Lifetime Introduces 2009 Nora Roberts Movies March 21

Lifetime will kick off the premiere of the 2009 Nora Roberts Collection with a Nora-thon this Saturday, March 21. All the previous movies made from Nora's books will air starting at 11 am PT/ET with Sanctuary, Blue Smoke, Carolina Moon, Montana Sky and Angels Fall. Nora Roberts' Northern Lights will premiere at 9 pm ET/PT on Saturday night starring LeAnn Rimes. Nora Roberts' Midnight Bayou with Jerry O'Connell and Faye Dunaway will premiere on March 28. Nora Roberts' High Noon will air on April 4; Cybill Shepherd is one of the cast. The final movie, Nora Roberts' Tribute starring Brittany Murphy will air on Saturday, April 11. Encore airings of each movie will be shown immediately after the premiere, at 9 pm on the Sunday and Monday after the premiere. On Sunday, April 12, there will be a mini Nora-thon, with all the 2009 Nora Roberts Collection airing one after the other starting at 3 pm ET/PT.

Man Booker International Prize Shortlist

Fourteen authors from 12 countries have been named to the shortlist for the Man Booker International Prize. The Man Booker International Prize is given every two years acknowledging a writer's contribution to world literature. The nominees are Evan S. Connell, Joyce Carol Oates and E.L. Doctorow (U.S.), Mahasweta Devi Bangladesh), James Kelman (U.K.), Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru), Arnošt Lustig (Czech Republic), Alice Munro (Canada), V.S. Naipaul (Trinidad/India), Antonio Tabucchi Italy), Ngugi Wa Thiong'O (Kenya), Dubravka Ugresic (Croatia), Peter Carey (Australia) and Ludmila Ulitskaya (Russia). Jane Smiley, chair of the judges, said that choosing the shortlist had made the judges aware of "how unusual and astonishing the literary world really is. . . . We've all read books by authors we had never heard of before and they have turned out to be some of the best books we've ever read. It makes me wonder who else is out there untranslated into English."

Story Prize Award

Tobias Wolff has won the $20,000 Story Prize for his collection Our Story Begins. Runners up were Jhumpa Lahiri for Unaccustomed Earth and Joe Meno for Demons in the Spring. They both receive $5,000. The judges said this about Tobias' work: "The previously uncollected pieces by Wolff in this new collection show an increasingly severe insistence on the most telling and specific detail as the author creates entire worlds, entire life stories, out of eloquent molecules of narrative. The emotional impact of these lapidary stories is specific and powerful. It is this great sense of the human condition, combined with the close detailing of everyday life that makes Tobias Wolff such an exceptional writer."

Playwright Horton Foote Dead at 92

Horton Foote, playwright and screenwriter, died March 4. Foote wrote more than 50 plays and films. He won a Pultizer Prize in 1995 for his play The Young Man From Atlanta. He also won 2 Oscars for his screen adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and for his original script Tender Mercies. Frank Rich, who as chief theater critic of The New York Times in the 1980s was one of Mr. Foote’s champions, once called him “one of America’s living literary wonders.” On Wednesday Mr. Rich described Mr. Foote as “a major American dramatist whose epic body of work recalls Chekhov in its quotidian comedy and heartbreak, and Faulkner in its ability to make his own corner of America stand for the whole.”

Author Philip Jose Farmer Dead at 91

Philip Jose Farmer, a longtime Peoria resident, died on February 25. Farmer wrote more than 75 novels, including the Riverworld, Dayworld, and World of Tiers series. He won the Hugo Award three times and the Grand Master Award for Science Fiction in 2001. Farmer's first published story, "The Lovers",(1952) was based on a love affair between an earth man and an alien woman. Its treatment of sexuality made him a well-discussed writer. Originally, the story was rejected by 2 editors. Yet it ended up earning Farmer a Hugo award for the "most promising new author." Farmer was well-respected in the science fiction world. Robert Heinlein dedicated his classic novel Strangers in a Strange Land to Farmer. Farmer's last book, The City Beyond Play, was published in 2007.