Michael Hazy: Renowned Animator and Storyboard Artist in Animation Industry

Who was Michael Hazy. What were his major contributions to the animation industry. How did he impact popular animated films and TV series. When did his career in animation begin and end.

The Legacy of Michael Hazy in Animation

Michael Hazy, also known as Mike Hazy, was a prolific animator and storyboard artist who left an indelible mark on the animation industry. His career spanned several decades, during which he contributed to some of the most beloved animated films and television series of the late 20th century.

Early Career and Rise in Animation

Hazy’s journey in animation began in the late 1970s, working on popular television series. His talent quickly became apparent as he took on roles such as key art assistant and storyboard artist for various shows.

• The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle (1979)
• The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show
• Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids
• The New Adventures of Batman

These early projects allowed Hazy to hone his skills and establish himself as a versatile artist in the animation world.

Contributions to Disney Renaissance

Michael Hazy’s career reached new heights during the Disney Renaissance, a period of revitalization for Walt Disney Animation Studios from the late 1980s to the late 1990s. During this time, he worked on several critically acclaimed and commercially successful animated features.

Key Disney Films

Hazy’s contributions to Disney’s most iconic films include:

• The Little Mermaid (1989)
• Beauty and the Beast (1991)
• Aladdin (1992)
• The Lion King (1994)
• Pocahontas (1995)
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
• Hercules (1997)
• Mulan (1998)
• Tarzan (1999)

In these films, Hazy served in various capacities, including assistant animator and key assistant animator. His work on specific characters and scenes contributed significantly to the overall quality and success of these animated classics.

Specialized Character Animation

Throughout his career, Michael Hazy demonstrated a remarkable ability to bring diverse characters to life through animation. His expertise in character animation is evident in the specific roles he played in various productions.

Notable Character Contributions

Some of Hazy’s most noteworthy character animation work includes:

• Scar in The Lion King
• Abu and the Narrator in Aladdin
• Lefou in Beauty and the Beast
• The Fates, Gods, Penelope, and Baby Pegasus in Hercules
• Ben, Lon, and Roy in Pocahontas

These characters, brought to life in part by Hazy’s skilled animation, have become iconic figures in the world of animation, beloved by audiences of all ages.

Expansion into Television Animation

While Michael Hazy is widely recognized for his work in feature films, his contributions to television animation were equally significant. His versatility as an artist allowed him to excel in both mediums, leaving his mark on numerous TV series.

Notable Television Projects

Some of the television series Hazy worked on include:

• BraveStarr (1987-1988)
• The New Adventures of Zorro
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe

In these projects, Hazy took on roles such as scene planning supervisor and writer, showcasing his diverse skill set in the animation industry.

Technical Expertise and Specializations

Michael Hazy’s career was marked by his technical proficiency and specialization in various aspects of animation production. His ability to adapt to different roles and responsibilities made him a valuable asset in the industry.

Specialized Animation Roles

Throughout his career, Hazy took on specialized roles such as:

• Key assistant animator
• Clean-up animator
• Breakdown and inbetween artist
• Scene planning supervisor

These roles required a deep understanding of animation principles and techniques, as well as the ability to work collaboratively within large production teams.

Impact on Animation Techniques

Michael Hazy’s work spanned a period of significant technological advancement in the animation industry. His career saw the transition from traditional hand-drawn animation to the early days of computer-assisted animation techniques.

Adapting to New Technologies

As the industry evolved, Hazy adapted his skills to new technologies and techniques. His work on later Disney films like Fantasia 2000 and The Emperor’s New Groove demonstrates his ability to integrate traditional animation skills with emerging digital tools.

This adaptability ensured that Hazy remained a relevant and valuable contributor to the animation industry throughout his career, even as production methods underwent significant changes.

Legacy and Influence

Michael Hazy’s contributions to the animation industry extend far beyond the specific projects he worked on. His skills, dedication, and creativity helped shape the golden age of animation in the late 20th century.

Inspiring Future Animators

Hazy’s work continues to inspire aspiring animators and artists. The characters he helped bring to life and the films he contributed to remain beloved classics, studied and admired by new generations of animation enthusiasts.

His career serves as a testament to the impact that skilled animators can have on the entertainment industry and popular culture as a whole.

Recognition and Awards

While individual animators often work behind the scenes, the films Michael Hazy contributed to received numerous accolades and awards. Many of the Disney films he worked on, such as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King, won Academy Awards and Golden Globes.

Industry Acknowledgment

Though Hazy may not have been in the spotlight, his contributions were recognized and valued within the animation industry. The consistent quality of his work and his long-standing career with major studios speak to his reputation as a skilled and reliable animator.

