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Tag: Books and literature

  • As China cracks down on stories about men in love, female fans mourn the idealized romances

    For Cindy Zhong, like many young Chinese women, a relaxing night used to mean curling up with a steamy story about two men in love. Then her favorite authors, and their tales, started disappearing.

    Fans of the popular Danmei same-sex romance genre, written and read mainly by straight women, say the Chinese government is carrying out the largest crackdown yet on it, effectively neutering the enjoyment.

    In the vast world of fantasy, Danmei is relatively straightforward: Two men stand in for idealized relationships, from chaste to erotic. Some scholars believe the stories appeal to Chinese women as a way to sidestep the country’s conservative gender values and imagine relationships on a more equal footing.

    “Women turn to Danmei for pure love, especially as they face pressure from families, peers and society to get married and have kids,” said Aiqing Wang, a senior lecturer at the University of Liverpool who studies Chinese popular culture and internet literature.

    The once-niche Chinese literary subculture has seen a boom in recent years, with novels adapted into blockbuster television series and translated into Western languages.

    Danmei — also known as “Boys Love” in English — has also caught the eye of Chinese authorities. At least dozens of writers have been interrogated, arrested and charged with producing and selling obscene materials in China in the past year, according to media reports and witness accounts online.

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    Some writers have stopped publishing or taken work offline. Websites have shut down or removed many stories, leaving the tamest behind.

    “Chinese female readers can no longer find a safe, uncensored space to place our desires,” said Zhong, an educator in her 30s.

    Writers have said they enjoy directing lives that aren’t their own.

    “When I was writing, I felt so powerful that I could create a world,” said Zou Xuan, a teacher who used to write Danmei for fun and has been reading them for a decade.

    From erotica to flowery romance

    China’s government has been tightening its grip on the LGBTQ+ community, shutting down rights groups and social media accounts, despite removing homosexuality from its list of mental illness in 2001. Same-sex relationships are not criminalized.

    Even though China’s censorship apparatus has long disapproved of same-sex love stories, the most popular Danmei stories have become bestselling books and been adapted into cartoons, video games and TV series. Adaptations often get around censorship by changing the characters to a heterosexual couple or presenting the relationship between male leads as an intense “friendship.”

    The stories, usually published online by amateurs, are some of the most widely read fiction in China. Ranging from the flowery to the heavily erotic, they can include scenes of men fighting with a sword and a flute in ethereal ancient costumes or sex scenes in nature after rainfall.

    Danmei is “a utopian existence,” said Chen Xingyu, a 32-year-old freelance teacher living in the southwestern city of Kunming. “I would be less happy without it.”

    Some of the most popular stories, such as Heaven Official’s Blessing and Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, have been translated into English, building a global fan base and cracking The New York Times paperback bestseller list.

    The stories’ language “is very flowery and poetic, which I really enjoy,” said Kayla McHenry, who works in a law firm in Pennsylvania and reads stories in translation.

    But the author of those, Yuan Yimei, better known under her pen name Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, was sentenced in 2020 to three years in prison for “illegal business operation” after selling her self-published Danmei books. She was released on parole in 2021.

    Silencing writers

    It is hard to know how many writers have been caught up in China’s crackdown.

    Danmei writers, mostly young females, claimed in social media posts that were later censored that they were detained and questioned by police in the northwestern city of Lanzhou, and expressed humiliation and fear that a criminal record could ruin their future.

    An official at the Lanzhou Public Security Bureau declined to comment, saying the cases are under investigation. Gansu provincial police didn’t respond to an AP request seeking comment.

    The Associated Press was unable to independently confirm the reports.

    Even in Taiwan, beyond the reach of China’s censors, there are effects of the crackdown on the mainland.

    Haitang, a major platform for the stories and headquartered in Taiwan, closed temporarily in June, warning writers not to continue writing “if the content does not comply with the laws and regulations of where the writers are located.”

    The website recently returned with drastically fewer stories and writers. Readers noticed that stories saved in their accounts were taken down. It was unclear if the authors or the website had done it.

    Another popular Danmei site, Sosad.fun, based outside China with at least 400,000 registered readers, shut down in April.

    Neither website responded to emails seeking comment.

    Despite the crackdowns, Danmei stories are still available in China, but fans say they’re tamer and lack erotic appeal. And with most of the best writers gone, they say that what remains just isn’t that good.

    Some now publish overseas

    Some fans said they have given up reading Danmei stories, but others chase the racy details that brought them to the genre.

    “Stories I read in high school were much more explicit than those I read nowadays,” said Chen in Kunming. “I have to spend more time and try harder to find them. I need this content to fill my life.”

    Chen said some authors are publishing their work abroad, leaving it to readers to get them into China and pass around paper books or digital files informally.

    Other readers said they were turning to online comics translated from Japanese or Korean.

    Despite the narrowing space for the same-sex stories in China, experts said women and their desires have changed in ways that won’t disappear.

    “The awakening of female consciousness, the desire of reading and not being ashamed of what they want to read is irreversible,” said Xi Tian, an associate professor of East Asian Studies at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.

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  • What to Stream: ‘Freakier Friday,’ NF, ‘Landman,’ ‘Palm Royale’ and Black Ops 7

    Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan re-teaming as the body-swapping mother and daughter duo in “Freakier Friday” and albums from 5 Seconds of Summer and the rapper NF are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you.

    Also among the streaming offerings worth your time this week, as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys team up for the new limited-series thriller “The Beast in Me,” gamers get Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and Apple TV’s star-studded “Palm Royale” is back.

    New movies to stream from Nov. 10-16

    — Richard Linklater’s love letter to the French New Wave and the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless,” “Nouvelle Vague,” will be streaming on Netflix on Friday, Nov. 14. In his review, Associated Press Film Writer Jake Coyle writes that, “To a remarkable degree, Linklater’s film, in French and boxed into the Academy ratio, black-and-white style of ‘Breathless,’ has fully imbibed that spirit, resurrecting one of the most hallowed eras of movies to capture an iconoclast in the making. The result is something endlessly stylish and almost absurdly uncanny.”

    — Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan re-team as the body-swapping mother and daughter duo in “Freakier Friday,” a sequel to their 2003 movie, streaming on Disney+ on Wednesday. In her review, Jocelyn Noveck writes, “The chief weakness of ‘Freakier Friday’ — an amiable, often joyful and certainly chaotic reunion — is that while it hews overly closely to the structure, storyline and even dialogue of the original, it tries too hard to up the ante. The comedy is thus a bit more manic, and the plot machinations more overwrought (or sometimes distractingly silly).”

    — Ari Aster’s latest nightmare “Eddington” is set in a small, fictional New Mexico town during the coronavirus pandemic, which becomes a kind of microcosm for our polarized society at large with Joaquin Phoenix as the sheriff and Pedro Pascal as its mayor. In my review, I wrote that, “it is an anti-escapist symphony of masking debates, conspiracy theories, YouTube prophets, TikTok trends and third-rail topics in which no side is spared.”

    — An incurable cancer diagnoses might not be the most obvious starting place for a funny and affirming film, but that is the magic of Ryan White’s documentary “Come See Me in the Good Light,” about two poets, Andrea Gibson, who died in July, and Megan Falley, facing a difficult reality together. It will be on Apple TV on Friday, Nov. 14.

    — AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr

    New music to stream from Nov. 10-16

    — There’s nothing worse than a band without a sense of humor. Thankfully 5 Seconds of Summer are in on the joke. Their sixth studio album, “Everyone’s a Star!,” sounds like the Australian pop-rock band are having fun again, from The Prodigy-esq. “Not OK” to the self-referential and effacing “Boy Band.” Candor is their provocation now, and it sounds good — particularly after the band has spent the last few years exploring solo projects.

