article by Gordon Cox, Brent Lang via Variety.com
“Hamilton,” the Broadway smash that’s looked like an awards-season favorite from the moment it opened, has been awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Although it’s rare for a musical to the win the drama prize over plays, “Hamilton” had nonetheless looked like a lock for the Pulitzer, given its link to American history and the fresh, contemporary resonances it finds in the nation’s foundational moments. (The most recent musicals to nab the Pulitzer were the 2010 show “Next to Normal” and 1996’s “Rent.”)
The Pulitzer win could be the first of many victories for “Hamilton.” Much of the theater industry considers the show’s sweep of the Tony Awards as a foregone conclusion. “The Humans,” Stephen Karam’s subtly drawn portrait of one American family’s anxieties, was one of the few obvious titles that seemed likely to give “Hamilton” a little competition; that play was named a 2016 finalist, as was Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Gloria.” “Hamilton’s” victory came during the centennial year for the Pulitzers, which recognize excellence in the arts and in journalism.
The Associated Press won the gold medal in public service, considered by many to be the top Prize, for its probe into labor abuses in the seafood business.
“The Sympathizer,” debut novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen’s look at a Vietnamese spy, took the fiction prize, while “Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS,”
The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum captured the criticism prize, one of two awards for the magazine. The other came in the feature writing category, where Kathryn Schulz was honored for her look at how the Cascadia fault line could lead to environmental disaster. Magazines have only been eligible for Pulitzers for a year. New Yorker staff writer William Finnegan was also honored in biography for his surfing memoir “Barbarian Days.”
To read more, go to: http://variety.com/2016/legit/news/pulitzers-2016-hamilton-pulitzer-prize-drama-1201755578/
Posts tagged as “New York”
article by Sarah Donaldson James via nbcnews.com
All eight Ivy League schools — Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown, University of Pennsylvania — have offered Long Island, New York high school senior Augusta Uwamanzu-Nna places in their freshman class.
In addition to the Ivies, she was accepted by Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Augusta is valedictorian at Elmont Memorial High School, where she has a 101.64 weighted grade point average. The school is no stranger to academic superstars: Last year, senior Harold Ekeh scored the same number of Ivy acceptances.
“I am elated, but most importantly, I am thankful,” Augusta, 17, told school officials at Sewanhaka Central High School District.
Augusta’s older brother Johnson told NBC News that Augusta’s “initiative and perseverance,” as well as the family’s emphasis on learning, were responsible for his sister’s success. And the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as both their Nigerian-born parents are college-educated, and her father has a master’s and doctorate from the University of Indianapolis.
“Education is very paramount in our family,” said her brother, who also made his way to the Ivies. He is a freshman at Cornell University, studying biological engineering.
Tobias and Basillia Nna immigrated to the United States in 1994 and settled first in Indiana then New York City. They moved to Elmont in 2000. Their father has worked for various companies as a physical therapist. All four of their children were born in this country. “Augusta’s school days start from 7 in the morning until around 8 at night,” said Uwamanzu-Nna. “Not to mention all of the homework assignments, scholarship and other miscellaneous things she gets done.”
He said that while his sister was co-founder of her own tutoring service, she also works at another tutoring center on Saturdays.
“I am humbled by all of the college acceptance letters that I recently received,” Augusta says on her high school website. “I am reminded that I have a responsibility to be a role model for others and use my experiences to encourage and inspire others, especially young women.”
To read more, go to: http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/college-game-plan/long-island-high-school-student-accepted-all-eight-ivies-n551901?cid=sm_tw&hootPostID=9c3ca1968651804b658563b28ec6dd2c
article by Kenneth Lovett via nydailynews.com
New York has become the first state to enact a program touted by President Obama to help at-risk black and Hispanic boys and young men, state officials said.
Known as “My Brother’s Keeper,” the program is designed to keep young males of color out of prison by focusing on family and community engagement, professional development and new school practices aimed at improving outcomes.
Governor Andrew Cuomo and the Legislature included $20 million in the state budget enacted last week to create a state version of the program. “I was born and raised in the Bronx and I have seen firsthand the challenges that so many boys and young men of color face every day,” Carl Heastie, New York’s first black Assembly speaker, told the Daily News.
