Memoirist Mary Karr (The Liars Club, Cherry, Lit) says, "Memory is a pinball in a machine—it messily ricochets around between image, idea, fragments of scenes, stories you’ve heard. Then the machine goes tilt and snaps off." - LitHub
Shehan Karunatilaka, who won for his book The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, wrote on Instagram and Facebook, "The book took seven years to write, with countless hours of research, craft and hard work poured into it." - The Guardian (UK)
Melville had just performed at the Nottingham Playhouse in the play Nine Night. She also played a recurring character on the British soap EastEnders and was a director as well as actor. - The Hollywood Reporter
They've never been romantically linked, but they're good buddies - and it's obvious. "The genuine tenderness between them, undergirding even their tensest interactions, is ultimately what makes their co-starring turns so memorable." - The New York Times
In 2017, the Spoleto Festival asked musician Rhiannon Giddens if she wanted to write an opera about Muslim scholar Omar ibn Said. She'd never even heard of him - and she certainly hadn't written an opera. - Los Angeles Times
And will it ever, ever be fair to musicians? In August, Congress member Rashida Tlaib's office calculated that "it would take more than 800,000 streams a month to equal a wage of $15 an hour." - USA Today
Kent, an international ballet star, led the Washington Ballet for six years. In her statement about leaving for the Houston Ballet, she said, "It is where I found my voice as an artistic director." - Washington Post
The manuscripts tell a newly rediscovered story of Mount Athos: "The new rulers took the community under their wing, preserved its autonomy and protected it from external interference." - NPR
The hall "seems to have achieved a rare distinction in its engineering for sound: consistency. No seat in the hall ... is appreciably better or worse than any other." And the sound, which is cool, has a "lack of sonic plumpness." - The New York Times
Lucy Simon, 82, was a Tony-nominated Broadway composer; Joanna Simon, 85, was a mezzo-soprano who (according to The New York Times) "stood out for her range of material, mastery of foreign languages and willingness to take risks." - Variety
Check out a certain state in particular: "Collectors across the country are choosing to start their own museums, and perhaps nowhere has this trend been more notable than in Florida." - The New York Times
A year after Alec Baldwin fired the gun whose bullet killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, a New Mexico prosecutor said in a statement, "No one is above the law and every victim deserves justice." - Los Angeles Times
Khadija Abdalla Bajaber, author of The House of Rust, won the prize, named for the legendary Portland author and activist - but "Le Guin was famously skeptical of awards, so designing one in her honor was especially difficult." - Oregon Public Broadcasting
For one thing, it's nearly impossible to digitize everything in an archive, or to connect it in context. "Physical documents can help us understand individuals from the past, while capturing the world in which they lived." - The Atlantic