His involvement in multiple award-winning projects underscores the significance of his contributions to the field of animation.

Michael Hazy’s passing on December 9, 2004, in Los Angeles, California, marked the end of a remarkable career in animation. His legacy lives on through the timeless animated works he helped create, continuing to entertain and inspire audiences around the world.

From his early days working on television cartoons to his significant contributions to the Disney Renaissance, Michael Hazy’s career exemplifies the dedication, skill, and creativity that define the best in the animation industry. His work will continue to be celebrated and studied by animation enthusiasts and professionals for generations to come.

Mike Hazy – IMDb

Mike Hazy was a writer, known for Hercules (1997), Aladdin (1992) and Pocahontas (1995). He died on 9 December 2004 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

DiedDecember 9, 2004

Known for:

Hercules

Aladdin

Pocahontas

The Lion King

Credits

Animation Department

• The Emperor’s New Groove
  • key assistant animator: “Miscellaneous” (as Michael Hazy)
• Fantasia 2000
  • key assistant animator
• How to Haunt a House
  • assistant animator
  • Short
• Tarzan
  • key assistant animator: “Captain” and “Thugs” (as Michael Hazy)
• Mulan
  • additional key assistant clean-up animator (as Michael Hazy)
• Hercules
  • key assistant animator: “The Fates”, “Gods”, “Penelope” and “Baby Pegasus”
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame
  • assistant: additional clean-up animation (as Michael Hazy)
• Runaway Brain
  • additional clean-up artist
  • Short
• Pocahontas
  • assistant animator: “Ben”, “Lon” & “Roy” (as Michael Hazy)
• The Lion King
  • assistant animator: “Scar”
• Aladdin
  • assistant animator: “Abu” and “Narrator” (as Michael Hazy)
• Beauty and the Beast
  • assistant animator: “Lefou” (as Michael Hazy)
• The Rescuers Down Under
  • breakdown and inbetween artist (as Michael Hazy)
• BraveStarr: The Legend
  • scene planning supervisor
• BraveStarr
  • scene planning supervisor
  • TV Series
  • 1987–1988

Art Department

• Mighty Mouse in the Great Space Chase
  • key art assistant
• The Fat Albert Easter Special
  • key art assistant
  • TV Movie
• The New Adventures of Zorro
  • storyboard artist
  • TV Series
• Blackstar
  • storyboard artist
  • TV Series
• The Kid Super Power Hour with Shazam!
  • storyboard artist (1981)
  • TV Series
• A Snow White Christmas
  • key art assistant
  • TV Movie
• Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids
  • storyboard artist
  • TV Series
• The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show
  • storyboard artist
  • TV Series
• The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle
  • key art assistant (1979)
  • TV Series
• Space Sentinels
  • key art assistant
  • TV Series
• The Fat Albert Halloween Special
  • key art assistant
  • TV Movie
• The New Archie/Sabrina Hour
  • key art assistant (1977)
  • TV Series
• The New Adventures of Batman
  • key art assistant
  • TV Series
• Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle
  • key art assistant
  • TV Series
• The Secret Lives of Waldo Kitty
  • key art assistant
  • TV Series

Writer

• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
  • written by
  • TV Series

Personal details

• Alternative names
  • Mike Hazey
• Died
  • December 9, 2004
  • Los Angeles, California, USA

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The Guides of Tordrillo Mountain Lodge

Mike Overcast

Co-Owner & Guide

We call him Overchill. After 20 years of pioneering and guiding heli terrain, along with his extensive experience as a snow blaster, avalanche consultant, and wilderness guide, Mike Overcast has become regarded as an expert in anything that involves snow in Alaska, having guided skiers in Valdez, Girdwood, Seward, Hatcher Pass, and in the Tordrillo and Neacola Mountain ranges.

In addition to being an owner of Tordrillo Mountain Lodge, he was a founding partner of Chugach Powder Guides where he worked with some of the best avalanche experts in the industry including Dave Hamre and Frank Coffey.

Born and raised in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, he has been pioneering river corridors throughout Southcentral Alaska since 1992 when he and business partner Tommy Moe started their first outfitting business, guiding guests down some of the most difficult whitewater rivers in Alaska. Today, he splits his time between Jackson Hole and Tordrillo Mountain Lodge, spending winters skiing and boarding and summers fishing and running whitewater. Mike’s certifications are WFR, OEC, Level 3 Mechanized Heli ski guide, and BLS.

Tommy Moe

Co-Owner & Guide

Since his grade school days when his father let him play hooky to ski powder, Tommy Moe knew that the sport would be part of his future. What he didn’t know was that he would become a world cup contender and take home an Olympic gold medal. In 1994, at the winter games in Lillehammer, Norway, Moe won the downhill by .04 of a second, followed by a silver in the Super G.