    — The R&B and neo soul powerhouse Summer Walker has returned with her third studio album and first in four years. “Finally Over It,” out Friday, Nov. 14, is the final chapter of her “Over It” trilogy; a release centered on transformation and autonomy. That’s evident from the dreamy throwback single, “Heart of A Woman,” in which the song’s protagonist is disappointed with her partner — but with striking self-awareness. “In love with you but can’t stand your ways,” she sings. “And I try to be strong/But how much can I take?”

    — Consider him one of the biggest artists on the planet that you may not be familiar with. NF, the musical moniker of Nate Feuerstein, emerged from the Christian rap world a modern answer to Eminem only to top the mainstream, all-genre Billboard 200 chart twice, with 2017’s “Perception” and 2019’s “The Search.” On Friday, Nov. 14, he’ll release “Fear,” a new six-track EP featuring mgk (formerly Machine Gun Kelly) and the English singer James Arthur.

    — AP Music Writer Maria Sherman

    New series to stream from Nov. 10-16

    — Apple TV’s star-studded “Palm Royale” is back just in time for a new social season. Starring Kristen Wiig, Laura Dern, Allison Janney, Leslie Bibb, Kaia Gerber, Ricky Martin AND Carol Burnett, the show is campy, colorful and fun, plus it has great costumes. Wiig plays Maxine, a woman desperate to be accepted into high society in Palm Beach, Florida, in the late 1960s. The first episode streams Wednesday and one will follow weekly into January.

    — “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” cast member Heather Gay has written a book called “Bad Mormon” about how she went from a devout Mormon to leaving the church. Next, she’s fronting a new docuseries that delves into that too called “Surviving Mormonism with Heather Gay.” The reality TV star also speaks to others who have left the religion. All three episodes drop Wednesday on Peacock.

    — Thanks to “Homeland” and “The Americans,” Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys helped put the prestige in the term prestige TV. They grace the screen together in a new limited-series for Netflix called “The Beast in Me.” Danes plays a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who finds a new subject in her next door neighbor, a real estate tycoon who also may or may not have killed his first wife. Howard Gordon, who worked with Danes on “Homeland,” is also the showrunner and an executive producer of “The Beast in Me.” It premieres Thursday.

    — David Duchovny and Jack Whitehall star in a new thriller on Prime Video called “Malice.” Duchovny plays Jamie, a wealthy man vacationing with his family in Greece. He hires a tutor (played by Whitehall) named Adam to work with the kids who seems likable, personable and they invite him into their world. Soon it becomes apparent that Adam’s charm is actually creepy. Something is up. As these stories go, getting rid of an interloper is never easy. All six episodes drop Friday, Nov. 14.

    — “Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints” returns to Fox Nation on Sunday, Nov. 16 for a second season. The premiere details the story of Saint Patrick. The show is a passion project for Scorsese who executive produces, hosts, and narrates the episodes.

    — Billy Bob Thornton has struck oil in the second season of “Landman” on Paramount+. Created by Taylor Sheridan, the show is set in modern day Texas in the world of Big Oil. Sam Elliott and Andy Garcia have joined the cast and Demi Moore also returns. The show returns Sunday, Nov. 16.

    — Alicia Rancilio

    New video games to play from Nov. 10-16

    — The Call of Duty team behind the Black Ops subseries delivered a chapter last year — but they’re already back with Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. The new installment of the bestselling first-person shooter franchise moves to 2035 and a world “on the brink of chaos.” (What else is new?) Publisher Activision is promising a “reality-shattering” experience that dives into “into the deepest corners of the human psyche.” Beyond that storyline there are also 16 multiplayer maps and the ever-popular zombie mode, in which you and your friends get to blast away at relentless hordes of the undead. Lock and load Friday, Nov. 14, on PlayStation 5, Xbox X/S or PC.

    — Lumines Arise is the latest head trip from Enhance Games, the studio behind puzzlers like Tetris Effect, Rez Infinite and Humanity. The basic challenge is simple enough: Multicolored 2×2 blocks drift down the screen, and you need to arrange them to form single-color squares. Completed squares vanish unless you apply the “burst” mechanic, which lets you build ever-larger squares and rack up bigger scores. It’s all accompanied by hallucinatory graphics and thumping electronic music, and you can plug in a virtual reality headset if you really want to feel like you’re at a rave. Pick up the groove Tuesday on PlayStation 5 or PC.

    — Lou Kesten

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  • Australia’s Helen Garner wins Baillie Gifford nonfiction prize for her ‘addictive’ diaries

    LONDON (AP) — Helen Garner, an acclaimed Australian writer whose celebrity fans include singer Dua Lipa, won the prestigious Baillie Gifford Prize for nonfiction on Tuesday for what judges called her addictive and candid diaries.

    Garner, 82, was named winner of the 50,000 pound ($65,000) prize at a ceremony in London for “How to End a Story.” Journalist Robbie Millen, who chaired the prize jury, said Garner was the unanimous choice of the six judges.

    Millen said the judges were captivated by the sharp observation and “reckless candor” of Garner’s 800-page book, which covers her life and work between 1978 and 1998.

    He said it is “a remarkable, addictive book. Garner takes the diary form, mixing the intimate, the intellectual, and the everyday, to new heights.

    “There are places it’s toe-curlingly embarrassing. She puts it all out there,” Millen said, adding that Garner ranks alongside those of Virginia Woolf in the canon of great literary diarists.

    Garner, who has published novels, short stories, screenplays and true crime books, said she was “staggered” to have won the prize for diaries she wrote entirely for herself.

    “I never thought that I was writing for anyone but myself and that’s what’s good about them, I think — that I’m free when I’m writing,” she told The Associated Press from Melbourne, Australia.

    “Those are the hours of practice that in a sense turned me into a writer. Because I’ve been keeping a diary since I was a girl — and I’ve burnt most of it, of course. I burnt it up until about the late 1970s. But it’s my 10,000 hours and it’s my enormous daily practice. So you never expect that to be out in the public eye. But it is.”

    “How to End a Story” is a deeply intimate book that among other things recounts, with unsparing detail and flashes of humor, the breakdown of a marriage.

    Despite the risk involved in such public soul-baring, Garner says the reaction of readers has made the experience life-affirming.

    “What I write about — my life and my experience and my, not to put too fine a point on it, soul — there are so many people who know what I mean and who’ve been there. And that’s been a great joy to me to discover that,” she said. “The deeper I go, the more other people I find there.”

    Garner’s book is the first set of diaries to win the prize, which was founded in 1999 and recognizes English-language books in current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts.

    Garner’s 1977 first novel “Monkey Grip” – the semi-autobiographical story of a single mother in bohemian inner-city Melbourne – is considered a modern Australian classic. Her work includes the novella “The Children’s Bach,” screenplays including “The Last Days of Chez Nous” and true crime books including “This House of Grief,” which Lipa chose this year for her monthly book club.

    The singer said Garner’s work was “a thrilling discovery. She’s one of the most fascinating writers I have come across in years.”

    Garner is co-author of “The Mushroom Tapes: Conversations on a Triple Murder Trial,” a book about Erin Patterson, the Australian woman who killed three of her estranged husband’s relatives with a lunch containing death cap mushrooms. It is published in Australia and the U.K. this month.

    Garner is less well known outside her home country, with U.S. and U.K. publishers only recently publishing many of her books.

    “It has taken us a long while to work out how good she is,” Millen said. “Finally her status is being recognized, and I hope this will cement it.”

    Garner is the second Australian in a row to win the Baillie Gifford prize. Last year’s winner was Tasmanian writer Richard Flanagan for his genre-bending memoir “Question 7.”

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  • Test Your Knowledge of Family-History Novels That Were Adapted as Movies or TV Series

    “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,” Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel, has been adapted into a stage musical that was itself made into a two-part feature film. In all versions, what is the name of the witch Elphaba’s younger sister, whom she accompanies to Shiz University?