Heastie said studies show that black and Hispanic males are more likely to drop out of high school and “become trapped in the revolving door of the criminal justice system.”
“We need to change the conversation around the achievement rates of African-American and Latino men so that successful futures become the rule and not the exception,” he said. “With this funding we are taking some meaningful steps toward a more holistic and comprehensive approach to improving the prospects of all our children, especially those who need our support the most.”
Obama, who has talked about his first job scooping ice cream, created a My Brother’s Keeper task force in 2014, with the idea of targeting minority boys so they can read at grade level by third grade, complete college education or training, and enter the workforce more prepared. It also seeks to reduce violence.
To read more, go to: http://m.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-enact-obama-brother-keeper-program-article-1.2587149?cid=bitly
CROWN HEIGHTS — Three officers and a lieutenant caught on video arresting an on-duty postal worker in Crown Heights earlier this month have been removed from their normal posts as the NYPD investigates the incident, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said Tuesday.
The four officers arrested 27-year-old Glenn Grays while he was delivering packages along President Street near Franklin Avenue on March 17 after the policemen nearly hit him in an unmarked car as he tried to cross the street, according to Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who released a passerby’s video of Grays’ arrest last week.
The NYPD has already said the incident is under review. But on Tuesday, Bratton expanded on that, saying that the Internal Affairs Bureau is looking to figure out a rationale for the arrest, about which he has “strong concerns,” particularly surrounding why the four cops —assigned to a conditions unit that usually wears a uniform — were in plainclothes.
article by Cristie Leondis via blackenterprise.com
NEW YORK (AP) — He’s been a rapper, actor, singer, entrepreneur, record producer and clothing designer. Now Sean “Diddy” Combs has taken on a new job as the founder of a charter school in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood.
Combs announced Monday that the new school will be named Capital Preparatory Harlem Charter School and it will open in the fall, according to the Associated Press. The venture has been in the works for five years. The school will be overseen by Capital Prep leader and founder Dr. Steve Perry, who started Capital Prep Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut, in 2005.
Combs and the board have hired Orlando, Florida-based educator Danita Jones as the principal of Capital Prep Harlem. Combs says creating the school is “a dream come true.” In addition, Combs and Perry have been meeting in secret with community leaders and experts in education to build the program.
The school’s board also includes author and spiritual life coach Dr. Iyanla Vanzant, who has worked with Oprah Winfrey in the past.
According to Capital Preparatory Harlem Charter School’s official website, the school is a free, public school for children grades 6-12. The extensive program will provide a “year-round, college preparatory education.” College courses will also be available to the students once they reach high school.
For the opening year, 160 students are to be enrolled in 6th and 7th grades. The deadline to apply for the upcoming school year is April 1st.
To read more, go to: http://www.blackenterprise.com/news/sean-diddy-combs-launches-charter-school-in-harlem/
article by Sarah Larson via newyorker.com
Dearly beloved, Prince is writing a memoir. Last night, at Avenue, the club on Tenth Avenue, in the Meatpacking District, he announced the news to a group of admirers who’d been alerted that afternoon. Before he arrived, editors, journalists, and friends of Prince danced to Q-Tip and Diana Ross under orange lights and a mirrored disco ball, and waitresses in stretchy, zippered minidresses carried trays of champagne flutes. Gayle King showed up, then Trevor Noah, of “The Daily Show.” Noah told me that his favorite Prince song was “Purple Rain.” In his youth in South Africa, he said, he’d discovered Prince after becoming a fan of Michael Jackson. “Prince is our generation’s classical music,” he said.
“Billie Jean” began playing. People screamed. Prince appeared on a glass-lined balcony, descending a staircase and standing a few feet above us like a pastor or a king. He had a roundish cloud of hair and wore a gleaming gold-and-purple striped pajama suit. “The good people of Random House have made me an offer I can’t refuse!” he said. He was writing a book, he told us. “It’s going to be called ‘The Beautiful Ones.’ ” We cheered. “I literally just got off the plane. I’m going to go home and change and put some dancing clothes on. Props to my brother Harry Belafonte.” People looked around. Prince put large, insectile sunglasses on. “Now I can see,” he said.
