Bookends

Marc Straus, 73. PHOTO: COURTESY OF MARC STRAUS

Who: Marc Straus, 73, gallery owner

New Yorker Marc Straus is an oncologist, published poet and art collector. In 2011, he opened an eponymous art gallery in the Big Apple, focusing on emerging international art and mature artists who have not been shown in decades.

On the gallery's roster are artists such as Emil Alzamora, a sculptor from Florida whose works have been reviewed by publications such as The New York Times, and Entang Wiharso, an Indonesian artist based in Rhode Island whose works showcase the understanding of the human condition.

His gallery will be participating in Art Stage Singapore 2016 at Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre from Jan 20 to 24.

He will also conduct a talk at ARNDT Gallery in Gillman Barracks on Jan 23, covering topics such as optimising returns in the art market and running a private museum.

What are you reading right now?

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. It is a 1996 memoir by the Irish author about his impoverished childhood and early adulthood as he struggled with his father's alcoholism in Brooklyn, New York, and Limerick, Ireland.

This is relevant as I have just completed a memoir of when I was aged 10 to 12.

It's going out to publishers and I wanted to read this book again to see what I felt after I had completed mine. How does one succeed in making a compelling full-length book about a kid?

What books would you save from a burning house?

Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Perhaps it is not read as much these days, but it was crucial to me as a child growing up. How do kids make their own way and what do they glean from a world so new to them?

Like so many refugee children today, Huck was on his own.

•Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt (1999, Scribner, $13.76) and Adventures Of Huckleberry Finnby Mark Twain (1994, Dover Publications, $5.80) are available on amazon.com.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Sunday Times on January 17, 2016, with the headline Bookends. Subscribe