CURATION
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from this page:
by Matrix
Network Node
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Name:
Sona Charaipotra
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City/Place:
New York City
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Country:
United States
Life
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Bio:
Sona Charaipotra is not a doctor— much to her pediatrician parents’ chagrin. They were really hoping she’d grow up to take over their practice one day. Instead, she became a journalist and author, earning raves from from Entertainment Weekly, People, and NPR for her YA doc dramedy, Symptoms of a Heartbreak, a YA coming of age story about a teen doctor navigating love and loss during her first year of residency.
She draws on a decade’s experience as a magazine writer and editor for her 2022 YA contemporary, How Maya Got Fierce— pitched as The Bold Type meets Younger. But she must admit, her limited skills en pointe meant she had to do plenty of research while co-writing the YA dance duology Tiny Pretty Things, now a Netflix original TV series. But her experiences with bullying as a teen girl meant she was well-prepared to tackle the 2022 YA thriller The Rumor Game. Sona has also contributed short stories to anthologies including A Thousand Beginnings and Endings, Come On In, Game On, and others, and is co-editor of Magic Has No Borders, a forthcoming YA anthology featuring South Asian diaspora voices.
Sona was born in Iran but grew up in central New Jersey (it does exist!), where she developed a penchant for real pizza and using phrases like “down the shore,” “j’eat?” and “all set.” She completed her bachelors at Rutgers University, where she focused on journalism and American Studies, writing papers on boy bands and Madonna.
Right out of college, she spent six years as a reporter at People magazine, covering Beyonce’s 21st birthday party and 9/11 in a single week. She’s since been a writer and editor for publications like TeenPeople (RIP), ABCNews.com, MSN, Bustle, Vulture, and Barnes & Noble, where she ran the beloved kids and teen blogs, and has contributed to publications including the New York Times, Cosmopolitan, and TeenVogue.
Sona got her masters in Dramatic Writing and South Asian studies at NYU, developing her thesis script for the screen at MTV Films and trying her luck in Hollywood before focusing on fiction, earning her MFA in creative writing at the New School’s esteemed Writing for Children program. While there, she co-founded CAKE Literary, a boutique book packager focused on high concept, deliciously diverse titles, including the Tiny Pretty Things series, the Tristan Strong series, the Love Sugar Magic series, The Gauntlet duology, and other lauded YA and middle grade books.
Sona served as VP of content and a board member for We Need Diverse Books, and was a founding board member for the South Asian Journalists Association. She has also offered mentorship through PoC in Publishing, SAJA, and other organizations. She has taught and presented at the Highlights Foundation, KWELI, SCBWI, AWP, BookCon, YallFest, and other events, as well as for schools and libraries.
Last year, after many years of struggling with executive dysfunction issues, Sona was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. She started therapy and medication and has since hyper-focused on learning all she can about neurodivergence, both as it applies to her life and her work.
When she’s not writing or teaching, Sona can be found stirring up trouble in the kitchen with her writer husband and two kids at home in New York City, or on the road, documenting her street food finds on Instagram.
If Sona’s writing makes you hungry (and it probably will!), you can find recipes at IshqInABackpack.com, or find her on social media (including TikTok!) talking about chai, Bollywood movies and books.
Clips (more may be added)
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
Wolfram Mathematics
This technological matrix, originating in Bahia, Brazil and positioning creators around the world within reach of each other and the entire planet, is able to do so because it is small-world (see Wolfram).
Bahia itself, final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place on earth throughout all of human history, refuge for Lusitanian Sephardim fleeing the Inquisition, Indigenous both apart and subsumed into a brilliant sociocultural matrix comprised of these three peoples and more, is small-world.
Human society, the billions of us in all the complexity of our relationships, is small-world. Neural structures for human memory are small-world. Neural structures in artificial intelligence are small-world...
In small worlds great things are possible. In a matrix they can be created.
Alicia Svigals
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"I'm truly thankful ... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"
—Nduduzo Makhathini (JOHANNESBURG): piano, Blue Note recording artist
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
Dear friends & colleagues,
Having arrived in Salvador 13 years earlier, I opened a record shop in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for Bahian musicians, many of them magisterial but unknown.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Bahians and other Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix (people who have passed are not removed), then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Recent access to this matrix and Bahia are from these places (a single marker can denote multiple accesses).
Across the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
For a complete list of everybody inside, tap TOTAL below:
TOTAL
Nduduzo Makhathini
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Matt Garrison
RÁDIO MATRIX