He also didn’t know that he would strike gold again when he discovered skiing in the Tordrillos. As a partner and founder in Tordrillo Mountain Lodge, Moe finds the greatest reward in sharing the property and newly-discovered terrain with skiers and snowboarders seeking the trip of a lifetime, whether it’s a week of powder skiing in the winter, whitewater rafting the Tal and Coal Creek or paddle boarding under the summer midnight sun.

Tommy has been skiing and rafting the Alaska wilderness for over 25 years. He has intimate knowledge of the mountains and rivers and has been a certified WFR since 2000. He resides in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with his wife Megan Gerety and two young daughters Taylor and Taryn.

Mike Rheam

Co-Owner & Guide

A Jackson, Wyoming, resident, Mike keeps his head in the snow during the winter months running the avalanche program of the Jackson Hole Ski Patrol as well as forecasting for one of the top avalanche centers in the world, the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center. In the summer months he is the owner/operator of Grand Fishing Adventures, Jackson’s premier fly fishing guide service and shop. He has skied Alaska since the early heli skiing pioneering days of the early nineties. Top priorities for Mike are floating and skiing with his wife and daughter, who are both better skiers than he is.

Hugh Barnard

Head Guide

“Kiwi” Hugh has been rattling around mountains for as long as he can remember. A misspent youth passed in New Zealand’s Southern Alps, Jackson Hole, and Chamonix left him with few career options so he became a mountain guide, qualifying as an IFMGA guide in 1998. He has been heli skiing since 1993 and has been Chief Guide and General Manager of Harris Mountains Heliski in his home town of Wanaka, New Zealand, since 1998. Hugh has spent time as the Chief Guide of Himachal Heliski in the Indian Himalaya and running heli ski trips to Western Greenland and Siberia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, exploring new terrain and sharing this experience with guests from all over the globe. Hugh has spent further stints heli guiding in British Columbia and Valdez, Alaska, and ski toured extensively from his family’s European base in Chamonix.

Having accompanied guests to TML in the past, Hugh claims to have found his spiritual home in the Tordrillos and joins the guiding team this season on a full-time basis as Director of Heliski Operations.

When not heli skiing, Hugh runs production, locations, and safety services to film crews specializing in logistics support in challenging environments, work that has taken him to most continents. When not working, Hugh is generally found in the surf.

Bill Dyer

Guide

This year will mark 20 years of ski guiding in Alaska for Bill, ten of those years have been exploring the vast Tordrillo Mountain and Neacola ranges from Tordrillo Mountain Lodge.

His Alaska guiding experience also includes a decade skiing both the eastern and western Chugach range from Girdwood to Valdez. When not in Alaska, you may find Bill guiding skiing or climbing in France, Switzerland, Italy, South America, Antarctica, Japan, and the western United States. When Bill is at home, he works for Exum Mountain Guides guiding, climbing, and skiing as a senior guide.

He is a fully certified International Mountain Guide (IFMGA) having successfully completed the AMGA Rock, Ski Mountaineering, and Alpine Climbing programs.

Bill says, “Whether it’s repeating a classic line in the Tordrillo mountains or pioneering a new one, sharing the adventure is the most important part!”

Lel Tone

Guide

Lel Tone grew up in Switzerland and started her skiing career in the Alps at the age of three. She ski raced during her college years in Vermont and even had a short stint competing in Extreme competitions when she moved to Squaw Valley in 1994. Lel has been a member of the Squaw Valley ski patrol since 1994 and as of 2004 became the Assistant avalanche forecaster there.

Lel has been guiding in the Chugach mountains since 1999 and in 2000 became a guide at Chugach Powder Guides. Lel is a licensed blaster in the state of California and is an Avalanche control route leader at Squaw. She has her Level 1, 2, and 3 avalanche certifications and is an AIARE (American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education) Level 1 and 2 avalanche instructor. Since 2004 Lel has been teaching avalanche courses in the Lake Tahoe area and far beyond in South America. Lel feels passionately about teaching people about the miracle of snow science and how to travel safely in the mountains. She has been an EMT since 1989 and a professional member of the American Avalanche Association since 2000. Currently she holds the Ethics Chair position for the American Avalanche Association and is a Guide member of Heli Ski US.

Last season, Lel was fortunate enough to travel to Kashmir, India, to heli ski in the Himalaya and film with Warren Miller for  ”Like There’s No Tomorrow.” Most recently, she has been involved in designing technical outdoor clothing for Eddie Bauer‘s First Ascent line. The whole experience of creating specific pieces for what she needs to get the job done and the guide built process in general has been a pleasure to work on.

