Project Runway contestants are no strangers to Atlas; the building’s owner and developer, Gotham Organization, has housed the contestants there since Season One, except for Season Six, when the show filmed in Los Angeles, and Season Four, when the Project Runway digs were at the developer’s Hell’s Kitchen modern rental building New Gotham. As in years past, when they weren’t toiling over sewing machines, contestants enjoyed access to the Atlas New York’s 24-hour personalized concierge service as well as to all the generous perks the Gotham lifestyle offers, including full use of the Atlas Fitness Club and Lounge with complimentary daily breakfast, and the stunning panoramic views on the 48th floor Atlas Sky Terrace.

Gotham Organization is credited with being the pioneer of providing building residents with innovative amenities that go well beyond the “standard” fare such as a gym or tenants’ lounge. For example, they are widely known for their popular Open A.I.R. summer rooftop concert series, which taps coveted artists to perform on the Atlas Sky Terrace; past performers have included Lady Gaga, Ellie Goulding and ZZ Ward, among many others. Lucky residents also enjoy spa treatments, yoga classes, film screenings, wine tastings and more. Gotham Organization’s portfolio of luxury rental properties includes Atlas New York at 66 W. 38th St., the Nicole at 400 W. 55th St. and New Gotham at 520 W. 43rd St.

Interested renters can now benefit from the recent launch of LivingGotham.com, the new online hub for Gotham Organization’s exceptional Midtown rental properties. LivingGotham.com provides a centralized location for all of Gotham Organization’s properties, and features a widget allowing prospective renters to search availabilities, view floor plans and make appointments, while offering current tenants access to exclusive event listings held across all Gotham buildings.

It also features a time-lapse video of the construction of Gotham West, an amenity-rich residential complex spanning nearly an entire city block, at 510-550 W. 45th St., boasting 1,238 rental apartments from studios to three-bedrooms. The property will open this spring.

After thirteen years teaching at the New School, Luis Jaramillo has helped his fair share of students get book deals. Now, with The Doctor’s Wife (Dzank), the Fort Greene, Brooklyn resident, who lives with his boyfriend of eleven years, has released his own. During an interview at his Greenwich Village office, Jaramillo, 37, explained why being in the heart of New York’s publishing community can sometimes be depressing.

JV: Has there been an advantage to being at the center the writing world with your job at the New School?

LJ: Going to publishing events always makes me really depressed because the way the editors talk about books is different than the way the writers talk about books. Editors and agents talk about books purely about how something can be sold. That’s the opposite of how many writers view books. To spend all your time writing something, you have to really like what you’re doing.

The poetic novel is set in the Pacific North-West.  Although it recently became a book of the week on Oprah’s Book Club, it’s not exactly John Grisham or Tom Clancy territory. How did you get it published?

When I first showed the book to my agent he said, “Sometimes writers write things that they only write for themselves.” Of course we want to sell the things we write but it’s hard to write a something that you’re not emotionally vested in. I put this book aside for year. Then my grandmother died and I thought, “Screw it, I’m just going to send this thing out. What’s the difference, who cares?” Basically I sent this book out as a manuscript for the Dzank literary contest in 2010 and totally forgot about it and got a call three months later from Dan Wicket, the editor of Dzank Books. I’d won and they wanted to publish my book. They are a small publisher from Ann Arbor, Michigan known for their experimental fiction.

You started off as a student at the New School and are now the Associate Chair of the writing program. Did you get free tuition?

In a way. While I was doing my MFA at the New School I started working as a receptionist. After the MFA I worked as a secretary and did some teaching. When the Creative Director of the writing program left, I was offered the job which was around 7 years ago.

Name some of the authors who have changed your life.

Abigail Thomas,  Mark Twain, Graham Greene, Tolstoy. Hilton Als and Abigail Thomas were great teachers. I got to know them well. Abi’s advice to me was “Everything can be used” which is a nice way of living in the world as a writer. Hilton’s advice was “write everyday.”

I heard you are also a yoga instructor?

Yes it’s something that runs alongside everything else I do. It helps you live in the world in a mindful way.

What’s your advice to aspiring writers?

Write a book. I teach a novel class and I meet lots of people who want to write a book and a lot of times they think that an idea is all that they need. You really have to put the time and effort into it and then, good luck. Persistence can never be under estimated. My advice is “keep on trying.”

By Courtney Holbrook

Grace Lee Boggs, a 96-year-old civic activist, has spent her life on the front line of almost every progressive movement in the last century, supporting the rights of women, minorities and workers. A resident of Detroit, Lee Boggs has just released a new book, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century. Boggs offers ideas for this generation of activists and plans for the problems of today. We sat down with Boggs to talk about activism, her history and advice for Occupy Wall Street members.

Tell us about your latest book. What makes this American Revolution different?

