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Doretta Lau

In this 2012 interview, the woman many call China's Annie Leibovitz explains why she became an artist - to realise the dreams her parents lost during the Cultural Revolution, and passed to her instead.

While on the road in 1964, Beach Boy Brian Wilson suffered a panic attack. He retreated to California to write, recuperate and record instrumentals while the rest of the band continued to tour the world. When they returned, vocal recording began. The studio sessions for Pet Sounds were intensive; the band spent a week laying down the vocals for Wouldn't It Be Nice alone.

The events covered in Jon Ronson's non-fiction book The Men Who Stare at Goats seem outlandish and eclipse anything a conspiracy theorist may dream up. Mind control? Check. Psychic assassins? Check. Goat/spider hybrids? Check.

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I’ve had Taylor Swift’s Blank Space on repeat since it came out – it’s so catchy. I like country artists Kacey Musgraves and The Band Perry, and I recently discovered Lzzy Hale, a real rock star with an incredibly powerful voice.

Prison on Fire opens with a shot of Victoria Harbour: a brief glimpse of water, open sky and towering buildings. By the next scene, this sense of freedom and possibility is gone, replaced by a bus heading to a prison.

Since 1969, readers have devoured American writer Judy Blume's young adult novels in an attempt to figure out how to navigate adolescence.

Canada's queen of rock may have matured as a performer, but she has not lost the rebellious edge that made her name, writes Doretta Lau.

A hard-drinking socialite, her philandering husband and his brazen hussy sidepiece - a relationship this toxic was bound to blow up. And blow up it does, as the suddenly gigantic wife goes on a rampage.

Earlier this year, American writer Adam Johnson learnt he had won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel The Orphan Master's Son via text message.

Erica Jong - author of the 1973 best-selling novel Fear of Flying - posed the following question last month on Twitter: "When you have your 15 minutes of fame, you're very busy, but what happens after?"

James Franco believes in exploring the many aspects of creativity beyond acting. That's why he's also directing, writing and studying for his PhD, he tells Doretta Lau

Visual artist Caroline Mak leads a double life. Since 2010, in addition to maintaining her art practice, she has been running a successful beverage company, Brooklyn Soda Works, with her boyfriend, research chemist Antonio Ramos, in New York.

One rainy day late last month, Londoner Emma-Lee Moss, better known as recording artist Emmy the Great, was back in Hong Kong where she was born and learnt her first instrument.

On a sunny spring afternoon, Christiaan Virant of the Beijing duo FM3 stopped to have a coffee in Causeway Bay. He was in Hong Kong to source new rubber cases for the next Buddha Machine, a small device that plays music loops taken from FM3 songs.

During the 1990s, American journalist Alison Singh Gee spent several years working for the South China Morning Post and Asiaweek. Outside work, she lived an "It" girl existence in Hong Kong.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor don't often give interviews. (They declined to do so for this article.) The Montreal post-rockers don't have a frontman or leader.

British writer Roald Dahl (1916-1990), author of the beloved children's books Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Fantastic Mr Fox, began his career writing short stories for adults.

On a recent afternoon, a French collector stops in at art dealer Katie de Tilly's gallery, 10 Chancery Lane, in SoHo. 

Claire Boucher, the Canadian musician who has been recording and performing as Grimes since 2010, has blossomed into an international pop star in the space of a year.