Murphy ekes out win in NJ, GOP's Youngkin upsets in Virginia
Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey narrowly won reelection in his reliably blue state while a Republican political newcomer delivered a stunning upset in the Virginia governor’s race, sending a warning to Democrats that their grip on power in Washington may be in peril.
GOP Virginia governor candidate airs new ad starring a parent who wanted to remove Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' from schools because it gave her nearly college-aged son nightmares
Laura Murphy, featured in an ad for candidate Glenn Youngkin, fought to require schools to notify parents about books containing sexual content.
news.yahoo.comKaren Tei Yamashita to receive honorary National Book Award
The National Book Foundation announced Friday that Karen Tei Yamashita has been awarded its medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a $10,000 honor previously given to Toni Morrison, Robert Caro and Isabel Allende among others.
American Academy of Arts and Letters expands, diversifies
(AP Photo)NEW YORK – One of the country's oldest cultural instititutions, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, is undergoing some of its biggest changes in more than a century. AdHarjo, the first Native American to be appointed U.S. poet laureate, said she looked forward to having an influence on future academy choices. “There are so many incredible Native visual artists,” she told the AP, while also citing such authors as N. Scott Momaday and Leslie Marmon Silko. But the academy will still call itself an academy, while working to make itself more accessible to artists and to the general public. Besides choosing members, the academy also gives dozens of prizes and grants each year, totalling more than $1 million.
Women's Hall of Fame honors Aretha Franklin, Morrison, Lacks
The National Women's Hall of Fame was founded in 1969 in Seneca Falls, the site of the first women’s rights convention. She won 18 Grammy awards and, in 1987, became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She was 75 years old when she became the first Black woman to set foot on the North Pole, and stood on the South Pole five years later. Born during the Civil War, Terrell was a dedicated suffragist whose civil rights activism continued up until her death in 1954 at the age of 90. Terrell was the first Black woman in the United States appointed to the school board of a major city, the District of Columbia.
`The books that help her through': Winfrey suggests seven
NEW YORK – With Election Day approaching and the pandemic ongoing, Oprah Winfrey is setting aside her usual book club recommendations and instead citing seven personal favorites, ranging from James Baldwin's landmark essays in “The Fire Next Time” to Mary Oliver's poetry collection “Devotions.”Winfrey is calling her choices “The Books That Help Me Through," works she values for “their ability to comfort, inspire, and enlighten.”"It’s a mix of fiction, poetry, non-fiction and spirituality, books I know and trust and revisit time and again,” she said in a statement Monday. Winfrey had planned a new choice every two months; her previous selection, Isabel Wilkerson's “Caste,” was announced in early August. Winfrey spokesperson Chelsea Hettrick said the seven books announced Monday would serve as “a bridge between selections,” and that no firm timeline had been set for future choices. “This year has brought such unprecedented change overall. We will re-evaluate in the coming weeks the selection plan and timing for the remainder of 2020,” she said.
Alexie, Pilkey books among most 'challenged' of past decade
FILE - In this Oct. 10, 2016 file photo, author and filmmaker Sherman Alexie appears at a celebration of Indigenous Peoples' Day at Seattle's City Hall. Alexie is included in a list of authors who wrote books that were among the 100 most subjected to censorship efforts over the past decade, as compiled by the American Library Association. All wrote books that were among the 100 most subjected to censorship efforts over the past decade, as compiled by the American Library Association. The association does not formally count the number of times books are actually removed from a library shelf or from a school reading list. “There are actually two lines of objections to the Anne Frank diary,” Caldwell-Stone says.
Walter Mosley to receive honorary National Book Award
NEW YORK Walter Mosley is receiving an honorary National Book Award, cited for dozens of books which range from science fiction and erotica to the acclaimed mystery series that has followed the life of Los Angeles private detective Ezekiel Easy Rawlins. The National Book Awards are presented by the non-profit National Book Foundation. But like such previous medal winners as Ray Bradbury and Elmore Leonard, he has never been nominated for a National Book Award in a competitive category. Mosley knows well the reason: Crime fiction is usually bypassed when lists for a years best books are considered. In a statement Thursday, National Book Foundation Executive Director Lisa Lucas noted the quantity, and quality, of Mosley's work.