Spiegel & Grau, the Random House imprint, is scheduled to publish “The Beautiful Ones” in fall 2017. “You all still read books, right?” Prince asked. “My brother Dan”—Dan Piepenbring of the Paris Review—“is helping with it. He’s a good critic. That’s what I need. Not a yes man.” Prince said that the book would begin with his first memory and go “all the way to the Super Bowl.” He played the Super Bowl in 2007, in a torrential storm, singing “Let’s Go Crazy,” “Baby I’m a Star,” and “Purple Rain” on an enormous illuminated Love Symbol, accompanied by dancers, fireworks, a glowing marching band, and a stadium full of backup singers. Like everything Prince does, it felt strangely mythic.
To read more, go to: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/prince-announces-his-memoir-funkily?mbid=rss
article by Melena Ryzik via nytimes.com
CHICAGO — When Jussie Smollett and Jurnee Smollett-Bell were growing up, bouncing with their parents and four siblings between New York and Los Angeles, as the kids pursued careers in modeling, acting and music, their downtime was just another chance for performance and togetherness.
“Creating was something that we just were expected to do,” Mr. Smollett said, in a joint interview with his sister here, where he tapes the Fox series “Empire.” Seated next to him in a downtown restaurant, she was nodding in agreement. “And I don’t remember a time not wanting to do that.”
The members of the Smollett clan have made good on their childhood promise. Mr. Smollett, 32, is a singer and a breakout star of the hit drama “Empire,” in which he plays Jamal, the most talented member of the Lyon hip-hop dynasty.
Ms. Smollett-Bell, 29, who made her mark as an actress by the age of 10, with the 1997 film “Eve’s Bayou,” is one of the leads in “Underground,” a new WGN America show about a group of slaves who try to escape from their Georgia plantation; her brother guest-stars.
Though it’s their first project together in 20 years, it’s clear that the more creative freedom they have, the more their tastes will converge.
The Smolletts have also been outspoken politically and, since their school years, devoted to causes like H.I.V./AIDS prevention and ending apartheid. They were raised in the orbit of the Black Panthers and, lately, have lent their voices to the Black Lives Matter movement. Their trajectory, from child stars to successful adults, is born of their family and its history of activism.
“Their sense of justice is very strong, and it permeates everything that they do,” said Alfre Woodard, who has known Jussie and Jurnee since they were children; they worked with her at the nonprofit Artists for a New South Africa. “They’re like a model sibling unit. They look out for each other, all the time. And they all reach across and say, ‘O.K., I got my foot in this door; here, grab my hand, we’re going in together.’”
Raised on a diet of classic films (they’ll gladly quote the 1945 version of “Mildred Pierce”), Jussie and Jurnee still count their mother, Janet Smollett, as their only acting coach. An African-American from New Orleans, Ms. Smollett met their father, Joel Smollett Sr., a Russian-Polish Jew, in the Bay Area, where they campaigned for civil rights. “My mom was in the movement with Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, and one of her first mentors was Julian Bond,” Mr. Smollett said of the Black Panther founders and the civil rights leader. “To this day, Angela Davis is one of her dearest friends. We’ve spent Mother’s Day with Angela.”
article by Mariella Moon via engadget.com
One way to address the lack of diversity in tech is to expose kids to computer science as early as possible. That’s exactly what Ruth Mesfun is doing. She studied how to teach Computer Science, so she could conjure up a curriculum and launch a new class for the Excellence Girls Middle Academy, an all-girls, majority-black middle school in Brooklyn.
She has also created a website called “People of Color in Tech” (POCIT) with her developer friend Michael Berhane, so her kids can find role models to look up to. The website features interviews of engineers, designers and other people of color in the industry, and Mesfun and Berhane hope to to add two more profiles every week.
The tireless teacher told TechCrunch that the website’s main goal is to demonstrate that there are “so many [people of color] who want to support each other” in a world that’s mostly made up of white guys. It might take a while before the industry becomes more diverse, but at least more people are making an effort to change things now. One of them’s NYC’s local government, which eventually wants all public schools in the city to offer computer science courses.
