Problem: Background: Leslie Feist was born on 13 February 1976 in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada. Her parents are both artists. Her father, Harold Feist, is an American-Canadian abstract expressionist painter who taught at both the Alberta College of Art and Design and Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. Her mother, Lyn Feist, was a student of ceramics from Saskatchewan.
Context: In 1991, at age 15, Feist got her start in music when she founded and was the lead vocalist for a Calgary punk band called Placebo (not to be confused with the English band Placebo). She and her bandmates won a local Battle of the Bands competition and were awarded the opening slot at the festival Infest 1993, featuring the Ramones. At this concert she met Brendan Canning, whose band hHead performed immediately before hers, and with whom she joined in Broken Social Scene ten years later. In 1995, Feist was forced to take time off from music to recover from vocal cord damage. She moved from Calgary to Toronto in 1996. That year she was asked by Noah Mintz of hHead to play bass in his solo project Noah's Arkweld. She played the bass guitar in Noah's Arkweld for a year despite never having played bass before. In 1998, she became the rhythm guitarist for the band By Divine Right and toured with them throughout 1998, 1999, and 2000. She also played guitar for some live performances by Bodega, but was never an official member of the band. In 1999, Feist moved into a Queen West apartment above Come As You Are with a friend of a friend, Merrill Nisker, who then began to perform as electro-punk musician Peaches. Feist worked the back of the stage at Peaches' shows, using a sock puppet and calling herself "Bitch Lap Lap". The two also toured together in England from 2000-2001, staying with Justine Frischmann of Elastica and MIA Feist appeared as a guest vocalist on The Teaches of Peaches. Feist appears in Peaches' video for the song "Lovertits", suggestively rubbing and licking a bike. Later, Feist covered this song with Gonzales (whom she met while touring with Peaches) on her album Open Season. In 2006, Feist contributed backup vocals on a track entitled "Give 'Er", which appeared on Peaches' album Impeach My Bush.
Question: what happened to her vocal cords?
Answer:

Problem: Background: Allen was born Allan Stewart Konigsberg in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York. He and his sister, Letty (b. 1943), were raised in Midwood, Brooklyn. He is the son of Nettie (nee Cherry; November 8, 1906 - January 27, 2002), a bookkeeper at her family's delicatessen, and Martin Konigsberg (December 25, 1900 - January 8, 2001), a jewelry engraver and waiter. His family was Jewish, and his grandparents immigrated to the US from Russia and Austria and spoke Yiddish, Hebrew, and German.
Context: In 1966, Allen wrote the play Don't Drink the Water. The play starred Lou Jacobi, Kay Medford, Anita Gillette and Allen's future movie co-star Tony Roberts. A film adaptation of the play, directed by Howard Morris, was released in 1969, starring Jackie Gleason. Because he was not particularly happy with the 1969 film version of his play, in 1994, Allen directed and starred in a second version for television, with Michael J. Fox and Mayim Bialik. The next play Allen wrote for Broadway was Play It Again, Sam, in which he also starred. The play opened on February 12, 1969, and ran for 453 performances. It featured Diane Keaton and Roberts. The play was significant to Keaton's budding career, and she has stated she was in "awe" of Allen even before auditioning for her role, which was the first time she met him. During an interview in 2013, Keaton stated that she "fell in love with him right away," adding, "I wanted to be his girlfriend so I did something about it." After co-starring alongside Allen in the subsequent film version of Play It Again, Sam, she would later co-star in Sleeper, Love and Death, Interiors, Manhattan and Annie Hall. "He showed me the ropes and I followed his lead. He is the most disciplined person I know. He works very hard," Keaton has stated. "I find the same thing sexy in a man now as I always have: humor. I love it when they are funny. It's to die for." For its March 21, 1969, issue, Life featured Allen on its cover. In 1981, his play The Floating Light Bulb premiered on Broadway and ran for 65 performances. While receiving mixed reviews, it gave an autobiographical insight into Allen's childhood, specifically his fascination with magic tricks. He has written several one-act plays, including Riverside Drive and Old Saybrook exploring well-known Allen themes. On October 20, 2011, Allen's one-act play Honeymoon Motel opened as part of a larger piece entitled Relatively Speaking on Broadway, with two other one-act plays, one by Ethan Coen and one by Elaine May.
Question: Did he have any success as a playwright?
Answer: Play It Again, Sam, in which he also starred. The play opened on February 12, 1969, and ran for 453 performances.

Problem: Background: Cronin was born in Cardross, Dunbartonshire, Scotland, the only child of a Protestant mother, Jessie Cronin (nee Montgomerie), and a Catholic father, Patrick Cronin. Cronin often wrote of young men from similarly mixed backgrounds. His paternal grandparents had emigrated from County Armagh, Ireland, and become glass and china merchants in Alexandria. Owen Cronin, his grandfather, had had his surname changed from Cronague in 1870.
Context: In 1930 Cronin was diagnosed with a chronic duodenal ulcer and was told that he must take six months' complete rest in the country on a milk diet. At Dalchenna Farm by Loch Fyne he was finally able to indulge his lifelong desire to write a novel, having previously "written nothing but prescriptions and scientific papers". From Dalchenna Farm he travelled to Dumbarton to research the background of his first novel, using the files of Dumbarton Library, which still has the letter from Cronin requesting advice. He composed Hatter's Castle in the span of three months, and the manuscript was quickly accepted by Gollancz, the only publishing house to which it had been submitted (it was apparently chosen when his wife randomly stuck a pin into a list of publishers). This novel, which was an immediate and sensational success, launched Cronin's career as a prolific author, and he never returned to practising medicine. Many of Cronin's books were bestsellers in their day and have been translated into many languages. Some of his stories draw on his medical career, dramatically mixing realism, romance and social criticism. Cronin's works examine moral conflicts between the individual and society, as his idealistic heroes pursue justice for the common man. One of his early novels, The Stars Look Down (1935), chronicles transgressions in a mining community in Northeast England and an ambitious miner's rise to be a Member of Parliament. A prodigiously fast writer, Cronin liked to average 5,000 words a day, meticulously planning the details of his plots in advance. He was known to be tough in business dealings, although in private life he was a person whose "pawky humour ... peppered his conversations," according to one of his editors, Peter Haining. Cronin also contributed many stories and essays to various international publications. During the Second World War he worked for the British Ministry of Information, writing articles as well as participating in radio broadcasts to foreign countries.
Question: when did he start his writing career?
Answer:
In 1930