    J. D. Biersdorfer

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  • M. Night Shyamalan’s latest plot twist? Teaming with Nicholas Sparks on a novel and upcoming film

    Even M. Night Shyamalan — known for making darker movies like “The Sixth Sense” and “Signs” — goes looking for the light sometimes.

    “I just finished three really dark movies, ‘Old,’ ‘Knock at the Cabin’ and ‘Trap,’ which are really edgy movies where the characters are super, super dark and complicated, and I wanted to do something different,” said the director.

    He found an interesting opportunity to collaborate on a new supernatural romance novel called “Remain” with Nicholas Sparks. Yes, that Nicholas Sparks — king of romantic dramas like “The Notebook” and “A Walk to Remember.”

    Co-authored books are a hot trend right now in the publishing world. Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben have a new novel out. James Patterson has teamed up with Bill Clinton and Dolly Parton on books. This collab, however, is different in that Shyamalan had written the screenplay and Sparks agreed to write a novel based on that story. A “Remain” film — starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Phoebe Dynevor — already wrapped production and will be released next year.

    “I don’t think anybody has ever done what we just did, which was take the same story and simultaneously go do our separate things,” said Sparks. “It isn’t in linear fashion. It’s two people doing two different art forms from the same story. I trusted him 100% to make the best film version of that story possible and he trusted me.”

    The two crossed paths years ago when Shyamalan was asked if he would want to adapt Sparks’ novel “The Notebook” into a feature film. The job ended up going to Nick Cassavetes, but Shyamalan said Sparks’ work “always represented something magical to me.” It meant something to him that he would be entrusted with a story so beloved.

    In an interview with The Associated Press, Sparks and Shyamalan talk about teaming up, scary movies and chicken salad. Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.

    ____

    AP: At first thought, you two working together seems like an unlikely duo. but the supernatural and romance genres have a lot in common.

    SPARKS: We’re not the first to dabble in this. The biggest movie of 1990 was “Ghost.” Shakespeare used to put ghosts into his plays.

    SHYAMALAN: I think love is a supernatural conceit. It’s a mythology we all buy into, but it is still a mythology, a supernatural mythology that there’s a “one.” The “destined one” that you meet in the coffee shop and that you know it was meant to be, and then all the things that happened because you met.

    AP: Night, you say you approached Gyllenhaal at the beginning of the year about this role. When you did that, did you tell him it would also be a novel written by Sparks?

    SHYAMALAN: I must have. But it was such an unusual moment because I had finished writing the screenplay, pressed save, rushed to get in the car to go to New York for my daughter’s birthday. In the car the phone rings, and it’s Jake. And I’m like, “What’s up, man?” We hadn’t talked in five years, something more. And he’s like, “I’d love to be in one of your movies.” And I went, “That is so weird. Where are you?” And he’s like, “I’m in New York.” I said, “Well, I’m going to New York. Want to have tea?” I had a gut feeling that the universe was doing something. So, I called my assistant. I said, “Print the script.” So, we’re just having tea and catching up. And he’s telling me how in love he is and how he’s just so happy and in love. And I said, “You know what? Here.” He was in shock. He called me two days later and said, “I’m in. I love it.” It was a weird kind of beautiful thing.

    AP: Does the book follow the screenplay to the letter or vice versa?

    SPARKS: Like any adaptation, no. The first thing I said when I read his script was, “Hey, this is great. Of course, it’s gonna be nothing like my novel. It’s entirely different.” Night said basically the same thing.

    SHYAMALAN: I think for audiences, it’ll be really interesting. They can point out the differences and ask, “Why did Nicholas do that with the character and the backstory? Why did Night do this?” Our dialogue isn’t the same.

    AP: Night, we’re in spooky season with Halloween coming up. Are there any films — besides your own — that you recommend watching?

    SHYAMALAN: “The Exorcist,” of course, it’s always there. There’s “The Innocents.” “The Haunting” 1963 film by Robert Wise. And the Japanese movie “Cure.”

    AP: Nicholas, have you made Night your famous chicken salad with Splenda?

    SPARKS: No, I haven’t. I did an interview with the New York Times where I offered the reporter some of my homemade chicken salad and it had Splenda. And whatever reason this blew up on social media. People thought it must be the most disgusting chicken salad ever. So, I said, “No, it’s delicious.” We started making it on my book tour last year, handing it out to people. And in fact, Splenda put the recipe on its boxes. You can get them. I was invited to the Indianapolis 500 to see the Splenda car.

    SHYAMALAN: To get to the core of your question. No, he has not made it. Nor has he mentioned it. Didn’t even offer it.

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  • Kevin Federline says his sons with Britney Spears are the reason for his new memoir

    LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kevin Federline says concern for his two sons with Britney Spears long kept him from telling his story, and those same concerns are the reason he’s telling it now that they’re men.

    In a memoir to be released Tuesday, “You Thought You Knew,” Federline documents his difficult years as husband, ex-husband, and co-parent with Spears, who wrote her own memoir in 2023.

    Federline’s includes some salacious stories and some potentially disturbing details about her behavior that have already made headlines.

    “I want my children to be able to move forward in their lives and know that the actual truth of everything is out there,” Federline, 47, told The Associated Press in a Zoom interview, backed by palm trees in Hawaii, where he now lives with wife Victoria Prince and their two daughters. “That’s a very, very big part of this for me. And it’s really important that I share my story, so they don’t have to.”

    He and Spears’ son Preston is now 20 and his brother Jayden is 19. They have little relationship with their mother.

    Federline was a 26-year-old backup dancer for other major pop acts when he coupled with Spears in 2004. Their courtship, two-year marriage and divorce took them through one of the most intense celebrity media frenzies in modern history. Federline was ruthlessly roasted as a loser hanger-on, especially after he released his own deeply mocked hip-hop album.

    Britney Spears, center right, and her husband Kevin Federline are interviewed by Rachel from the Tyra Banks show as Tyra Banks, right, looks on while they arrive for the LG Mariah Carey and Jermaine Dupri Post Grammy Party at a private residence, Feb. 8, 2006, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Danny Moloshok)

    “I wasn’t just famous — I was infamous,” he writes in the book, which will be released on the new audiobook first platform Listenin.

    He told the AP he long considered writing the book, but recently got serious about it.

    “I picked it up and put it down quite a lot over probably a five-year period,” he said. “I think that it’s a very good description of me, who I am, the father I’ve become, the husband I am, the ex-husband I am.”

    Key revelations from Kevin Federline about Britney Spears

    — Federline describes the night he and Spears first connected at a Hollywood nightclub, and how they hooked up hours later in a hotel bungalow: “Britney turned around, slipped off her underwear and started kissing me, tearing at my clothes with both hands. We stumbled toward the bed while I struggled to kick my pants off my ankles. This. Is. Happening. OK, sorry. Calm down, that’s as detailed as I’m going to get.”

    — He writes that a “San Andreas-level seismic shift in my reality” followed a few hours later when he left the hotel with Spears and dozens of paparazzi cars followed them.

    — He describes the night before their wedding, when Spears called her ex Justin Timberlake, seeking closure: “She never really got over him. She might’ve loved me, but there was something there with Justin that she couldn’t let go of.”

    Justin Timberlake, right, greets Kevin Federline as they arrive at the JT-TV launch party in Los Angeles, Feb. 9, 2007. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)

    Justin Timberlake, right, greets Kevin Federline as they arrive at the JT-TV launch party in Los Angeles, Feb. 9, 2007. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)

    — Federline said seeing Spears drinking while pregnant “tripped the silent alarms in my head.” He later was outraged when he saw her doing cocaine when the boys were still breastfeeding, saying “are you seriously going to go home after this and feed them like you don’t have a body full of drugs?”

