarah Lawrence College, New York, MFA in fine arts in writing with a speculative fiction focus. Home: New Jersey. Family: Husband James, twins aged 7, and an 18-month-old. A golden Doodle, Stanley. The day job: Full-time writer and mother. In another life: 'Writing is something in my soul. But I'd love to experience film or TV.' Favourite writers: Karen Russell; Erin Morgenstern; Kelly Link; Amy Bender; Anthony Bourdain; VE Schwab; Jennifer Egan. Second book: 'I'm working on it.' Top tip: 'You have to build a whole world, with tools to help the reader immerse themselves in the novel.' Website: Instagram: @ The debut Aftertaste Bloomsbury, €17.99 While dishwashing in a restaurant, Kostya mixes a cocktail and discovers his ability to summon spirits through the food he cooks. Rising through the culinary ranks, he starts to connect the living with the dead through his cooking. But it's a dangerous game, that threatens the stability of the afterlife — not to mention Kostya's love life — with the psychic, Maura. Full of ghosts, and delectable food, this novel explores life, death, love, and friendship, but mostly the effects of grief, and the difficulty of finding closure. The verdict: A gourmet delight. Highly original and hugely evocative, it definitely tugs at the heartstrings.
Forbes
16-06-2025
- General
- Forbes
The College Essay In The Age Of AI
Girl writes an essay on the bed getty The college essay has been a common, central part of holistic admissions since the mid-60's. It has been used to assess how well students write and think, how well they fit the college under consideration, and also who they are. For decades, it has been one of the few parts of the process the student has complete control over, providing a unique opportunity for the student to personalize the college admissions process. Sarah McGinty literally wrote the book on the college essay, writing seven editions of The College Admissions Essay for the College Board. She is a former high school English teacher and department chair (Montclair High School, Millburn High School),a former admission director of Sarah Lawrence College, and taught at Harvard from 2003-2015. Times have changed. McGinty focuses her attention today on the future of the college essay and whether the essay is now less a reflection of the applicant's character and insight and more a pseudo-resume built through fluency in artificial intelligence. White: Has the college essay been an effective tool to assess college candidates? McGinty: The reality is the college application essay is an assignment of significant consequence with unclear criteria for an unknown audience. That's a tall order. I remember early days as a high school English teacher, under the mandate of a department chair who decreed that every student must write one (or more!) essays a week, aa significant burden for them…and for me. In the first weeks, when I had not been able to evaluate all the first round of essays before I had to assign the second, a wise and brave student came to me: 'It's not really fair to ask us to write another essay when we've not received the first one back.' She was exactly right: you need to know your audience to be heard. And the application essay leaves most writers overconcerned about correctness and driven toward a brag. White: What makes a good essay? McGinty: One word? How about 'memorable'? A favorite essay read at Sarah Lawrence College showed the young author returning home after school one day to find her grandmother ensconced in a bed in the dining room, smoking her ever-present cigarette, propped up next to a small glass of straight gin. The essay recounted both the developing relationship between author and grandmother and reminiscences of Lord Marchmain's bed in Brideshead Revisited. It seems unlikely that the author was coached to write about this. It was real, engaging, and fabulously literary…for me, an A+. There was an electric connection that day between this young woman and her reader—she had gambled on her audience and won. So you can see the prescription is pretty hard to replicate. White: Is the present choice of Common Application essay prompts effective? McGinty: They all herd you toward the brag. It has to be awesome. 'Talent,' 'obstacle,' 'challenge,' realization, 'accomplishment,' captivating idea. Wow. Kids start envying friends with tragedy and divorce in their lives. David Foster Wallace gave a memorable graduation address at Oberlin College, including an anecdote about young fishes. As they swim past, a grizzled old fish says 'How's the water?' One little fish says to the other, 'What's water?' Applicants are in the early days of self-reflection; life on a treadmill is unexamined. The application is, without a doubt, asking one of the first 'look at the water' questions—this process will continue but it has hardly started at 17. I think the Common App can produce good results with a vibe that is more collaborative and less competitive. Excellent educators and people from all areas of admission help rewrite and revise this form quite regularly. There are opportunities periodically to change the tone and also the questions. I'd vote for something like 'Tell us about something small and insignificant in your life. Help us see it clearly and know how important it is to you'? White: Adaeze "Daisy" Ogunedo, the Senior Associate Director at Smith Collegeand President-elect of the National Association of College Admissions Counseling certainly agrees. She commented to me that "I view the essay as an opportunity for the student to share their story. While applicants might see it as yet another assignment, as someone who has read hundreds of these in my career, it gives me a little glimpse into who the student is that their resume and grades don't give me. It might not be a big story about events in your life, but a quirky anecdote about how they take pictures of a certain brand of milk every time you see it. This is the students' chance to reach directly out to the admissions officer and say "Hey look. There's a person amongst all these words." Do you think this is less likely to be affected by students using artificial intelligence to write their essays. McGinty: Let's help applicants. If we do, the temptation to let Claude apply for you will diminish. The applicant should be able to enrich their application without feeling like there needs to be a start-up on their resume or a death in their family.
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Rahm Emanuel Joins CNN as Political Commentator
Look out, Scott Jennings! CNN said it hired Rahm Emanuel, the former Obama advisor and Chicago mayor, as a senior commentator on political and global affairs. Emanuel most recently served as U.S. Ambassador to Japan. More from Variety Trump Is on a Winning Streak in War on Press: Is the Sullivan Decision Next? CNN's Jake Tapper Reveals Second Season of 'United States of Scandal' 'Fed Up With Fake News': CNN Juror Would Have Awarded Up to $100 Million in Punitive Damages His hire comes as CNN has tried to lure conservative and center-right viewers by enlisting the aforementioned Jennings, a former Bush advisor whose presence on the network has increased in recent weeks. Jennings appears frequently in Washington political panels and on the primetime show 'NewsNight,' and even recently made a foray into CNN's more traditional news programming. His support for the policies of the Trump administration has brought him directly into on-air conflict with several CNN anchors, who often accuse him of grandstanding. Emanuel could serve to balance the scales. A former chief of staff in the Obama White House, Emanuel is known for having a blunt demeanor. 'You have to be idealistic enough to know why you're doing what you're doing, and then ruthless enough to get it done,' Emanuel told a group of graduate students at Stanford University in 2017. CNN has seen its viewership erode noticeably since the 2024 presidential election, and recently reworked a good portion of its weekday schedule. Emanuel served as a U.S. Congressman from Illinois for six years, and also worked as an advisor in the Clinton administration. He holds a bachelor's degree from Sarah Lawrence College and earned a master's degree in speech and communication at Northwestern University. Emanuel is represented by WME, but not by his brother, Ari Emanuel, who is CEO of Endeavor the talent-and-sports conglomerate that is the agency's corporate parent. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Grammy Predictions, From Beyoncé to Kendrick Lamar: Who Will Win? Who Should Win? What's Coming to Netflix in February 2025