New literary prize is $50,000 honor for best New York story
NEW YORK A new literary award with a $50,000 cash prize will honor those best at telling a New York story. Wolfson and Tusk are funding the prize themselves and have committed to at least 10 years. Starting next spring, the award will be presented to a book, fiction or nonfiction, published in a given calendar year that is about New York City or takes place there. Celebrated works of the past that would have fit that category include Robert Caro's The Power Broker, Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities and Toni Morrison's Jazz.Jurors for the Gotham prize include filmmaker Ric Burns, poet Safina Sinclair and former New York City schools chancellor Dennis Walcott. The deadline for submissions for the 2020 prize is Nov. 1.
Library of Congress to honor author Colson Whitehead
NEW YORK Colson Whitehead keeps winning awards. Already this year's recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Orwell Prize for political fiction, Whitehead is now being honored by the Library of Congress. On Monday, it announced that he had won the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. Whitehead, 50, is the youngest winner of the lifetime achievement prize, which the library has previously given to Toni Morrison, Philip Roth and Denis Johnson, among others. He is the first author to win Pulitzers for consecutive works of fiction The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, for which he won in April.
Rosanne Cash wins prestigious MacDowell arts medal
FILE - In this May 22, 2018, file photo, Rosanne Cash attends the 2018 PEN Literary Gala in New York. The singer-songwriter is this year's winner of the Edward MacDowell Medal, presented by the MacDowell artist colony, which announced the prize Sunday, May 17, 2020. The singer-songwriter is this year's winner of the Edward MacDowell Medal, presented by the MacDowell artist colony, which announced the prize Sunday. In a statement issued through MacDowell, Cash said she was profoundly humbled to receive an award that Morrison and others had been given. Cash will be formally honored at the MacDowell colony, based in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
Small free libraries offering solace amid virus shutdowns
Across the United States, volunteers are reporting a jump in little free libraries as readers look to pass the time. Since 2009, tens of thousands of little free libraries have sprung up in the U.S. and more than 100 countries. In rural areas, where broadband internet is sparse, the little free libraries may be only place to find a Toni Morrison novel. We have definitely seen an increase in use, said John Sweet, who helps oversee a free library in Bend, Oregon. Janelle Will of Akron, Michigan, said her tiny farm village of 300 people doesnt have a public library, but its free library remains busy.
Poet Aja Monet Launches Holistic Online Reading Series: Healing Should Never Be Commodified
Many of Morrison's daughters and sons in writing have taken her words to heart and are putting them into practice. Monet has been working with poets and artists from across the nation for more than 15 years, so it comes as no surprise to see her rise to America's current challenge. "Healing belongs to the people and should never be commodified or weaponized," Monet says, pointing to a healthcare system designed so that the nation's poorest are continually paying the highest cost. This means that however we respond to this moment as artists and poets must be in an effort to commune." "Whatever we imagine is real, so this is the time where artists decolonize the collective imagination we create," Monet says.
browardpalmbeach.comPoet Aja Monet Launches Holistic Online Reading Series: Healing Should Never Be Commodified
Many of Morrison's daughters and sons in writing have taken her words to heart and are putting them into practice. Monet has been working with poets and artists from across the nation for more than 15 years, so it comes as no surprise to see her rise to America's current challenge. "Healing belongs to the people and should never be commodified or weaponized," Monet says, pointing to a healthcare system designed so that the nation's poorest are continually paying the highest cost. This means that however we respond to this moment as artists and poets must be in an effort to commune." "Whatever we imagine is real, so this is the time where artists decolonize the collective imagination we create," Monet says.
miaminewtimes.comKnopf names Reagan Arthur as its new publisher
Arthur, 55, currently heads another venerable publisher, Little, Brown and Company, and will begin her new job on Feb. 11. She succeeds longtime Knopf publisher Sonny Mehta, who died in December at age 77 and had mentioned her in recent months as a worthy replacement. Like Mehta, Arthur has a long record of success. She will lead the Knopf, Schocken and Pantheon imprints and will report to Maya Mavjee, who has been named to the newly created position of president and publisher of Knopf Doubleday. Mavjee, who left Penguin Random House at the end of 2018 amid a corporate restructuring, will rejoin her old company on March 2.
