Katie Giarla

A darkened room of students sat in silence watching the film, Rent, when College sophomore Victor Galli stood up: “Can I please request more musical lesbian break-up scenes?”

When Israeli student Netta Mishly was 15 years old, her class was taken to a shooting range as an introduction to military service.

It took a severe physical beating to convert writer Pete Dexter from newspaper reporting to fiction writing, but he seems to have found his niche.