    — He writes that Preston told him Spears mercilessly mocked him and once punched him in the face.

    — He says the boys began refusing to visit her when they were 13 and 14, and later told him stories that “shook me to the core.” “They would awaken sometimes at night to find her standing silently in the doorway, watching them sleep — ‘Oh, you’re awake?’ — with a knife in her hand.”

    Spears’ response to Federline’s book

    Spears responded with a statement on her social media accounts. She said Federline has engaged in “constant gaslighting.”

    “Trust me, those white lies in that book, they are going straight to the bank and I’m the only one who genuinely gets hurt here.” She said, adding that “if you really know me, you won’t pay attention to the tabloids of my mental health and drinking.”

    She also addressed her relationship with her sons:

    “I have always pleaded and screamed to have a life with my boys. Relationships with teenage boys is complex. I have felt demoralized by this situation and have always asked and almost begged for them to be a part of my life. Sadly, they have always witnessed the lack of respect shown by (their) own father for me.”

    An attorney for Spears did not respond to a request for comment.

    Federline’s life, and thoughts about Spears’ life

    Federline writes about growing up in Fresno, California, and finding “my therapy and my purpose” through dance.

    Kevin Federline, wearing a white button down shift, performs in the center of a stage with his arm raised during a concert. (AP Photo/Danny Moloshok)

    Kevin Federline performs during a concert at the House of Blues Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2006, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Danny Moloshok)

    He reminisces about his first big tour, with Pink, and working with Aaliyah, Destiny’s Child and Michael Jackson. He details wrestling with John Cena in the WWE and appearing in a self-mocking Super Bowl commercial.

    Federline says Preston and Jayden are living on their own as young adults, and have both been working on making music that makes him proud.

    He weighs in on Spears’ dissolved court conservatorship, saying it was necessary but hurt most of the people involved. He said the fans who fought to free her left an unfortunate legacy.

    “The Free Britney movement may have started from a good place, but it vilified everyone around her so intensely that now it’s nearly impossible for anyone to step in,” he writes.

    He says in the book that he wrote it in part as a public plea for her to get more help.

    “I’ve lost hope that things will ever fully turn around,” he writes, “but I still hope that Britney can find peace.”

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  • A new Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley want to tell you a story

    LONDON (AP) — If you listen carefully, you can hear the noise of chocolate frogs flying through the air on the Hogwarts Express.

    Hermione Granger gasps with delight as Ron Weasley catches the sweet treat thrown his way by Harry Potter, as all three travel home after an eventful first year at the wizarding school.

    This isn’t the now-vintage, Daniel Radcliffe-era movies, it’s not the “Cursed Child” play and neither is it the forthcoming HBO TV series. What you’re hearing is a brand-new cast in a new Audible recording of J.K. Rowling’s seven books.

    The legacy of Harry Potter might have been clouded by headlines surrounding Rowling’s comments on gender and opposition to trans rights, but it hasn’t stopped production on new projects set in the wizarding universe. The Associated Press visited the London recording studio for a “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” session in the summer, as young actors Frankie Treadaway, Max Lester and Arabella Stanton lay down walla — background noise that’s used to bring the stories to life. The young trio voice Harry, Ron and Hermione in the first three audiobook adaptations, before an older cast takes over.

    Instead of listening to someone like Jim Dale or Stephen Fry telling the whole story alone, this new audio production — the first book releases Nov. 4 — has a full, high-wattage cast. While Cush Jumbo narrates, Hugh Laurie is Albus Dumbledore, Riz Ahmed portrays Professor Snape and Michelle Gomez brings Professor McGonagall’s Scottish lilt to life. Matthew Macfadyen voices Voldemort, and Keira Knightley appears later in the series as Dolores Umbridge.

    But it’s Stanton who is pulling double duty in the Potterverse: The 11-year-old is also starring as the studious and brave Hermione Granger in the HBO show.

    “I can’t say much, because they’ve cast a Mimblewimble tongue-tying spell on me,” Stanton apologizes. “But I’ve just started filming, and it’s great at the moment.”

    AP sat down with Treadaway, 14, Lester, 13, and Stanton to find out the snacks required to keep them going, their introductions to the wizarding world and how they feel about acting. The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

    AP: What were the auditions like?

    TREADAWAY (Harry): You really got like, a taste of what it was going to be like, also in the studio and even the scenes.

    AP: Had you done anything like this before?

    LESTER (Ron): I did some audio before, yeah, but I mean nothing as professional as this is.

    AP: How does this compare to your stage work?

    STANTON (Hermione): It’s just very, very different, but I suppose the similar thing is that, because you want to make your voice come alive, I think you … sort of act as you’re saying the lines to give the words some color.

    AP: How’s the recording going so far?

    LESTER: Lovely people, great food and great experience.

    AP: What’s your favorite food when you’re working?

    TREADAWAY: The snack cupboard and the chocolate fridge.

    LESTER: The chocolate fridge is dedicated to chocolate.

    STANTON: It’s filled with snacks.

    TREADAWAY: They have to restock every time I go.

    AP: Can you remember the first time you ever heard about Harry Potter?

    TREADAWAY: I think it might have been when my sister was watching the movies chronologically and then for some reason I only decided to tag along for the last one.

    AP: Did you go back to the beginning?

    TREADAWAY: I don’t think I did, because I was like, “Oh, I can’t watch this, this is a 12 (rating),” so I had to wait till I was 12 to watch them.

    STANTON:  My friends had started all reading all the books and everything and they were like, “Oh have you heard Harry Potter this, Harry Potter that?” And so I was like, right I’m going to start reading the books. So I think when I was 8 I started reading the first one. Sort of just worked my way through them and yeah it was great, I’ve loved Harry Potter. I love it.

    LESTER: I saw this book in Waterstones and everyone said that it was quite popular. It was like one of the bestsellers. So my mum bought it for me and I read the book and it was just great.

    AP: So what do your friends and family think about you voicing these characters? Have you been able to tell them?

    LESTER: I haven’t really told many of them, not really.

    TREADAWAY: I think those who know will never truly know actually what it’s about until they listen to it.

    STANTON: I think I’ve told quite close family, sort of keeping it in a bubble. But they’ll never really understand because so much effort — I mean, the teams, all the amazing people behind it, they put in so much effort to make the audio series incredible.

    AP: Have you got a favorite part of the stories?

    TREADAWAY: I can’t wait to hear how the battle scenes work because of all the SFX and all the sounds and all of the grunts and oohs and ahs and all that because I think that will sound really cinematic. … It was very weird because I would stand there for a minute just grunting and I would feel so stupid.

    STANTON: I can’t wait to hear all the spells because I think Hermione generally just says so many spells and I can’t wait to hear the sounds of people casting them, I just love spells.

    LESTER: My favorite part that I’m looking forward to is just literally just to hear it all come together and for everyone to talk to each other because I feel like that’s going to be amazing.

    AP: Are you like your characters in any way?

    TREADAWAY: That’s how I found it quite easy to just step into the character because I think I relate to them and I’m sure you guys do as well. … I’m not like the biggest ego ever. … Sometimes you’re the smaller person in the room and you just sometimes just mingle. I feel like I relate to Harry in that way.

    AP: How about you and Hermione?

    STANTON: I love books. I love writing, I love reading, I love doing all that kind of stuff. I mean, I like school, but I don’t love school. And I think … books is the main connection between Hermione and I.

    AP: How are you like Ron?

    LESTER: I think we both relate to each other because we’re quite cheeky and we love food. We love food! … In moments, we’re both serious and we’re also not afraid to stand up for the people that we love or stand up for our friends because we always do the thing that’s right, and that’s kind of what I relate to, because I go into the deeper side of Ron, and not just the eating food and being cheeky.

    AP: What’s your favorite kind of magical element?