Wes Wylie

Guide

Born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Wes Wylie is convinced that he would’ve grown to be six-feet tall if not for a ski injury that fractured his right femur at the age of four at Mt. Norquey in Banff. He continued to ski all over the Canadian Rockies and most major mountain ranges of British Columbia until his first foray into Alaska in the mid 1980s when he spent four weeks climbing/skiing Mount McKinley and he was hooked.

From there, he eventually ended up in Valdez, where he spent 15 years promoting the heli ski industry, ten of which he was guiding. His favorite mountain range has always been the Tordrillos since he first skied them in 1998 with Overcast, Moe, and Nobis. He has oodles of guiding experience in Alaska and Utah and numerous certificates and affiliations including CSGA in 1997, NSP Level III, Avalanche I and II and Guide Member of the US Heli-Ski Association.

If that weren’t enough, he received his medical degree through the University of Texas and completed his residency at the Texas Medical Center in Houston. He’s certified in Advanced Trauma and Life Support, Advanced Cardiac Life Support, Pediatric Life Support and OEC. He currently resides in Park City, Utah, where he is a Private Practice Physician during the summers.

Jon Hunt

Guide

Jon Hunt is one of the finest powder skiers we have on the TML guide roster. No doubt that 18 years as an Alaskan guide, Jackson local, and renowned athlete, make him uniquely qualified to find the powder and keep you safe. Jon is back this season from his medical leave to replace his knee. Expect the same smooth operator, and maybe a little more. Jon spends his early season in Jackson skiing with guests in the JHMR backcountry as a resort guide. Jon skis guests though the best lines…behind the lines. His insatiable desire to deliver the goods takes to a higher level when operating from a helicopter instead of on his feet. His keen eyes can be trusted. For those who get to ski with him, consider yourself in the very best hands.

Dave Hahn

Guide

Dave Hahn is a longtime mountain-climbing guide and ski patroller from Taos, New Mexico. He has made a specialty of leading expeditions on high, cold and remote mountains. Notable successes include his fifteen summits of Mt. Everest and 36 trips to the top of Vinson, Antarctica’s high point. Dave routinely guides climbers on Mount Rainier and Denali, and changes things up with a few Kilimanjaro climbs and safaris. He has been recognized for several high profile rescues and, on occasion, for his writing about life in the mountains.

Desi Sherwood

Guide

Desi hails from Girdwood, Alaska, a local ski town renowned for its expert terrain and backcountry access. Desi grew up ski racing, hunting, and fishing throughout Alaska. 

While completing his degree in Outdoor Leadership and Education, Desi started guiding both whitewater rafting and fishing. He has led many multi-day guiding trips around the state with numerous outfitters. In the winters, Desi spent 13 years coaching both alpine ski racing and big mountain freeskiing, and now heli ski guides in both Girdwood and the Tordrillos. 

Through his fish guiding adventures, Desi has worked as a producer, logistics coordinator, and guide for various outdoor, fishing, and skiing productions.  

Desi has been an integral part of the Tordrillo Mountain Lodge team during both summer and winter programs since 2013. 

Jennifer Cornell

Lodge Manager

Kent McBride

Guide

Mike Davidson

Guide

Mike was raised in Anchorage and has been a part of the TML team since our beginnings. As a lifelong skier, Mike naturally gravitated to ski patrolling and avalanche control work at Alyeska Resort to compliment his position as a Battalion Chief and Paramedic at the Anchorage Fire Department.  As a member of the Girdwood community in Alaska for 30 years Mike’s home mountain is at Alyeska Resort.  Mike looks forward to meeting our clients and ensuring that they have the opportunity to enjoy the trip of a lifetime at TML!

During the summer Mike can often be found at his home on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula in Cooper Landing where he is an avid fisherman, usually looking for the next “big one” in his drift boat.  Prior to his time as a ski guide, Mike also worked as a raft guide and enjoys the helicopter access to the summer river rafting and fishing opportunities at TML.  A Guide member of the US Heli Ski Association Mike is also a licensed Paramedic and certified in Advanced Cardiac Life Support and Pediatric Advanced Life Support. An enthusiastic husband and father, Mike’s also an airplane pilot when he’s not working, guiding or skiing.

10 New British Writers of 2023 Why not take a look at the 10 New British Writers of 2023.

Steven Buoro, Andy Africa’s Five Sad Secrets

Steven Buoro, 29, was born in Ososo, Nigeria, the fourth of six children. His father was a photographer, so their family was creative, although the only books they read were religious texts. It wasn’t until Buoro received a scholarship to a missionary school where children were kicked out for not speaking English that he learned to read.

