THE FUSE

For more than four decades, Robert Kaplow has built an unconventional writing career. A novelist, longtime English teacher, radio essayist and East Coast lifer, Kaplow has spent his creative life obsessed with language — not just what words say, but how they sound, fade and linger. That obsession has now earned him his first Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay for “Blue Moon,” a wry, intimate biographical dramedy directed by Richard Linklater and starring Ethan Hawke as legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart. With it comes a permanent new prefix: Academy Award nominee.