Established in 1975, the Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival aims to introduce the next generation of great playwrights. Writers internationally are invited to submit short works, which are traditionally performed in rep at an Off-Broadway venue. This year’s festival will be evaluated through readings only, with winners set to be announced August 12 at 4 PM ET at a free online event. Read more
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President Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen will release a joint book, Renegades: Born in the U.S.A., on October 26th globally via Higher Ground/Penguin Random House. Read more
Seemingly mundane items fetched large sums Wednesday, like a set of family recipes and a rolling pin, two serving trays and a drinking cup that sold for a collective $43,130. Read more
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U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday nominated writer, surgeon and public health expert Atul Gawande to lead global health development at the U.S. Agency for International Development, including for COVID-19, the White House said. Read more
His brilliantly idiosyncratic fiction has travestied everyone from Moses to Lin-Manuel Miranda, and laid a foundation for the freewheeling genre experiments of writers such as Paul Beatty, Victor LaValle, and Colson Whitehead. Yet there’s always been more to Reed than subversion and caricature. Laughter, in his books, unearths legacies suppressed by prejudice, élitism, and mass-media coöptation. Read more
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King has partnered with Audio Up Media, iHeart Media, and producer Lee Metzger (The Voice) to create Strawberry Spring, a new show based on a tale from his 1978 short story collection Night Shift. Read more
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Scribed Inc., an online platform for e-books, podcasts and audio books, is in discussions to go public as soon as this year, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Read more
Five of the playwrights will make their Broadway debuts. According to Drew Shade, founder and creative director of Broadway Black, this is unprecedented. Read more
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George R.R. Martin is co-executive producing another TV show—and this time, it’s not one based on his own books. Martin is part of the team behind Dark Winds, a series adaptation of Tony Hillerman’s Leaphorn & Chee series. The show is set to star Kiowa Gordon (Roswell, New Mexico) and Zahn McClarnon (Westworld), with McClarnon also producing. AMC has already ordered a six-episode first season. Read more
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Li Kotomi from Taiwan was awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize on July 14 for her Japanese-language novel “Higanbana ga Saku Shima” (The island where red spider lilies bloom). Read more
