Burns, who won the Booker Prize for Milkman in 2018, has won the International Dublin Literary Award. She’s the first Northern Irish writer to win the prize (and was the first to win the Booker as well). She thanked the Belfast Library and said, “There seemed to be a black market in library tickets when I was growing up. … I managed to go into the building with about three to five cards and come out with about nine to 15 books.” – BBC
Tag: 10.23.20
In Rural Nepal, Traveling Theatre Group Helps Villagers Challenge Child Marriage And Domestic Violence
Visiting isolated villages where many people have never seen a play before, the Nepali troupe called Shilpee does forum theatre, where a script is performed twice; the second time, audience members can stop the action and suggest or act out a different solution to the situation onstage. Says director Ghimire Yubaraj, “It would be easy to be judgmental and disregard the audience members as poor or uneducated, but their ideas can be brilliant.” – The Guardian
The Composer Who Has Her Students Cook And Do Nature Hikes
Gabriela Lena Frank hosts the young composers in her apprentice program at her mountainside farmstead in northern California, where, she says, “we get rid of the shame of wrong notes. We make good food and I say, ‘You get to make mistakes here.'” As one alumna put it, “It shows you that music making is an earthly thing, so why not connect to the earth while we make it?” – The New York Times