Nobel Prize-winning Toni Morrison dies at 88
By Nicholas SakelarisundAug. 6 (UPI) Author Toni Morrison, the first African American to win the Nobel Prize for literature, died Monday at a New York hospital at age 88. The most meaningful thing to me personally is that at last the prize has been awarded to an African American, Morrison said in 1993. Morrisons work detailed Black life in the United States from slavery to the fight for equality. She was always proud to be a Black, female author. So it seems to me that my world did not shrink because I was a black female writer.
thewestsidegazette.comNewsletter: In El Paso, a pastors faith endures
TOP STORIESIn El Paso, a Pastors Faith EnduresPastor Michael Grady had never prayed so fervently as when he got the call Saturday telling him that his 33-year-old daughter, Michelle, was lying in a pool of blood. When he saw his daughter, it was bad: I know she wasnt OK, but I told her she was going to be OK. This is one story of faith in the aftermath of the deadly El Paso shooting. Returning to CourtCan California force President Trump to release his tax returns before he can get on the primary ballot? -- Trump is heading to Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso today in the shootings aftermath. -- The Oakland Raiders, the closest thing the NFL has to an institutional antihero, are being featured in the latest season of the HBO show Hard Knocks.OPINION-- As the El Paso massacre showed once again, white supremacy is the poison in our well.
latimes.comToni Morrison was a 'literary mother' to countless writers
For a day she could pretend to be Sula Peace, from Nobel laureate Toni Morrison 's novel "Sula," an ode to female friendship and how it can endure the most shameless betrayals. Toni Morrison died this week at age 88 and left behind countless writers for whom her characters were like close acquaintances and her stories like parables to guide them through their own lives. Edwidge Danticat, the prize-winning Haitian-American author, called her "a literary mother to generations of writers, especially black women writers like myself." To ask a writer about reading Morrison or how Morrison influenced their work is, in part, to ask why they became writers at all. Saeed Jones, a prize-winning poet whose memoir "How We Fight for Our Lives" comes out this fall, remembered repeated efforts to read "The Bluest Eye" and the Morrison novel "Tar Baby."
chicagotribune.comNobel-winning author Toni Morrison dead at 88
(Reuters) - U.S. author Toni Morrison, whose 1987 novel Beloved about a runaway slave won a Pulitzer Prize and contributed to a body of work that made her the first black woman to be presented the Nobel Prize in Literature, has died at the age of 88, her publisher said on Tuesday. FILE PHOTO: Author Toni Morrison smiles as she arrives at Rolex's Mentor and Protege gala, November 10, 2003 in New York. Morrison was born on Feb. 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, and grew up in a family with a storytelling tradition. Morrison, whose only marriage ended in divorce, taught in colleges and was an editor at the publisher Random House before writing her own books. In 2012 Morrison was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama, who called her a national treasure.
feeds.reuters.comOprah Winfrey pays tribute to Toni Morrison
Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning author Toni Morrison (R) shares a laugh with Oprah Winfrey during the annual Carl Sandburg Literary Awards Dinner in 2010, in Chicago. (CNN) - Oprah Winfrey has written a tribute to "Beloved" author Toni Morrison, who has died at 88-years-old. Toni Morrison took the word and turned it into a Song...of Solomon, of Sula, Beloved, Mercy, Paradise Love, and more," Winfrey wrote. Over the years, Morrison appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" multiple times. "It is exhilarating and life-enhancing every time I read and share her work," Winfrey concluded her tribute.