    LESTER: My favorite kind of magical element is the spells. I think they’re just really cool. Like “stupefy” (the stunning spell) — I think that’s very, very cool.

    STANTON: One of the main props that Hermione uses is the Time Turner. I love all the magical objects like the Invisibility Cloak, the Time Turner, all those things because … (they’re) things you wouldn’t be able to use in real life, but in the magic world, it transports you into a completely different world.

    TREADAWAY: The Polyjuice Potion, because when you record that, it’s like, you have to really hone in on the actual sound of turning into someone else, and that was one of my favorite magic parts of it.

    AP: Are you aware of how much love there is for Harry Potter?

    TREADAWAY: I guess that’s sort of why you have a bit of pride in yourself knowing that such a big name and characters, you get to associate yourself with them. If you know what I mean, it gives you a little feeling inside your heart.

    AP: What does it mean for you to be representing Ron?

    LESTER: It makes me proud, honestly, to be representing such a great and funny character, but then also, I don’t know, it just makes me … feel a part of this community.

    AP: And how about you, representing Hermione?

    STANTON: I’ve dreamt of that since a really young age, and I’ve always looked up to all of the people who played Hermione, like Emma Watson and all those people.

    AP: Are you aware how huge it is around the world?

    TREADAWAY: I don’t think we’ll really feel that until it comes out, I guess, because that just makes it more unreal.

    LESTER: It’s so popular around the world, which makes it more unreal that so many people are going to be interested in this and we don’t even realize it, yeah, we can’t even process this.

    AP: So is acting the way forward for you now? Would you like to continue doing this?

    TREADAWAY: Yeah, definitely — I mean on this, it never really felt like pushing yourself to do something, it wasn’t work, it felt like an enjoyable experience and you’ve got something to see at the end of it.

    STANTON: I’d love to act, yeah, definitely. And I think, like Frankie said, I mean, just being part of the audio series is incredible. And yeah, can’t wait to do more.

    LESTER: I think it is for me because I always say it’s not work if you do something that you love and, honestly, I love acting so much. It makes me feel happy and it makes me feel like my true self and … I think it is the way forward just to keep going and do a lot of jobs, hopefully.

    AP: And you’re all bonded now aren’t you?

    ALL: Yeah.

    LESTER: The proper trio.

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  • The new Children’s Booker Prize aims to reward quality fiction for kids

    LONDON — Britain’s most prestigious literary prize is getting a younger sibling.

    The Booker Prize Foundation announced Friday that it is setting up the Children’s Booker Prize alongside its existing awards for English-language and translated fiction.

    Like its sister prizes, the children’s award comes with a 50,000 pound ($67,000) purse.

    The prize will open for submissions early next year and the inaugural award will be handed out in 2027, with the winner picked by a jury of children and adults led by writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Britain’s current children’s laureate.

    Cottrell-Boyce, whose books include the Carnegie Medal-winning “Millions,” said he was “buzzing” about the prospect.

    “It’s going to be – as they say – absolute scenes in there. Let the yelling commence,” he said.

    Funded by the arts, environment and education charity AKO Foundation, the new award will be open to fiction from any country aimed at children aged 8 to 12, either written in English or translated, and published in the U.K. or Ireland.

    Booker Prize Foundation Chief Executive Gaby Wood said the prize aimed to inspire more young people to read and be “a seed from which we hope future generations of lifelong readers will grow.”

    The original Booker Prize was founded in 1969 and has established a reputation for transforming writers’ careers. Its winners have included Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Arundhati Roy and Hilary Mantel.

    This year’s winner will be announced on Nov. 10.

    The International Booker Prize was established in 2005 as a lifetime achievement award. Since 2016 it has gone to a single work of translated fiction, with the prize money split between author and translator. Past winners include Nobel literature laureates Olga Tokarczuk of Poland and Han Kang of South Korea.

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  • Bestselling author Jodi Picoult pushes back after her musical is canceled by Indiana high school

    NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Author Jodi Picoult has the dubious honor of being banned in two mediums this fall — her books and now a musical based on her novel “Between the Lines.”

    “I’m pretty sure I’m the first author who has now had censorship occur in two different types of media,” Picoult says. “Honestly, I’m not out here to be salacious. I am writing the world as it is, and I am honestly just trying to write about difficult issues that people have a hard time talking about because that is what fiction and the arts do.”

    The superintendent of Mississinewa High School in Gas City, Indiana, canceled a production last week of “Between the Lines,” saying concerns were raised over “sexual innuendo” and alcohol references in the musical. Jeremy Fewell, the superintendent, did not respond to a request for comment.

    “It’s devastating for us to know that these kids who put in hundreds of hours of hard work had that torn away from them because of the objections of a single parent,” says Picoult.

    “What I know, perhaps better than most people, as someone whose books have been banned, is when one parent starts deciding what is appropriate and what is inappropriate for the children of other parents, we have a big problem.”

    Picoult noted that the same Indiana high school has previously produced “Grease,” where the sexual innuendo and alcohol abuse is much greater, including a pregnancy scare, sex-mad teens and the line “Did she put up a fight?”

    “Between the Lines” centers on Delilah, an outsider in a new high school, who finds solace in a book and realizes she has the power to write her own story and narrate her own life. “It is a very benign message. And it’s actually a really important one for adolescents today,” says Picoult.

    The original work, which features a nonbinary character, had already been edited with licensed changes to make it more palatable for a conservative audience, including removing any reference to the nonbinary character’s gender orientation.

    The production was scheduled for Halloween weekend at the Gas City Performing Arts Center. The show has music and lyrics by Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson, and a story by Timothy Allen McDonald, based on the 2012 novel by Picoult and her daughter, Samantha van Leer. It played off-Broadway in 2022.

    Picoult, the bestselling author of “My Sister’s Keeper” and “Small Great Things,” has also written about the moments leading up to a school shooting in “Nineteen Minutes,” which was banned 16 times in the 2024-2025 school year, according to PEN America, making her the nation’s fourth most-banned author.

    “I had 20 books banned in one school district in Florida alone because of a single parent’s objection and she admitted she had not read any of the books,” said Picoult, a PEN America trustee. “She said that they were banned for ‘mature content and sexuality.’ There were books of mine that did not even have a single kiss in them.”

    The uptick in book banning has spread to stages as well. The Dramatists Legal Defense Fund has documented recently challenged plays and musicals from states including Pennsylvania, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Ohio and New Jersey after parents or teachers complained that the works’ social themes weren’t appropriate for minors.

    The Northern Lebanon High School, in Fredericksburg, Pennsylvania, canceled a 2024 production of “The Addams Family,” citing concerns over scenes with violence, children smoking and subtle queer themes. Paula Vogel’s play “Indecent,” which explores a flashpoint in Jewish and queer theatrical history, was abruptly canceled in Florida’s Duval County in 2023 for “inappropriate” sexual dialogue.

    Last year, the Educational Theatre Association asked more than 1,800 theatre educators in public and private schools across the U.S. about censorship. More than 75% of respondents reported pressure to reconsider their play and musical choices during the 2023-24 school year.

    “We are not protecting kids,” said Picoult. “We are robbing them of materials that we use to deal with an increasingly complex world.”

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  • Movie Review: Some tragedy, some romance, and a regretful helping of corn in ‘Regretting You’

    They have cup holders at the multiplex. But as yet, they have not installed Kleenex holders.

    That might have been a good idea once it was clear that director Josh Boone was going to helm another adaptation of a popular YA novel, this time “Regretting You” by Colleen Hoover. As fans may recall, Boone’s “The Fault in Our Stars” sent millions of overactive tear ducts and sniffly noses into overdrive. It would have been good to have a whole box of tissues at hand.