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)
According to billboard.com, the late Marvin Gaye and Chic principles Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards (who died in 1996) are among the artists chosen to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on June 9 in New York City. Joining them will be Elvis Costello, Tom Petty, and 1960s hitmaker Chip Taylor.
The new inductees wrote such iconic songs as “What’s Going On,” “Mercy Mercy Me,” “Le Freak,” “Good Times,” “Wild Thing,” “American Girl,” “Everyday I Write The Book,” and many, many more.
“The 2016 roster of Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees is a beautiful mosaic of the best of late 20th Century popular music. With creators of Rock & Roll, Soul/R&B, Country and Funk/Dance represented, we are looking forward to an unforgettable and extremely exciting event and evening at the Marriott Marquis on June 9th,” said co-chairs Kenneth Gamble & Leon Huff, who are serving their first year in that role.
The hall’s 47th Annual Induction and Awards Dinner will take place at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City. Gaye and Edwards will be inducted posthumously.
article by Sara Maslin via nytimes.com
In a gray suit, her short hair neatly curled, Vanessa Gathers sat in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn last Tuesday, beaming as the judge spoke words she had waited nearly two decades to hear: The manslaughter conviction for which she had spent 10 years in prison was vacated, the judge said, after an investigation revealed that her confession to the crime was false.
In an instant, Ms. Gathers was no longer a convicted criminal. The judge, Justice Matthew J. D’Emic, smiled back. “Good luck!” he said.
Ms. Gathers, 58, is the first woman to have been exonerated by the Conviction Review Unit, a special unit created by the Brooklyn district attorney to look into scores of cases linked to Louis Scarcella, a retired detective whose tactics led to the wrongful convictions of more than a dozen people, according to the district attorney’s office. The unit is examining 100 cases, many of them involving Mr. Scarcella.
Mark Hale, an assistant district attorney, told the judge that an investigation into Ms. Gathers’s case had determined that she had been wrongfully convicted and that her confession had been coaxed, fed to her by Mr. Scarcella.
“We have grave doubts and, in fact, do not believe that it was true,” Mr. Hale said.
After the hearing, the Brooklyn district attorney, Ken Thompson, spoke outside the courtroom. “These wrongful convictions represent a systemic failure, a failure by prosecutors, defense attorneys, by judges, by the system,” he said. “These wrongful convictions destroy lives, and no matter what happens, Ms. Gathers will not get back those 10 years.”
Ms. Gathers was convicted of manslaughter in the death of Michael Shaw, 71, who was attacked and robbed inside his apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 1991. He died of complications from the assault six months later, in 1992. Ms. Gathers was convicted in 1998, and has been free since she was paroled on March 2, 2007, after serving 10 years in prison.
Ms. Gathers was approached by Mr. Scarcella on the street a month after Mr. Shaw’s death “because she fit the description of one of the assailants,” according to a statement released by the district attorney’s office. She denied being connected to the attack, and pointed to a woman who she believed had done it, but years later, as the investigation continued, she was again interrogated by Mr. Scarcella. In 1997, she confessed — the only evidence presented at trial.
But an examination by Mr. Thompson’s office determined that Ms. Gathers had “made a false confession based, in part, on the defendant’s inability to articulate her role in the assault; perceived inaccuracies in the statement itself; and the lack of details in the statement,” the district attorney’s statement said. Investigators determined that the “complete lack of a coherent narrative in the defendant’s confession, combined with apparent factual errors, amount to reasonable doubt in the validity of the confession itself.”
Among those inconsistencies, Mr. Hale said in court on Tuesday, were statements that the victim had been in a wheelchair. In fact, he had never used one.
While imprisoned, Ms. Gathers had an impeccable record and consistently maintained her innocence, even at three parole hearings, where it may have been more expedient to admit to the crime in hopes of being released, said Lisa Cahill, a lawyer with Hughes Hubbard & Reed, which represented Ms. Gathers, along with the Legal Aid Society. “And it wasn’t because of calculations or because of some Machiavellian foresight,” Ms. Cahill said. “It is because she is fundamentally a decent woman.”