The current exhibit at The Egan Gallery in The Magoski Arts Colony is called "A Show on Earth" and features work by local artist Melinda Hagman. My favorite pieces in the show are a series of paintings of various literary figures. Here they are, with some fun facts about each author:
Name: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), American short story writer, poet
Fun Fact: He was famous for his tales of horror and the macabre.
Major Works: "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Pit and the Pendulum"
Quote: “Villains!' I shrieked. 'Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!”
Name: Fyodor Doysoevsky (1821-1881), Russian novelist
Fun Fact: He was sentenced to death by firing squad for his political activities, but was pardoned at the last minute and send instead to Siberia, where he developed epilepsy.
Major Works: Crime & Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, Notes From Underground
Quote: “Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
Name: Hans Fallada (1893-1947), German novelist
Fun Fact: He was a lifelong drug addict and tried to commit suicide several times.
Major Works: Little Man, What Now?, Every Man Dies Alone
Quote: “Not that she's a political animal, she's just an ordinary woman, but as a woman she's of the view that you don't bring children into the world to have them shot.”
Name: Henry Miller (1891-1980), American novelist
Fun Fact: He also painted watercolors.
Major Works: Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn
Quote: “A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.”
Name: Herman Hesse (1877-1962), Swiss novelist and poet
Fun Fact: In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature
Major Works: Siddhartha, Demian, Steppenwolf
Quote: “Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.”
Name: Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005), American journalist and author
Fun Fact: He spent a year of his life living and riding with the Hell's Angels, as research.
Major Works: Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
Quote: "Tune in, freak out, get beaten."
Name: Isak Dinisen (1885-1962), Danish author
Fun Fact: She and her husband ran a coffee plantation in Africa.
Major Works: Out of Africa, Babette's Feast
Quote: “When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.”
Name: Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), American novelist
Fun Fact: His style combines satire, gallows humor, and science fiction
Major Works: Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, The Sirens of Titan
Quote: “Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”
Name: Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), English novelist
Fun Fact: He was also mathemetician, logician, Anglican deacon, and photographer.
Major Works: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Jabberwocky
Quote: “Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Name: Louis-Ferdinand Celine (1894-1961), French novelist
Fun Fact: He was also a doctor
Major Works: Journey to the End of the Night, Death on Credit
Quote: “That is perhaps what we seek throughout life, that and nothing more, the greatest possible sorrow so as to become fully ourselves before dying.”
Name: Nathanael West (1903-1940), American author, screenwriter
Fun Fact: He was killed in a car accident the day after F. Scott Fitzgerald died.
Major Works: Miss Lonelyhearts, The Day of the Locust
Quote: “He read it for the same reason an animal tears at a wounded foot: to hurt the pain.”
Name: Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957), Greek novelist, philisopher
Fun Fact: The Church of Greece condemned his work.
Major Works: The Last Temptation of Christ, Christ Recrucified, Zorba the Greek
Quote: “True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their
own.” 
Name: Steve Kilbey (1954-), Australian singer, songwriter, poet
Fun Fact: He was the lead singer of the band The Church.
Major Works: Earthed, Unearthed
Quote: "One of the greatest tragedies in recent American history is that our second and third albums never got released here."
Name: Sylvia Plath (1932-1963), American poet, novelist
Fun Fact: She committed suicide by placing her head in an oven, at age 30.
Major Works: The Bell-Jar, Colossus, Ariel
Quote: “And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
Name: Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), Russian novelist
Fun Fact: He was also a chess composer.
Major Works: Lolita, Pale Fire, Speak, Memory
Quote: “Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don't stop to think, don't interrupt the scream, exhale, release life's rapture.”