    Of course, that story was about not only about teen love but teen cancer. It was hard not to cry just thinking about it, let alone seeing it. “Regretting You,” a tragicomic intergenerational romance adapted by Susan McMartin, has its share of grief. But the strange way the tears give way to smiles, quips and then full-on rom-com corniness feels a little awkward — and then just weird and annoying. It’s a two-Kleenex ride, at most — definitely not the whole box.

    Allison Williams and Dave Franco play Morgan and Jonah, and when we first meet them in high school, they have definite chemistry (they also look like they’re around 30, despite some de-aging). But Jonah’s dating Morgan’s sister Jenny, and Morgan is with Jonah’s buddy Chris. This prelude, at a teen gathering on the beach, introduces us to the quartet but also informs us of Morgan’s unexpected pregnancy, which she’s just discovered in a convenience store restroom.

    “How did we end up with our exact opposites?” Jonah asks on the beach, as hunky Chris parties and gets drunk, along with Morgan’s fun-loving sister.

    And then 17 years later, we meet the foursome again. We’re more than a little disappointed to know that the couples remained intact — sort of. Did Morgan REALLY marry the boyfriend who told her on the beach that she was more fun when drunk? Yes, Morgan married Chris. And sister Jenny is with Jonah (bespectacled and dark and twisty, as Meredith Grey might say) — but only because a one-night stand has led to a baby, which they’re co-parenting.

    Then there’s the other baby — Morgan’s daughter Clara (Mckenna Grace), about to turn 17, lovely, smart and aiming for drama school. There’s some conflict with her mother about this ambition, though like so much here, it really doesn’t ring true that Morgan, as portrayed by the always-appealing Williams, would oppose such a thing. But whatever. Who are we to question the stuff between teen daughters and their moms, right?

    Then Miller turns up. Known as the coolest guy in school (believable) but also a slightly sketchy sort (not believable), Miller, played sweetly by Mason Thames, enters Clara’s life when he hitches a ride with her. She knows he has a girlfriend, but is smitten. Theirs is a rocky road to love. Kidding! Only a few pesky pebbles stand in the way, seemingly meant to take up pages in a meandering script. (He breaks up with the girlfriend. He reunites with the girlfriend! He breaks up with the girlfriend again. He’s a little angry! He’s fine again.)

    But back to the main event: Everyone is coexisting with a minimum of turbulence … until tragedy happens, leaving a jagged streak of grief that cuts across the family.

    Hoover’s readers will know what we’re talking about. So, partial spoiler alert: An accident cuts down the character list. And throws every single relationship into turmoil.

    It’s hard to discuss much of this without further spoilers, but let’s just say we have the requisite zigs and zags but literally no real suspense. Along the way, the wittiest moment is when Jonah’s baby finds himself on a shopping cart in the supermarket wedged between large bottles of white wine, with which Morgan is self-medicating. Speaking of medication, one assumes the cheery line, “Acetaminophen always helps!” was written before it became a political statement.

    Last year’s adaptation of Hoover’s “It Ends With Us,” directed by Justin Baldoni as you may have heard, was a big hit, and so expectations have been considerable for “Regretting You.” There are some sweet kisses (otherwise, it’s very chaste) and some nice declarations of motherly devotion (credit to Williams for doing her best) but the cheese factor is regretfully high. And the whole thing ends with a wrap-it-all-up scene so corny, I literally felt myself blush in the darkness of the multiplex.

    If there had been a box of Kleenex beside me rather than a Diet Coke, I would have covered my eyes.

    “Regretting You,” a Paramount Pictures release, has been rated PG-13 “for sexual content, teen drug and alcohol use, and brief strong language.” Running time: 117 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.

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  • Do You Recognize These Literary References in Modern Pop Culture?

    Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s challenge celebrates allusions to characters and plots from classic novels found in music and television. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books.

    J. D. Biersdorfer

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  • Oprah Winfrey picks Megha Majumdar’s ‘A Guardian and a Thief’ for book club

    NEW YORK (AP) — Megha Majumdar’s “ A Guardian and a Thief,” already a finalist for the National Book Award and Kirkus Prize, is now Oprah Winfrey’s book club pick.

    Set in the near future, “A Guardian and a Thief” depicts a world of drought, flooding, crime and food shortages as it contrasts a woman whose family is about to emigrate from India to the U.S. with the resident of a shelter who has stolen her purse and the passports it contains. It’s Majumdar’s first novel since her acclaimed debut, “A Burning,” came out in 2020.

    “I was spellbound from Page 1,” Winfrey said in a statement Tuesday. “Megha Majumdar is one of those exquisitely skilled authors who takes us into the story of characters and cultural conflicts and leaves us spellbound until the last word and beyond. Who was the ‘Guardian’ who was the ‘Thief’? I’m still thinking about it.”

    Majumdar’s conversation with Winfrey can be seen on Winfrey’s YouTube channel and other outlets where podcasts are available. Winfrey’s book club is currently presented by Starbucks. Other recent picks include Elizabeth Gilbert’ s memoir, “All the Way to the River,” and a novel by Richard Russo, “Bridge of Sighs.”

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  • Project connects Americans to the Dutch people who honor their relatives at World War II cemetery

    DALLAS (AP) — In the decades since June West Brandt’s older brother was killed in World War II, her kind and artistic sibling who loved to play boogie-woogie on the piano has never been far from her mind. So she was delighted to discover he’s also being remembered by a Dutch couple who regularly visit a marker for him at a Netherlands cemetery.

    “It’s wonderful for me to know that someone is there,” said Brandt, 93, who lives near Houston.

    Her introduction over the summer to Lisa and Guido Meijers came by way of a new initiative aiming to increase the number of connections between the family members of those buried and remembered on the walls of the missing at the World War II cemetery and the Dutch people who have adopted each one.

    The project was spurred on by “The Monuments Men” author Robert Edsel, whose newest book, “Remember Us,” tells the story of the adoption program at the Netherlands American Cemetery. His Dallas-based Monuments Men and Women Foundation teamed with the Dutch foundation responsible for the adoptions to create the Forever Promise Project, which has a searchable database of the names of U.S. service members buried and remembered at the cemetery.

    “I’d like us to find and connect as many American families to their Dutch adopters as is possible,” Edsel said.

    Ton Hermes, chairman of the Foundation for Adopting Graves American Cemetery Margraten, said that while each of the about 8,300 graves and 1,700 markers for the missing at the cemetery near the village of Margraten have adopters, only about 20% to 30% of them are in contact with the service member’s relatives.

    When the Meijerses adopted the marker for Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. William Durham “W.D.” West Jr. several years ago, they knew only basic information about the 20-year-old whose body was never recovered after his B-24 bomber was shot down over the North Sea on a mission into Nazi Germany.

    Through talking with Brandt, they’ve learned that West was “quite a creative soul,” Lisa Meijers said.

    “That obviously makes a huge change in how to remember someone,” she said.

    Brandt said her brother loved to paint and played the piano by ear, and even though she was six years younger, they were “big buddies” growing up in the small western Louisiana city of DeRidder.

    “We loved being together, so it was very hard when he left,” Brandt said.

    Brandt’s daughter, Allison Brandt Woods, said it’s heartwarming knowing Meijerses are watching over the marker. Woods met up with them on a recent trip and hopes the connection between their families will continue with future generations.

    The cemetery, Lisa Meijers said, is among many reminders of World War II in the southern Netherlands, which was liberated by Allied forces in September 1944 after over four years of Nazi occupation.

    “We just really feel how extremely important it is to remember these things and to honor the sacrifices these people made for us,” she said.

    The Meijerses, who have a 1-year-old son, visit West’s marker about once a month, bringing flowers.

    Hermes said the program is so popular that there’s a waiting list to adopt a grave or marker.

    Names on the walls for the missing were opened up for adoption in 2008, said Frans Roebroeks, secretary for the Dutch adoption foundation. The formal adoption process for graves began to take shape during a 1945 meeting of the Margraten town council.