After completing his degree in Mathematics, he came to the UK to complete an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia as a Booker Prize Scholar.

One evening in June 2018, when it was already dark, a voice spoke to him. “He wanted to confess all his inner anger and irritation. I started writing and writing and writing, and when I came back and read what I had written, it was the most truthful and powerful thing I have ever written in my life. ”

He wrote it on his phone and it was the introduction to Andy Africa’s Five Sad Secrets, a gripping, tragicomic novel that asks questions about what it means to grow up in modern day Nigeria, where there is a lot of Western culture but few opportunities. The story is told from the perspective of Andy himself, a fatherless 15-year-old with a soft spot for blondes and a voice unlike any other.

Tom Crewe, New Life

Tom Crewe recalls the “pressure” he felt before his bold and brilliant debut. The idea came to him ten years ago, but it had been hatched for more than four years – during his time at the London Review of Books (LRB) – and, in his words, he “desperately tried to get it out of his head …

It seemed like too much to take in one day.” Reaction to the book was also strong, with Ann Enright saying it was “captivating”.

Based in part on real people, The New Life is about a group of radical freethinkers in Victorian England who want to live and love as they please, without fear or shame.

Crewe, 33, was born in Middlesbrough and studied history at the University of Cambridge, where he also received his Ph.D. He specializes in the 1880s and 1890’s.

Jacqueline Crookes, Firefever

Jacqueline Crookes is 59 years old and was born in Jamaica but grew up in Southall, West London. Her first novel, Firefever, was written in diary form and is essentially a fictional portrait of her early years. “It is largely based on my experience as a young woman in a male-dominated world. Experience of oppression. Dancing with amazing people. Dark side and light side.

The book, a poignant story about black women and dub music in the late 1970s, tells the story of Jamaie and her friends visiting the underground club The Crypt. There she meets the charming Musa and falls in love with him, but things soon go awry. Jamaie then embarks on a fateful journey through London, Bristol, and Jamaica, where she becomes embroiled in racial unrest, violence, revolution, and revenge.

Although Firefever is her debut novel, Crookes has already published Ice Migration, a collection of short stories shortlisted for the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Literature.of the year. One of her short stories, “Silver Fish in the Midnight Sea”, was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award the same year. She admits that writing “Fire Fever” was more difficult than “Ice Migration”.

“I am a very fast writer. When writing a novel, you have to slow down a lot. But now I’m working on my second novel, so I understand the process much better.”

Aidan Cottrell-Boyce, End of Night Work

“It’s not as depressing as it sounds!” Aidan Cottrell-Boyce, 35, explains with a smile why the devastating lockout prompted him to write his debut novel, The End of Night’s Work, an apocalyptic novel.

“When you are going through a difficult time, a narcissistic feeling arises: how can everyone else not see that this is a disaster? How can everyone else just go on with their daily lives? But that is the experience of the apocalypse that we are all experiencing right now,” he says. “Everyone knows one way or another that the end of the world is coming, but most people are not involved in strong climate denial or extinction rebellion. Most people think, “Maybe we’ll burn down soon, but I’m not sure.”

This labyrinthine and convoluted tale of a crystal clear economy involves a global youth rebellion, a 17th-century prophet, and a rare hormonal syndrome that causes victims to age prematurely—inventions cleverly woven into the picture of pre-Brexit London as a new father sees it in a failing marriage.

Cottrell-Boyce is a Cambridge theologian who was once a member of the Green Party and is now a scientist. While he knows that The End of Night’s Work is likely to be seen as a novel of ideas, for him it is a very personal novel. “I haven’t read many books about a relationship of care, love and intimacy between two people who destroy each other through this care. Wanting to be good all the time can be devastating.”

Jyoti Patel, “What We Lost”

Jyoti Patel’s first novel received rave reviews not only before publication but also before writing. What We Lost won the 2021 New Writers Award for Chapter One from Merky Books.

Patel, 30, was working in digital marketing when she submitted her work for the award. “There were many tears, disbelief and quiet reverence. I had to struggle a lot to study English at university,” says Patel, who was told she received the award during the pandemic. “I celebrated in many groups.”

She was born in Paris to British Indian parents and grew up in North West London.

At the center of the sensitive and empathic debut What We Lost is Nick, an 18-year-old struggling to navigate college life in a rural town, and his mother, Avani, who has long mourned the tragic death of her husband, Elliot. When Nick’s grandfather dies, he receives a key that reveals uncomfortable secrets about his father’s life and the family’s shame. The novel also travels back to the 1980s, exploring Avani and Elliot’s relationship and their experiences as an Indian and white British couple. At its core, this is a story about family secrets, love, belonging, the diaspora, and how immigrants create a dual identity.

