Mark Z. Danielewski is an American fiction author, he is most known for his debut novel House of Leaves, which won the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. His second novel, Only Revolutions, was nominated for the National Book Award. Danielewski began work on a proposed 27-volume series, The Familiar, although he completed only 5 volumes before halting the project in 2017. Danielewski's work is characterized by an intricate, multi-layered typographical variation, or page layout. Sometimes known as visual writing, the typographical variation corresponds directly, at any given narratological point in time, to the physical space of the events in the fictional world as well as the physical space of the page and the reader. Early on, critics characterized his writing as being ergodic literature, but Danielewski, who has commented on his disappointment with criticism's inability to properly confront his work, expressed his theoretical approach to literature:Signiconic = sign + icon.

Rather than engage those textual faculties of the mind remediating the pictorial or those visual faculties remediating language, the signiconic engages both in order to lessen the significance of both and therefore achieve a third perception no longer dependent on sign and image for remediating a world in which the mind plays no part." Danielewski was born in New York City to Tad Danielewski, a Polish avant-garde film director, Priscilla Decatur Machold. Mark was Tad's second child. Christopher, the first, was born to Tad's first wife. Mark was the first of two children born to Priscilla. Anne Decatur Danielewski, a.k.a. Poe, an American singer and record producer, was born 2 years after Mark; when Mark was a child and young man, the Danielewski family moved around continuously for Tad's various film projects. By the age of 10, Mark had lived in 6 different countries because of his father's work: Ghana, Spain, Switzerland and the United States, he and his sister, went to high school in Provo, Utah.

Danielewski has said that this time in Utah as well as his experiences elsewhere helped him to gain an appreciation for creativity in all its forms, the traveling showed him that "there was much to be learned out there." Not much else is known about Mark's early life, critics continue to pull details from certain characters in his novels as evidence for biographical details that have never been confirmed. In 1985 Danielewski spent time in France visiting his brother who at the time was living on Rue des Belles Feuilles. There was a manual typewriter that he found himself pounding away on, it was there. During this period he wrote an unpublished story called "Where Tigers Dance." Danielewski has referred to the story as being "so unfinished it didn't deserve to be called incomplete," but that it has continued "to roam around" in his imagination. Fans have come back to this tangential story about an early work of fiction from his youth since the release of "Parable no8:'Z is for Zoo'" and The Familiar.

In 1988 Danielewski graduated with a degree in English Literature from Yale, where he studied under John Hollander, Stuart Moulthrop, John Guillory. He was inspired by Harold Bloom. In 1989 Danielewski moved to Berkeley, where he enrolled in an intensive Latin course at the University of California, Berkeley, he pursued graduate studies at the USC School of Cinema-Television in Los Angeles. During this time he became involved in the film Derrida, a documentary based on the career and philosophy of Algerian-born French literary critic and philosopher Jacques Derrida. Danielewski was an assistant editor, sound technician and cameraman for the movie, he can be seen adjusting the sound equipment in Derrida's suit jacket at one point in the film, he graduated with an MFA in 1993, the same year his dad died. It is the year he came upon the idea of a house, bigger on the inside than the outside. Danielewski has been an avid cat lover throughout his life, they show up in a myriad of ways throughout his works and happen to be a main topic in his most recent book series The Familiar.

In January 2016, Danielewski adopted two Devon Rex kittens, Archimedes & Meifumado, after his previous Devon Rex companions and Carl died. Danielewski dates the origin of his debut novel House of Leaves to 1990 and a story that he wrote after finding out that his father was dying: 1990. My father was head of the USC School of Theater. I was living in New York. I got the phone call. The'Mark your father is dying' phone call, he was in the hospital. Renal failure, cancer. I headed west. Over the course of three sleepless nights and three sleepless days I wrote a 100+ page piece entitled Redwood. I remember using a fountain pen. I had the change to buy sodas and snacks along the way and there I am scratching out words with this absurdly expensive thing of polished resin and gold. I'd like to say it was a Pelikan. Another thing I seem to remember: the paper I was writing on had a pale blue cast to it. There was something about how the pen seemed to bite into the paper at the same time as it produced these lush sweeps of ink.

