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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. And my guest today, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Hilton Al's,

has spent decades examining how we create meaning through words, images, and the spaces in between.

As a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, his essays and profiles on figures like Tony Morrison,

Joan Didion, and Richard Pryor, have redefined cultural criticism,

blending autobiography with literary and social commentary. In addition to being a writer, Al's is also a

curator. Recently, he explored language in a new gallery exhibition, The Writings on the Wall,

Language and Silence in the Visual Arts, at the Hill Art Foundation in New York.

The exhibit brings together the works of 32 artists across a range of media to examine how artists embrace silence.

The show asks a powerful question, what do words in their absence look like?

Hilton Al's has been a staff writer through New Yorker for over 30 years. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017, for his work as a

theater critic, and he's the author of several books, including The Women, White Girls, and My Pinup,

a genre-bending memoir essay that examines the music, persona, and cultural impact of prints.

He's curated several art installations, including a show on the late Joan Didion.

Hilton Al's, welcome to Fresh Air.

Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor.

Your exhibit made me think about something that writer Samuel

Delaney has said. Who has this. Yes. And I've been thinking about this for the last few weeks,

honestly. But he has this theory that imagination is the only shared reality and that creativity

is how we manifest that shared reality.

...