Category: people

Among the 24 honorees: musicians Wynton Marsalis and Santiago Jimenez; composer Philip Glass; actor Audra McDonald; and authors Sandra Cisneros, Ron Chernow, Rudolfo Anaya, and James McBride.

When he won a Tony in 1979, at age 28, for The Elephant Man, his career kicked into overdrive – until he was paralyzed in a diving accident in 1985. But, after a long recovery and a period of depression, an invitation from the Berkshire Theater Festival restarted what would become a long career.

Carla Hayden is about to take over as the Librarian of Congress. She’s “aware of but undaunted by the library’s challenges, including outdated technology, a storage crisis for its rapidly growing collections and a demoralized staff. A 2015 government report found widespread mismanagement of its IT systems, which wasted millions of dollars and hampered operations at the Copyright Office and elsewhere.”

“In the 1990s, if you wanted to see a trans actor on the big screen, you had remarkably few options. Despite a plethora of films with large transgender roles, … trans actors were almost entirely sidelined from major productions. … But that wasn’t even a conversation in the 90s, when Arquette and Chablis became two of the first trans actors to play trans roles in major mainstream films.”

“As the longest-running current longitudinal survey of intellectually talented children, SMPY has for 45 years tracked the careers and accomplishments of some 5,000 individuals, many of whom have gone on to become high-achieving scientists. The study’s ever-growing data set has generated more than 400 papers and several books, and provided key insights into how to spot and develop talent in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) and beyond.”

“Creativity is often thought of as individualistic. In Seattle, though, with its game companies, design firms, and rapidly closing art galleries, creativity is becoming more corporate. The health of the arts in the region is increasingly tied to the health and success of artistic organizations. There are successful arts organizations, but not necessarily successful artists. In this context, the corporations often charged with pricing artists out of the area become not threatening, but part of the same business partnership.”

“Wells is an unassuming man who has become used to causing a stir, and this can be disorienting: it’s odd to hear him wonder, not unreasonably, if restaurants ever think of bugging his table. But a restaurant can’t openly acknowledge him. … Experienced for the first time, this covert cosseting feels slightly melancholy, like an episode of Cold War fiction involving futile charades and a likely defenestration.”

“[She] could have coasted by on her famous surname … Instead, this playful and likeable performer, who was born male but identified in the latter part of her adult life as transgender and ‘gender suspicious’, carved out a career of idiosyncratic and often uncommercial character work before concentrating on promoting awareness of trans issues.”

“I got to have the most amazing birthday party ever courtesy of Danny DeVito and his family. I got to travel. And, on a pragmatic level, it helped me pay for college.”