    “They were meeting to figure out the answer to the question: How do you thank your liberators when they are no longer alive to thank?” Edsel said.

    Many initial adopters took on the grave of someone they had gotten to know.

    “Once they heard their soldier was killed in action, the Dutch people decided to adopt his grave, to bring flowers and to correspond with the wives or mothers in the United States,” Hermes said.

    Roebroeks said many of the graves have been cared for by the same family since the end of the war, including one that’s been passed down through his family. He said Army Pfc. Henry Wolf had stayed at his grandfather’s farm and became “like a son” to him.

    Wolf’s grave has passed from Roebroeks’ grandfather to his mother and now to his sister, who will pass it to her daughter, he said.

    “That grave stays in the family,” he said.

    Edsel said that so far, over 300 families have asked to be put in touch with their adopters.

    “And we’re just starting,” he said.

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  • Oprah Winfrey picks Megha Majumdar’s ‘A Guardian and a Thief’ for book club

    NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Megha Majumdar’s “ A Guardian and a Thief,” already a finalist for the National Book Award and Kirkus Prize, is now Oprah Winfrey’s book club pick.

    Set in the near future, “A Guardian and a Thief” depicts a world of drought, flooding, crime and food shortages as it contrasts a woman whose family is about to emigrate from India to the U.S. with the resident of a shelter who has stolen her purse and the passports it contains. It’s Majumdar’s first novel since her acclaimed debut, “A Burning,” came out in 2020.

    “I was spellbound from Page 1,” Winfrey said in a statement Tuesday. “Megha Majumdar is one of those exquisitely skilled authors who takes us into the story of characters and cultural conflicts and leaves us spellbound until the last word and beyond. Who was the ‘Guardian’ who was the ‘Thief’? I’m still thinking about it.”

    Majumdar’s conversation with Winfrey can be seen on Winfrey’s YouTube channel and other outlets where podcasts are available. Winfrey’s book club is currently presented by Starbucks. Other recent picks include Elizabeth Gilbert’ s memoir, “All the Way to the River,” and a novel by Richard Russo, “Bridge of Sighs.”

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  • The MacArthur Foundation’s ‘genius’ fellows: The full 2025 class list

    The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced its 2025 class of fellows on Wednesday, a prize often called the “genius award.”

    The MacArthur fellows receive a $800,000 prize paid out over five years that they can spend however they choose. The foundation selects fellows over the course of years and consider a wide range of recommendations. Fellows do not apply for the recognition or participate in any way in their selection.

    The 2025 fellows are:

    Ángel F. Adames Corraliza, 37, Madison, Wisconsin, an atmospheric scientist whose research deepened knowledge about what drives weather patterns in the tropics.

    Matt Black, 55, Exeter, California, a photographer whose black and white images investigate poverty and inequality in the United States.

    Garrett Bradley, 39, New Orleans, a filmmaker who leverages many types of material, including archival and personal footage, to tell almost lost and intimate stories, especially about the lives of Black Americans.

    Heather Christian, 44, Beacon, New York, a composer, lyricist, playwright and vocalist who creates complex, immersive musical theater performances that interweave the sacred and mundane.

    Nabarun Dasgupta, 46, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, an epidemiologist who helped create tools to identify unregulated substances in street drugs and designed other harm reduction interventions.

    Kristina Douglass, 41, New York, an archaeologist whose research revealed new understandings of Indigenous conservation practices in places sensitive to climate variability.

    Kareem El-Badry, 31, Pasadena, California, an astrophysicist who developed new approaches to understanding existing datasets that have revealed new knowledge about how stars form and interact.

    Jeremy Frey, 46, Eddington, Maine, an artist whose mastery of Wabanaki basket weaving both carries on traditional practices and finds new possibilities in the materials and techniques.

    Hahrie Han, 50, Baltimore, a political scientist whose research illuminated what helps people participate in civic life and how to help them connect across differences to solve collective problems.

    Tonika Lewis Johnson, 45, Chicago, a photographer and activist who created participatory projects that reveal the consequences and legacy of segregation in her neighborhood of Englewood on the city’s South Side.

    Ieva Jusionyte, 41, Providence, Rhode Island, a cultural anthropologist whose diverse ethnographies investigate the ethical and practical issues that national border policies create for workers and communities who live in border regions.

    Toby Kiers, 49, Amsterdam, an evolutionary biologist whose research helped document how plants, microbes and fungi cooperate to trade the resources that each need to survive.

    Jason McLellan, 44, Austin, Texas, a structural biologist whose research into viral protein structures helped advance the understanding of viruses and helped to develop new vaccines.

    Tuan Andrew Nguyen, 49, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, a multidisciplinary artist whose projects in film and sculpture draw on personal testimonies and community archives to document and heal from histories of war and displacement.

    Tommy Orange, 43, Oakland, California, a fiction writer whose books illuminated the experiences past and present of Native Americans in the Oakland area.

    Margaret Wickens Pearce, 60, Rockland, Maine, a cartographer whose maps document the relationships of Indigenous people in North America to their land and that narrate histories, incorporate knowledge and detail the ongoing dispossession of Native people.

    Sébastien Philippe, 38, Madison, Wisconsin, a nuclear security specialist whose research revealed that past nuclear testing by France and the U.S. exposed many more people to radiation than was previously documented.

    Gala Porras-Kim, 40, Los Angeles and London, an interdisciplinary artist whose exploration of museum collections challenged conventions of curation and often highlight what is lost or unknown about cultural artifacts.

    Teresa Puthussery, 46, Berkeley, California, a neurobiologist and optometrist who identified a type of cell in the retina that helps clarify how humans process visual information.

    Craig Taborn, 55, Brooklyn, New York, a musician and composer known for his improvisations and collaborations and whose performances reveal the full range of the piano’s capacity as an instrument.

    William Tarpeh, 35, Stanford, California, a chemical engineer who developed techniques to extract valuable minerals from wastewater that can be turned into fertilizers or cleaning products.

    Lauren K. Williams, 47, Cambridge, Massachusetts, a mathematician whose research is in algebraic combinatorics and also contributed to solving problems in other areas through interdisciplinary collaborations.

    ___

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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  • Do You Recognize These Books From Their Plot Descriptions?

    Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s tests your memory of books you may have read during your school days — specifically, the plots of much-loved novels for young readers. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books.

    J. D. Biersdorfer

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  • Jane Austen fans step back in time to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the beloved author’s birth

    LONDON — Ellie Potts goes dancing with her friends most weeks. They don’t put on the latest Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran, though — they much prefer English country dances that were popular more than 200 years ago.

    As the music starts, about two dozen men and women curtsy and bow, extend a gloved hand to their partner, before dancing in circles or skipping in elaborate patterns around each other.

    Like many of her fellow Hampshire Regency Dancers, Potts is a devotee of Jane Austen and all things from the Regency period. Not only have they studied the books and watched all the screen adaptations — they also research the music, make their own period dresses, and immerse themselves in dances Austen and her characters would have enjoyed in centuries past.

    “I’ve been interested in Jane Austen since I was about 8 or 9,” said Potts, 25. “I mainly joined (the dance group) so I can have balls and things to go to in my costumes, but I really got into it. I’ve been surprised how much I enjoy the dancing.”

    There’s no shortage of grand costumed balls and historical dancing this year, which marks the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth. This weekend, thousands of fans who call themselves “Janeites” are descending on the city of Bath for a 10-day festival celebrating the beloved author of “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility.”

    The highlight is a Regency costumed promenade on Saturday, where some 2,000 people in their finest bonnets, bows and costumes will parade through the streets of Bath. Organizers say the extravaganza holds the Guinness World Record for the “largest gathering of people dressed in Regency costumes.”

