2013 Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced

The 2013 Pulitzer Prize winners for letters, drama, and music were announced Monday, April 15.   The  award for fiction went to Adam Johnson for his novel The Orphan Master’s Son, cited as an “exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart.” Pakistani-American Ayad Akhtar’s play Disgraced about “a successful corporate lawyer whose deep-seated self-loathing is fully revealed at a dinner party” won the Pulitzer in the drama category. Mr. Akhtar has also written the novel American Dervish and is working on another novel and play. For history, Cornell professor Fredrik Logevall won for Embers of War which was noted as a “balanced, deeply researched history” into the Vietnam conflict.  Other Pulitzers were given to Tom Reiss for his biography The Black Count, Sharon Olds for her work of poetry Stag’s Leap , Gilbert King for his nonfiction book Devil in the Grove, and Caroline Shaw’s for her music Partita for 8 Voice. You can  see the complete list of winners and finalists in this NYT article. Also check out Hedy Weiss’s article in the Chicago Sun-Times on Mr. Akhtar’s play which had its world premiere  at Chicago’s American Theater Company in January 2012.

Laura

“The Balcony is Closed”- Roger Ebert, 1942-2013

Popular and Pulitzer-Prize winning film reviewer Roger Ebert died Thursday after a long battle with cancer at the age of 70. Film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, Ebert was well known for his trademark thumbs-up/thumbs-down PBS television show he co-hosted first with the late Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune and then with his Sun-Times colleague Richard Roeper. He won a Pulitzer in 1975 for distinguished criticism (“the first, and one of only three, given to a film reviewer since the category was created in 1970.”) And in 2005, he  became the first critic to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Despite cancer surgeries which resulted in losing his ability to speak,   eat, and drink he resumed his writing and television work. Author of more than 20 books, Ebert also noted in his 2011 memoir Life Itself  that he considered himself “beneath everything else a fan.” Tributes have been pouring in from filmmakers such as Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese,  Ron Howard, and colleagues as well as Chicago’s Mayor Emanuel and President Obama. Director Steven Spielberg summed it up best: “Roger’s passing is virtually the end of an era and now the balcony is closed forever.” Read the complete article here which includes special memories, quotes, and some of his best-known reviews. And check the EPL catalog for books by him.

Laura

The Marilyn Monroe Mystique

On August 5, 1962 Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her Los Angeles home at the age of 36. And although she’s been dead for 50 years, her mystique grows stronger every year. New fiction and non-fiction books, including Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox and The Empty Glass, continue to be published, a Marilyn Monroe makeup collection is due in October, and  a seven-disc boxed set of her films have just been released on Blu-ray. 20th Century Fox cinematographer Leon Shamroy summed up the Monroe mystique best when he shot her first screen test in 1946: “I got a cold chill,” he said at the time. “This girl had something else — something I hadn’t seen since silent pictures. She didn’t need a soundtrack to tell her story.” And the mystery of her death just adds to the intrigue. Check out the article in the August 2nd Chicago Sun-Times.

Laura

Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012

Known as the master of science fiction, Ray Bradbury died Tuesday at the age of 91. More than eight million copies of his books were sold during his lifetime, including the short-story collections The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man and The Golden Apples of the Sun, and the novels Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Born in Waukegan, Illinois, he and his family moved to California when he was 13. “Waukegan had everything that was good about a small town,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times in a 1991 interview. “ There’s a park in Waukegan named in his honor. Mr. Bradbury was presented with the National Medal of  Arts in 2004 and received a special Pulitzer citation in 2007 “for his distinguished, prolific and deeply influential career as an unmatched author of science fiction and fantasy.” You can read the entire New York Times article here. For more of Mr. Bradbury’s works check the EPL catalog.

Richard Roeper’s column in today’s (June 7) Chicago Sun-Times is also worth reading.

Laura