Michael Magee, Close to Home

33-year-old Michael Magee always knew he wanted to write about his home in West Belfast, but he was still held back by “a strange idea of ​​what a novel should be – it wasn’t western Belfast, you know? Most of the books about Belfast are written by non-working class people. For them, West Belfast is a ghetto, a no-go zone. But the history of this place is the only story I know.”

This understanding paved the way for Close to Home, a poignant exploration of masculinity amid the devastation of recent times. The narrator Sean is the first in his family to go to college, but after a breakdown, he finds himself in a wasteland with no prospects, and it does not help that he kills someone at a party.

Meiji couldn’t find an outlet for his partially autobiographical material until he struck up a conversation with writer Thomas Morris, then editor of the influential Dublin literary magazine The Stinging Fly. Morris suggested that Meiji write him a letter, “starting at any point in my life and going through the text.” Within two weeks, the letter consisted of 20,000 words.

Further inspiration came from studying the French writers Édouard Louis and Annie Ernault, whose autobiographical writings on class relations pointed the way forward and fueled Meiji’s skepticism about the social mobility that comes with literary success. “What part of yourself are you losing in the process?” he says. “What does this do to your relationship? And how do you fit those things into the books you want to write?”

He thinks that one way to do this is to go back in time, not forward; his next novel will be about his childhood, and the next will be about a single woman raising two children during the Troubles, just like his mother did.

“That’s where I’m at, because this place is obsessed with the past,” Meiji says. “People who were born on both sides of the Good Friday Agreement, like Sean, were promised that they would reap the benefits of the world. But the working class, which has been disproportionately affected by the conflict, is still incredibly poor. People look around and wonder: What was all this for? We are still damn poor.”

Monica Hazey, “Very Good, Actually”

Marian Keys, Rob Delaney, Nina Stibbe, Paula Hawkins, Dolly Alderton, Ashling B: here are some of the names lined up to praise Monica Haya’s painfully funny first novel, Very Good, Actually.

Set in the author’s hometown of Toronto, the book follows the aftermath of a young couple’s divorce in the year between the narrator Maggie’s 29th and 30th birthdays. Sounds bleak, but it’s not.

Fun details – including Google search history, unanswered emails, selected Tinder conversations, and fantasy scenarios. “I wanted to portray the absurdity of a broken heart,” Hazy says.

When her own marriage fell apart at age 20, she tried to find an accurate reflection of her situation in books and films: so it’s bad, but getting better. There was nothing like that, and I decided to write about it myself.”

Hazy, now 34, moved to London in 2010 to complete her master’s degree in early modern literature from King’s College and supported her early forays into writing and comedy while working as a bartender at Secret Cinema. Visa problems sent her back to Toronto, where a parody of newspaper advice column “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better” became a book. This launched her career as a screenwriter for series such as Shitts Creek.

She also got married, divorced and moved back to the UK. Today she lives in London and is working on her second novel. She is also filming a romantic comedy series for Sky and is about to start adapting Very Good, Actually for television.

Georgina Moore, Garnett Girls

Georgina Moore, 50, is a book publicist who has worked with some of the biggest names in the business, including Adele Parks, Maggie O’Farrell and Patrick Gale. Books are part of her legacy – her father ran a small academic publishing house and took her to the London Book Fair as a child. But in her adult life, she became familiar with the industry, with what it requires of authors and how much they have to work to promote their books, and this pushed her away from trying to write her own book.

She then spotted the perfect place for romance: an old beach house on the Isle of Wight where she and her partner have a boat. The result is a whimsical family saga about journalist Margot Garnett, her three thirty-year-old daughters, their alcoholic father, and a home that beckons them back no matter how far they run. Garnett’s Isle of Wight is more of a Hampton than a mockery, and Moore’s expressive prose makes it easy to see why The Garnett Girls is compared to the works of commercial fiction queens Penny Vincenzi and Maeve Binci.

Moore and her family live mostly on a boat in London. She celebrated the sale of her book by buying Betsy, a small canal boat, which she moored near where she is now writing her second novel.

K Patrick, “Mrs. C”

Patrick, 36, is a former landscaper living on the Isle of Lewis and a recent graduate of the Creative Writing Master’s program at the University of Glasgow. He wrote most of the first draft of “Mrs. C” in just three months.

The main character is a young Australian who comes to England to take a job at an elite girls’ boarding school, where she begins an affair during a hot summer. Strong physical emotions and the novel’s stylish, gritty prose make a compelling pair, as protagonist Patrick struggles with an emerging identity.

