Arts & Events

In 2001 Emily Giffin ditched a fledgling law career in Manhattan and set out for London to write fiction. Five bestselling novels and a few million dollars later, that decision looks pretty good. At forty, Giffin and her husband, Buddy Blaha, are doting parents to twin eight-year-old sons Edward and George and daughter Harriet, who turned five in May. The family recently moved into a $5 million Buckhead manse, and Blaha left a top job at Newell Rubbermaid “to smell the roses before gearing up again,” Giffin says. “We recently went to St. Barts for our ten-year anniversary, and he wrote ‘coach’ as his occupation on his immigration document. I’ve never seen him so happy. It really makes me realize how lucky I am to love what I do.”

In 2016 Monica Campana, the cofounder and executive director of Atlanta street art festival Living Walls, and Marian Liou, the founder of We Love BuHi, a social media love letter to Buford Highway, met while applying for fellowships at downtown’s Center for Civic Innovation. Soon after, they decided to partner and bring Living Walls to Buford Highway.

These are Atlanta's 500 most powerful leaders. We spent months consulting experts and sorting through nominations to get a list of the city's most influential people—from artists to chefs to philanthropists to sports coaches and corporate CEOs. In this section, we focus on arts, film, music, entertainment, and sports.

After nearly 30 years of performing, hosting house concerts, and teaching the traditional music of Ireland, Atlanta-based musician Bella Issakova is releasing her first album. Come in from the Rain, a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Randy Clepper, offers a fresh take on Irish dance tunes. It largely features Issakova on the fiddle and Clepper on the Irish bouzouki.

It's probably best that Collective Soul bassist Will Turpin's new solo EP, "The Lighthouse" is only available in audio form. Otherwise, the five instantly addictive tracks on the project (the EP hit iTunes Tuesday) would likely require a doctor's prescription. Playing piano and singing lead vocals, Turpin will debut tunes from "The Lighthouse" Thursday night at Drinkshop Live at the downtown W on Ivan Allen Boulevard. "It's just one of those innate feelings that you have," explains the life-long Beatles fan on how you go about writing a catchy melodic pop song. "When I was taking piano lessons at eight years old, my earliest music teachers kept telling me to quit using my ear. Their goal was to teach me to read music in a traditional way. But after I learned a piece of music, I was always using my ear to modify things. If it feels good to me, that's a good starting place for how a listener might respond to something I write. I'm all about melody. Somebody asked me the other day on a TV show what 'The Lighthouse' sounds like and I said, 'mega sweet, power pop candy.'" Turpin laughs and adds: "I'm not really good at describing music. But I don't think that my style on this EP is something that most people would be able to predict. Hopefully, that's a good thing!"

If there’s an Atlantan with something interesting to say, there’s a good chance they’ve said it to Rose Scott. Her radio program, Closer Look, which airs live every weekday afternoon on local NPR member station WABE, hosts a vibrant cross-section of the city’s movers and shakers, interviewed by Scott herself. “I always say we’re a curator of conversations,” she told me. “Community conversations.”

Rod Stewart brought his One Last Time tour to a sold-out Ameris Bank Amphitheatre on Friday evening, delivering a career-spanning set filled with timeless hits. Opening the night, Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Cheap Trick set the tone with their high-energy performance. Here, check out the scenes photographer Perry Julien captured at the show.

The album cover consisted of a sticky spider web entangling two dazed women and their confused man. The salacious image told listeners everything they needed to know about Caught Up, R&B singer Millie Jackson’s epic 1974 “soul opera.” The only thing more shocking than dropping the needle on Side One to hear a collection of songs from the perspective of the "other woman": Flipping the 12-inch piece of vinyl to discover Side Two and songs from "the wife."