GLB: Well, I think it’s important to understand that we begin with a chapter in [the book] that says: “These are the times to grow our souls.” Most people don’t think of revolution in terms of growing our souls. I think it would be helpful to understand that the times we are in for this revolution are very different from what people usually associate with revolution. What I think is taking place is that we are at a very important historical transition at a cultural level that is as far-reaching and as essential as from hunting and gathering to agriculture 11,000 years ago.

Most people think of revolution in a vertical way, in terms of the Russian Revolution and the seizure of state power. We have just come through the 20th century, where those revolutions have turned out to be colossal failures in terms of creating tremendous dictatorships. People have wondered whether it was possible to make a revolution.

We are in the midst of a transformation of a fundamental nature, because the industrial age is coming to an end, particularly in a place like Detroit—a city that was once a national and international symbol of the miracles of industrialization and then became the national and international symbol of the devastation of deindustrialization. It is now in the midst of revitalizing itself, rebuilding itself, respiriting itself from the ground up in a way that people hadn’t expected.

You have been a supporter of Occupy Wall Street. Can you give us your opinion of how the movement stands today?

Well, as it happens, the Occupy Movement was a facilitator here of the movement in Detroit and the new book. I talk about it a great deal—I think it’s fantastic and I love what it has managed to do in terms of changing the conversation. But I think it has changed the activism to such a degree that it has not really encouraged people who are involved in the movement to imagine alternatives. I think that the Occupy Movement is going to have to begin doing more with imagination, and a reimagination of alternatives.

What advice would you give to young activists involved in Occupy and other movements? How can they reimagine?

I urge them to consider what time it is on the clock of the world. That is the first question I think you have to ask yourself; otherwise, you think that you only respond, react to everything. You watch the response to the Trayvon Martin murder in Sanford, Fla. We must understand that the murder of Trayvon in 2012 is very different from the murder of Emmett Till in 1955. We are at a very different time on the clock of the world.

The murder of Emmett Till in 1955 sparked the public bus boycott a few months later, which was the spark for the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement began to change a lot of things in our country. It brought about a kind of revolution in values, which has in turn brought about a kind of counter-revolution, which I think has brought about the movements today—we’re seeing these responses to Trayvon and the Occupy movement.

You are a Chinese-American woman. What made you become involved in the black power movement and the Civil Rights Movement?

Well, when the Civil Rights Movement started and I became an activist, the number of Asian Americans in this country was minuscule. There was nothing like an Asian-American movement, but the African-American movement was beginning.

I was challenged to become a part of it because I was living rent-free in a basement where I had to chase down a barricade of rats in order to get into my quarters. That made me very rat-conscious and brought me into contact with the black community, which was also fighting against poor housing. That in turn put me in touch with the March on Washington movement, which was demanding jobs for blacks in the defense industry. The Depression had ended for white folks in 1940 and ’41, but not for blacks. They were still excluded from well-paying jobs in industries. When I joined the March on Washington movement, which actually did not result in a march but terrified the White House and Franklin D. Roosevelt to such a degree that he issued an order banning discrimination against African Americans in the defense industry. When I saw what a movement could do, I decided I would become a movement activist.

You’ve done more in the past 10 years than some people do in their lifetime. Have you ever thought, “Well, I’ve done my part, it’s time to settle down”?

Well, I’m very old. I’m almost 97. I’m hard of hearing. I have a lot of weakness. Getting around is very difficult. I mostly need a wheelchair. I realize that there are limitations. On the other hand, I know I have a tremendous amount of energy to have lived for as long as I have lived and to have experienced as much as I have experienced. I have never wondered about having another life.

Can you talk about your appearance on April 22 at the New School?

That’s going to be a conversation between myself, faculty member Bill Gaskins and student Melina Pelaya. It will be a panel discussion. The New School is the kind of school that aims to be progressive. John Dewey, who was a hero of mine, helped found it. His writing was extremely important to me.

What book should every young person read?

I have two favorites. One is Hegel’s Phenomenology, which was written in 1831 and deals with the expansion of the human being and the human spirit. Another one that I think is a really fabulous book of this time is The Third World, by Alvin Toffler, which has been a bestseller for many years and which you can pick up at any second-hand store for practically nothing.

What Toffler points out is that we have had three waves of civilization. The first wave was the agricultural wave; it’s when everything was based on the land. The second was the industrial age, where you have the people working to produce on the assembly line. You get a lot of standardization and specialization and concentration and centralization in that period. That period is now coming to an end, and we’re entering something called the third wave, where there is a link between the producer and the consumer and you have the intervention of the markets. That is where we are going now in the world.

Grace Lee Boggs will speak at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium (66 W. 12th St., betw. 5th & 6th Aves.) Sunday, April 22 at 6 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, email socialjustice@newschool.edu.