Santanu Bhattacharya, One Little Voice

One Little Voice is set in contemporary India and spans three decades and multiple cities, offering a whole universe of emotions. The action of the book starts at 1992 and describes the time of the rise of nationalism and the country engulfed in unrest.

The main character, Shubhankar Trivedi, is a ten-year-old boy who lives with his family in the northern city of Lucknow. One day, he witnesses a horrifying act of violence that will change him forever and cast a shadow over his difficult and traumatic path to adulthood.

41-year-old Bhattacharya grew up in India and moved to the UK seven years ago to study for a master’s degree in public policy from Oxford. He now lives in London and works as an educational consultant. He has already received several awards for his writing, including the 2021 Mo Sivcharran Prize and the Life Writing Prize.

Dear Friends! Subscribe to our VKontakte group , where we publish the most interesting facts about cities and countries of the world. Here is one of them:

how the hops that changed the face of beer appeared

Citra hops began to be used a little over ten years ago, and today it is very difficult to imagine what craft brewing would be like without it. VinePair tells how this variety rose to the top of popularity.

In 2010, Fred Miller Pub, a place for Miller Brewing employees, put a new beer on tap. At first glance, this was nothing remarkable. The company’s Milwaukee facility has a test brewery that regularly releases exclusive beers to staff and patrons in the name of research and innovation. But this beer – an IPA with 70 IBUs and dry hopped at 1. 5 kg per 100 liters – stood out from the usual Miller beers. And it had a funny and provocative name – Wild Ting.

“That beer was great,” says Dr. Patrick Ting, former hop specialist at MillerCoors, after whom the beer was named. It tasted like white wine to me. It also had mango and lychee flavors. Many people liked it.

This beer, brewed with an experimental hop variety originally known as 9148-114, had a fresh citrus aroma and tropical fruit flavor that was cutting edge at the time. As Dr. Thing recalls, quite a few colleagues found its taste too strong – some called it “cat’s”. However, Wild Ting IPA seemed different to him – and this other was great. In over 30 years of studying hops at Miller and MillerCoors, he has never tasted anything quite as unusual.

Three or four years earlier, he had persuaded the company’s management to contract a test site for this hop variety after he tested it in trial brews. MillerCoors did this in 2007 and sponsored the Hop Breeding Company (HBC) to plant two acres of hops. The experimental strain was named HBC 394. Today we call it Citra.

Citra is one of the world’s most popular hops and has played a role in popularizing the IPA. MillerCoors was unable to find applications for this variety, but four other companies – Widmer Brothers, Sierra Nevada, Boulevard and Deschutes – funded its development, and this provided the variety with a great future. They decided to take a risk and thus influenced the development of modern brewing and hop-growing. Over the past 14 years, and especially in the last six or seven years, Citra has gone from being a test variety to arguably the most popular hop in the world—giving rise to modern-day hazy fever and consumer greed for Other Half, WeldWerks, Tree House, and many other breweries.

Citra is now easy to find. A top popular IPA that doesn’t have these important hops is another thing to look for. It’s found in other styles as well, from blondes and witbeers to farmhouse ales, and it’s even featured in Canada’s Labatt Blue Mass Camp. Michael Ferguson, director of the Haas Hop Breeding Program, says that Citra in beer is like autotune.

“Citra gets along well with everyone at the IPA party,” says Cloudburst Brewing founder and head brewer Steve Luke. – This variety can be a star, it can be an ordinary figure, and sometimes you can not even feel it. Citra’s impact on taste is also incredibly predictable. There is no other variety that pairs better with other American hops. Citra makes many other hops more fruity, blends with them and softens them.

Luke has been using Citra for over a decade and still sings the praises of the wonderful flavor notes of fresh yellow peach, mandarin and apricot. He calls the character of this hop unpretentious and clean, without smeared undertones and persistent bitterness. Luke uses Citra in about 80 percent of his popular hop varieties. At the 2020 Great American Beer Festival, the jury awarded Cloudburst a silver medal in the hazy imperial IPA category for Not a Scientist, brewed with Strata, Mosaic and, of course, Citra.

Citra was created in 1990 by Gene Probasco as a new hybrid. Wanting to try something new, he cross-pollinated a “brother” and “sister” from the same Hallertauer Mittelfrüh family. The resulting plants were not very productive, but he liked the shape and weight of the buds and their high lupulin content, which is important for brewers. Probasco, who founded and led the agronomy and breeding program at John I. Haas from 1978 until his retirement in 2016, was interested in the new aromatic varieties but failed to find customers for them. In the 1980s and 1990s, hops were a consumable commodity, not like they are now, when hop varieties have become brands that are marketed to thousands of breweries seeking new flavors for their creations.

