Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Names and faces
■ The 23rd novel by acclaimed American author Louise Erdrich and an adult fiction debut by Trinidadian standup comedian Lisa Allen-Agostini this week were named finalists for the 30,000 pound ($38,000) Women’s Prize for fiction. Erdrich’s “The Sentence” — set in a haunted Minneapolis bookstore — and Allen-Agostini’s Caribbean story of gender violence and liberation, “The Bread the Devil Knead,” are on a six-book shortlist for the British award. The finalists also include New Zealand author Meg Mason’s bold and funny novel about love and mental illness, “Sorrow and Bliss”; U.S.-Canadian writer Ruth Ozeki’s bibliophilic novel “The Book of Form and Emptiness”; Turkish-British author Elif Shafak’s Cyprus-set love story “The Island of Missing Trees”; and American writer Maggie Shipstead’s “Great Circle,” the story of a pioneering female aviator and her legacy. Founded in 1996, the prize is open to female English-language writers from around the world. Previous winners include Zadie Smith, Tayari Jones and Maggie O’Farrell. Last year’s winner was Susanna Clarke’s literary fantasy “Piranesi.” This year’s winner will be chosen by a jury led by British journalist Mary Ann Sieghart and announced June 15 at a ceremony in London.
■ President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden were set to host their first official film screening at the White House on Thursday. The Bidens were to show HBO’s “The Survivor,” in honor of Yom HaShoah and Holocaust Remembrance Week, in the White House movie theater in the East Wing. The film tells the story of boxer Harry Haft, who put the lives of fellow concentration camp prisoners at risk to save his own. The movie dramatizes Haft’s experience in Auschwitz, a central part of the Nazi death camp system. Director Barry Levinson, actor Ben Foster (who plays Haft), the film’s producers and representatives of the American Jewish community were expected to attend, the White House said. HBO debuted “The Survivor” on Wednesday to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day. The film honors the 6 million Jews who died as part of Nazi Germany’s mass murder of European Jews. The White House movie theater dates to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had a cloakroom converted into a theater, where he watched news reels, including of World War II battles being fought in Europe and Asia.