India’s New Literary Prize Is Its Richest (By Far)

The JCB Prize for Literature will recognize (the jury’s choice of) the best work of fiction by an Indian author either written in or translated into English from an Indian language. The winning author will receive 2.5 million rupees ($38,500), and the translator (if applicable) wins 500,000 rupees ($7,700). The aim is not only to promote Indian literature, but to encourage translations between Indian languages and into English.

Le Figaro Music Critic: How Music Criticism Is Changing

Christian Merlin: “What to make of the Internet? We tried to determine criteria, but it was difficult because, broadly speaking, none of the approaches worked. A press card? Even I’ve never had one. Remuneration? Most of the music criticism websites don’t pay their authors, so one might say that this isn’t a professional activity. The problem is that today, there are some really competent people writing on those sites. Some things have come out in the wash and the most serious and solid sites have come out in front, even if others are only moderately professional.”

When Your Cousin Is A Playwright And Suddenly, A Whole Trilogy Of Plays Is Out There About A Mirror You

At the center of Quiara Alegría Huedes’ Elliot trilogy of plays – Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue; Water by the Spoonful; and The Happiest Song Plays Last – is the former soldier. But Elliot isn’t someone the playwright made up out of whole cloth. Instead, he’s based on her cousin, whom she calls her muse. Sure, she changed some details, but “the fictional Elliot’s life is close enough to this young man’s that he can confidently be regarded as the Ur-Elliot, the original model, the irreducible essence of Elliot-ness from whom all other Elliots on various stages have sprung.”

‘It Tore The Cover Off A City’: An Oral History Of ‘The Wire’, Ten Years On

Creator and showrunner David Simon sold The Wire to HBO as “the anti-cop show, a rebellion of sorts against all the horseshit police procedurals afflicting American television.” Says actor Aidan Gillen, “It dealt with issues that no other shows would be interested in dealing with. It didn’t compromise in any areas. To get it, you had to watch and listen, and there was a risk that people might not have bothered, but they did.”

Martha Graham Dance Co. Makes A Virtual-Reality Video For Barney’s

“Department store Barneys New York has teamed up with Samsung and the Martha Graham Dance Company for what’s possibly the most intriguing dance-meets-fashion collaboration to date. Today through April 8, you can visit select Barneys stores or their website to experience Mantle, a surreal 11-minute virtual reality experience featuring current and former Graham company members in eerie choreography by Cynthia Stanley.”

Oscars Telecast Falls To All-Time Low Audience

The live show was broadcast by ABC and it attracted an average of 26.5 million viewers according to Nielsen, a 20 percent decline on last year’s 32.9 million. The previous record low was set in 2008 when 31.8 million viewers tuned in to watch Jon Stewart host the event. That year, Oscar chaos was narrowly avoided after an 11-week writers’ strike in Hollywood.

How AI Took Over A Community Of Knitters

“The knitting project has been a particularly fun one so far just because it ended up being a dialogue between this computer program and these knitters that went over my head in a lot of ways. The computer would spit out a whole bunch of instructions that I couldn’t read and the knitters would say, this is the funniest thing I’ve ever read.”