“When I got into the business, the American hop industry was 100 percent alpha, there was just a little bit of Fuggle,” says Probasco. His employer was developing new hop varieties for large brewing companies that didn’t really need hops with a grapefruit character. They needed consistent quality and quantity.

– At first it was just me. Back then, we didn’t do much with microbrewers. I just thought it was an interesting variety and we left it in the field.

With little interest from buyers, Citra remained in the field for more than ten years. But even after Haas merged its hop breeding program with Select Botanicals Group (a division of Yakima Chief Hops) to create HBC, Probasco left a few plants on what he calls a museum, out of sight, out of mind. And then, at the beginning of the 2000s, he was approached by Dr. Ting, who was looking for something new. Probasco, meanwhile, has quietly taken to small breweries, talking about the variety at industry events.

“In 2005, I started attending Hop Research Council meetings,” says Tom Nielsen, research and raw materials manager at Sierra Nevada Brewing, California. Jin quietly took people aside and tried to get them to cooperate. We experimented with this variety for about a year. Haas even gave us rhizomes, the biggest and juiciest I’ve ever seen.

The Sierra Nevada Brewery planted Citra in their hop farm in Chico and used the variety in several strains, including a couple of years in Estate Ale. But another beer from Citra caught my attention. Around the time Nielsen got his hands on the HBC 394, Sierra Nevada was working on a powerful draft-only beer that was somewhere between an IPA and a double IPA. It used a bunch of Crystal and Magnum hops. While experimenting with different dry hopping combinations and a new piece of equipment called the hop torpedo to extract more resins and oils, the brewery found a missing ingredient in the recipe.

“Citra made beer brighter,” Nielsen recalls. “It was like being punched in the face.

Sierra Nevada added Citra dry hopped Torpedo Extra IPA to the range in early 2009of the year. It was the first change to the brewery’s permanent range since 1980, and the Torpedo has been in service for 12 years now. That same year, 560 km north of the Deschutes brewery, Fresh Squeezed IPA appeared on taps for the first time. Basic hop? Citra again. The Deschutes brewers started doing trial brews with this beer in 2006 and they liked the result. When Fresh Squeezed became popular with consumers as well, they realized there was something to it.

“Citra is the protagonist of the Fresh Squeezed story,” says Veronica Vega, director of product development at Deschutes. “He created the beer, he inspired the name, and he became that instant huge success that every brewer dreams of. In addition to the unique taste and aroma, Citra has a powerful effect. It looks like he’s punching him in the face.

Four years after the launch of the bottled version, Deschutes introduced Fresh Squeezed in bottles. The variety instantly soared to the top of sales and remains there until now. Later, the success of Fresh Squeezed and the expansion of Citra’s supplies prompted the brewery to launch a pale ale called Lil’ Squeezy, as well as an Imperial IPA, Royal Fresh. Meanwhile, Sierra Nevada, building on Torpedo’s experience, released Tropical Torpedo, a less potent IPA with an intense Citra fruity character and several newer hops.

In 2009, Washington hop growers harvested 40 hectares of Citra and it was quickly snapped up by several craft brewers. Just four years later, the area has grown to 525 hectares, plus another 7.5 hectares in Idaho. The world knew about this unusual variety and there was enough demand for the achievement of Probasco. Back then, brewers took IPAs in a new direction, creating hazy, juicy beers with a softer texture and much less bitterness than their predecessors. In 2020, Citra accounted for about 19% of the total hop acreage in Washington, Oregon and Idaho. With an area of ​​almost 4.5 thousand hectares, it bypasses all other varieties far.

“Citra already has a much larger share than Cascade had in 2015, both in terms of planted area and yield,” says Jakey Brophy, director of marketing and communications for hop growers association Hop Growers of America. – Cascade, which has been ranked first for many years, fell to fifth in 2020. Citra is now securely entrenched in first place. Between it and the second largest variety is more than 1900 hectares.

Industry experts believe that the area under Citra will continue to grow, although perhaps not as impressive as in recent years. Recently, other new flavor hops have attracted interest, such as Mosaic (HBC 369), Strata and Idaho 7. Mosaic harvested 2,224 hectares last year, making it the third largest crop in the US. Still, as much as some brewers would like to use something new in beer, Citra’s popularity shows no signs of fading, thanks in large part to its “friendliness”.

From a strain that was gathering dust in a hop museum two decades ago, Citra has become a favorite among brewers and consumers and has secured a place in breweries and taprooms for the foreseeable future.

Steve Luke also believes that the growth of Citra plantings and the rise of cloudy IPAs are closely related.