A kind of cutting and spilling. As if a page could bleed. My intention had been to present this piece of writing as a gift to my father; as has been mentioned many times before, my father responded with the suggestions that I pursue a career at the post office. I responded by reducing the manus

The 2018 Ohio Valley Conference Women's Basketball Tournament ended the 2017–18 season of Ohio Valley Conference women's basketball. The tournament was held February 28 -- March 3 at Ford Center in Indiana. Regular-season champion Belmont won the tournament and with it the OVC's automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament; the OVC women's tournament is a traditional single-elimination tournament featuring the top eight teams in the conference regular-season standings. This differs from the format used in the OVC men's tournament; the women's tournament is seeded so that the #8 seed faces the #1 seed in the first round, #7 faces #2, so on. There is no reseeding, so if the #8 team were to defeat the #1 seed it would continue in the tournament playing the team which would have faced the #1 seed in the subsequent round. All times central. Television

Kurt Johnson is an American entomologist, a recognized figure in comparative religion and consciousness studies. His scientific career began while he was a Christian monk, during which time he completed his doctoral studies in evolution and ecology, he is known in science for his writing on taxonomy and ecology and in particular for his published research and popular writing on the scientific career of famous Russian–American novelist and lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov. His book Nabokov's Blues was named a "top 10 book in science" in 2000 at the Washington Post, Library Journal, Booklist and HMS Beagle. However, Johnson became a significant figure, writer and lecturer in comparative religion, spirituality and integral studies, having continued as a Christian monastic for a number of years during his active scientific career and thereafter continuing as a seminary professor and guest lecturer; these aspects of Johnson's life and work are reviewed separately below. Johnson was associated with the American Museum of Natural History from 1976 until 1998 and subsequently with the Florida State Collection of Arthropods.

During this time he published some two hundred scientific articles on aspects of butterfly taxonomy and ecology. These publications are listed in numerous bibliographies and catalogues of the scientific literature in this discipline. Johnson's publications, hundreds of species and generic names created by him and a number of co-authors during that period, involved "hairstreak" and "blue" butterflies; the latter is the common name for the same butterflies studied by Vladimir Nabokov during his scientific career before his fame as a novelist. Accordingly, after completing scientific studies on the butterfly groups pioneered by Nabokov, the publication with Coates of Nabokov's Blues, Johnson was a significant figure in Nabokov centennial programs and events in 1999–2000. Johnson continues to work, with a number of colleagues, on DNA studies of Nabokov's butterfly groups as followup to the work he accomplished from 1976–1998 with anatomists Zsolt Balint and Dubi Benyamini. In addition to taxonomic work, Johnson and Benyamini published on the evolutionary and biogeographic origins of the high mountain butterflies of South America, an ongoing biogeographic mystery explored by Nabokov This work, Johnson's many popular articles on science in world periodicals involved him in significant conservation work, as an advisor in association with The Nature Conservancy, The World Wildlife Fund and several endangered species, one of which "The Karner Blue" had been discovered by Nabokov himself.

Johnson was a Christian monastic and began his association with the American Museum of Natural History in New York City during that time, after completion of his doctoral studies in 1980. Shortly before, but after, his retirement from active scientific work in 2000, Johnson concentrated more on activities with a monastic colleague, Brother Wayne Teasdale, a Roman Catholic monk who had become an influential pioneer in interfaith and interspiritual dialogue after publication of his books The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World's Religions and A Monk in the World. Johnson and Teasdale shared a background in Christian contemplation and the Hindu spirituality known as "Advaita". Johnson was ordained in both traditions and Teasdale was a well-known writer in both, with a PhD in Christian theology from Fordham University; this collaboration led to them, others, founding InterSpiritual Dialogue in Action in 2002, an international association for the discussion of contemplative and mystical experience across traditions ISDnA was active with the Parliament of the World's Religions and other inter-religious discussions.

After Teasdale's death in 2004, Johnson and other colleagues of Teasdale continued and expanded ISDnA, first to include an education program based on the work and writings of Teasdale, at the One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in New York City. Given his academic background, Johnson maintained ties with the humanist community, serving on the faculty of the Humanist Institute and with American Ethical Union's United Nations representative agency The National Service Conference, publishing on religious issues in humanist publications. Johnson involved himself with integral philosopher Ken Wilber and the integral community in establishing an array of programs on integral spirituality at One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in New York City and Johnson and another colleague of Teasdale, Gorakh Hayashi, published additional articles on Teadale's thoughtIn 2009 ISDnA created the website resource "The InterSpiritual Multiplex: A Guide and Directory to InterSpirituality Worldwide" and, partnering with the Universal Order of Interfaith and the World Council of Interfaith Congregations founded "The Universal Order of Sannyasa" which Bro.

Wayne Teasdale had envisi