10 iconic Toni Morrison quotes to live your life by
Nobel laureate and author Toni Morrison died Monday night at the age of 88, according to her publisher Knopf. Morrison wrote such admired books like "Beloved," "Song of Solomon," "Sula" and many others, and was the first African American woman to win a Nobel Prize. Ever since the news came out of Morrison's death, many fans have been sharing some of their favorite words that Morrison wrote or said on social media and they're all incredible. From her books to speeches she made accepting prestigious awards, here are a few Morrison quotes to celebrate the life of the famed author:1. Song of Solomon, 1977.
Toni Morrison, 'Beloved' author and Nobel laureate, dies at 88
Angela Radulescu via Wikimedia Commons(CNN) - Toni Morrison, author of seminal works of literature on the black experience such as "Beloved," "Song of Solomon" and "Sula" and the first African-American woman to win a Nobel Prize, has died, her publisher Knopf confirmed to CNN. She was 88. Developing storyThe-CNN-Wire & 2019 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.
Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison dies at 88
Francois Durand / Getty ImagesNEW YORK - Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison has died. Publisher Alfred A. Knopf says Morrison died Monday night at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. She was the first black woman to receive the Nobel literature prize, awarded in 1993. The Swedish academy hailed her use of language and her "visionary force." Her novel "Beloved," in which a mother makes a tragic choice to murder her baby to save the girl from slavery, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988.
Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize winning author of "Beloved," has died at 88
Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, the author of acclaimed novels such as "Beloved" and "Song of Solomon," has died, Knopf Publishing confirmed Tuesday. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, the first African American to receive the distinction. From 2004: Toni Morrison on a writer's lifeMorrison was born Feb. 18, 1931 in Loraine, Ohio. The Morrison family issued this statement:It is with profound sadness we share that, following a short illness, our adored mother and grandmother, Toni Morrison, passed away peacefully last night surrounded by family and friends. Morrison said at her Nobel Prize address in 1993: "We die.
cbsnews.comToni Morrison, Nobel Prize winning author of "Beloved," has died at 88
Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, the author of acclaimed novels such as "Beloved" and "Song of Solomon," has died, Knopf Publishing confirmed Tuesday. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, the first African American to receive the distinction. From 2004: Toni Morrison on a writer's lifeMorrison was born Feb. 18, 1931 in Loraine, Ohio. The Morrison family issued this statement:It is with profound sadness we share that, following a short illness, our adored mother and grandmother, Toni Morrison, passed away peacefully last night surrounded by family and friends. Morrison said at her Nobel Prize address in 1993: "We die.
cbsnews.com5 worthwhile films worth checking out in Miami this week
Read on for the highest-rated films to catch, based on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer Score, which reflects the opinions of hundreds of film and television critics. Boasting a Tomatometer Score of 98% and an Audience Score of 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, "Toy Story 4" has been a must-watch since its release on June 21. With a Tomatometer Score of 97% and an Audience Score of 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, this 1975 release has been a favorite of critics. With a Tomatometer Score of 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, "Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am" has garnered plenty of praise since its release on June 21. With a Tomatometer Score of 89% and an Audience Score of 87% on Rotten Tomatoes, "Rocketman" has been garnering attention since its release on May 31.
5 worthwhile films worth checking out in Miami this week
Read on for the highest-rated films to catch, based on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer Score, which reflects the opinions of hundreds of film and television critics. Boasting a Tomatometer Score of 98% and an Audience Score of 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, "Toy Story 4" has been a must-watch since its release on June 21. With a Tomatometer Score of 97% and an Audience Score of 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, this 1975 release has been a favorite of critics. With a Tomatometer Score of 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, "Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am" has garnered plenty of praise since its release on June 21. With a Tomatometer Score of 89% and an Audience Score of 87% on Rotten Tomatoes, "Rocketman" has been garnering attention since its release on May 31.