    Bonny Wise, from Indiana, is attending her sixth Jane Austen festival in Bath. This time she’s bringing four period dresses she made, and will lead a tour group of 25 Austen enthusiasts from all over the United States.

    “I started planning a tour four years ago, when I realized this was a big year for Jane,” said Wise, 69. She credited the 1995 adaptation of “Sense and Sensibility” with sparking her obsession.

    “That movie just opened up a whole new world for me,” she said. “You start with the books, the movies, then you start getting into the hats, the tea, the manners … one thing just led to another.”

    Wise said she loves the wit, humor and social observations in Austen’s books. She also finds the author’s own life story inspiring.

    “I admire Jane and what she managed as a woman in that era, her perseverance and her process of becoming an author,” she said.

    The Jane Austen Society of North America, the world’s largest organization devoted to the author, says it has seen a recent influx of younger fans, though most of its members — 5,000 to date — skew older.

    “We’re growing all the time because Jane Austen is timeless,” said Mary Mintz, the group’s president. “We have members from Japan, India. They come from every continent except Antarctica.”

    Many festival-goers will be making a pilgrimage to Steventon, the small village in rural Hampshire, southern England, where Austen was born in 1775.

    The author lived in Bath, a fashionable spa town in the 18th and 19th centuries, for five years. Two of her novels, “Persuasion” and “Northanger Abbey,” feature scenes set in the World Heritage city.

    Bath is also the filming location for parts of “Bridgerton,” Netflix’s wildly popular modern take on period drama based loosely on the Regency period, the decade when the future King George IV stood in as prince regent because his father was deemed unfit to rule due to mental illness.

    Thanks to the show, Austen and Regency style — think romantic flowing gowns, elegant ballrooms and high society soirees — have become trendy for a new generation.

    “I think Jane Austen is on the rise,” Potts said. “She’s definitely become more popular since ‘Bridgerton’.”

    In a church hall in Winchester, a few streets away from where Austen was buried, the Hampshire Regency Dancers gather weekly to practice for the many performances they’re staging this year in honor of the author.

    The group selects dances that appear in screen adaptations of Austen’s novels, and members go to painstaking detail to ensure their costumes, down to the buttons and stitching, are authentic looking.

    “We go to a lot of trouble to get things as close to the original as possible,” said Chris Oswald, a retired lawyer who now chairs the group. “For me it’s about getting a better understanding of what life was like then, and in the process of doing that getting a better understanding of Jane Austen herself.”

    Oswald is passionate about his group’s showcases in Hampshire, or what he jokingly calls “Jane Austen land.”

    “People get quite touched because they are walking where Jane Austen actually walked. They dance in a room that Jane Austen danced in,” he said. “For people who are very into Jane Austen, that’s extremely special.”

    Many “Janeites” say they get huge enjoyment in making Austen’s words and imageries come to life in a community of like-minded people.

    Lisa Timbs, a pianist who researches the music in Austen’s life and performs it on an antique pianoforte, puts it succinctly: She and her Regency friends are “stepping back in time together.”

    “I think it’s an escape for a lot of people,” Timbs added. “Perhaps it’s to escape the speed, noise and abrasiveness of the era in which we find ourselves, and a longing to return to the elegance and indulgent pleasures of what was really a very fleeting period in history.”

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  • Oprah Winfrey selects Elizabeth Gilbert’s new memoir for her book club

    NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Elizabeth Gilbert’s “All the Way to the River,” a memoir that has already stirred up an online conversation, is Oprah Winfrey’s new book club pick.

    In Gilbert’s book, published this week, the author writes of a consuming love affair with the self-destructive and terminally ill Rayya Elias, a onetime friend for whom the author left her husband. Gilbert already has an influential and well-chronicled history of transformation and telling all — starting with her million-selling phenomenon, “Eat, Pray, Love,” a spiritual journey that ends with Gilbert marrying the man (Jose Nunes) she will divorce to be with Elias.

    “With ‘Eat, Pray, Love,’ Elizabeth Gilbert started a movement,” Winfrey, who interviewed Gilbert in 2012 for “Eat, Pray, Love,” said in a statement Tuesday. “This new memoir is just as powerful — raw, unflinching, and deeply healing. She bares her soul, sharing her truth so openly, she offers readers the courage to face their own.”

    Winfrey recently interviewed Gilbert at a Starbucks in Seattle; the Starbucks chain is the current presenter of her club. Their conversation can be seen on Winfrey’s YouTube channel and other video outlets.

    Gilbert’s book was well publicized before Winfrey’s endorsement. Last week, New York magazine’s The Cut ran an excerpt and The New Yorker released a review by staff critic Jia Tolentino that led to widespread comments on social media, notably about Gilbert’s confiding that she thought of killing Elias, whose addictions the author feared would destroy them both. (Elias died in 2018.)

    “Gilbert frames her journey with Rayya as a sort of test strip for the universe: take a love affair for the ages, dip it in an unbelievable amount of mutual suffering, and see what color everything turns,” Tolentino wrote.

    Like dozens of book club choices before her, Gilbert learned of the news through an unexpected call from Winfrey.

    “I’d been told by my publisher to expect a phone call at a certain time and date that week, but I thought I was going to be talking to my editor about book business,” Gilbert said in a statement. “There is nothing in the world that can prepare you to receive such a call. I instantly felt like a teenager all over again, watching ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ after school, and learning that there is a much, much bigger world out there than I knew.”

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  • Atlanta Journal-Constitution to stop printing as it transitions to all-digital news

    ATLANTA — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will stop providing a print edition at the end of the year and go completely digital, marking a dramatic change for a storied newspaper that was founded just a few years after the end of the Civil War.

    The decision will make Atlanta the largest U.S. metro area without a printed daily newspaper, although some smaller metro Atlanta newspapers continue printing.

    Publisher Andrew Morse made the announcement Thursday, saying the news organization will continue to report news using online, audio and video products.

    “The fact is, many more people engage with our digital platforms and products today than with our print edition, and that shift is only accelerating,” Morse wrote in a letter to subscribers posted on the Journal-Constitution’s website. The AJC has about 115,000 total subscribers, of whom 75,000 are online only; Morse has set a goal of gaining 500,000 online subscribers.

    The newspaper is privately owned by descendants of the Cox family. Former Ohio Gov. James Cox bought The Atlanta Journal in 1939 and The Atlanta Constitution in 1950. The Atlanta Constitution was founded in 1868 only a few years after the Civil War left Atlanta in ruins and was the platform of famous editors including New South booster Henry Grady and anti-segregationist Ralph McGill.

    Morse said The Journal-Constitution will offer a new mobile app by the end of the year and will provide an electronic replica edition for subscribers who prefer the experience of the paper edition.

    Many smaller newspapers have stopped printing, while others have cut back their days of publication. For example, The Tampa Bay Times, which serves Tampa and St. Petersburg, Florida, prints only two days a week. But it’s been unusual until now for major metropolitan newspapers to entirely abandon print. The highest profile example is The Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey. Once the top-selling newspaper in New Jersey, it stopped printing in February. The Newhouse family, which owns the Star-Ledger, has also stopped printing other sizable newspapers in New Jersey and Alabama.

    The Cox family has invested in the news organization since Morse, a former CNN executive, became publisher in 2023. The Journal-Constitution has hired reporters in the Georgia cities of Athens, Macon and Savannah, expanded an offering focused on Black culture, and pushed new audio and video offerings. The business also moved into a new office in Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood, returning inside the city limits from an office in the northern suburbs.

    Company executives said the print edition was still profitable. The Journal-Constitution closed its own printing plants and outsourced printing to another newspaper in Gainesville, Georgia, in 2021. When Morse came on board, he paused a plan to curtail the print edition, but said now the time is right.

    “We will begin the new year as a fully digital organization, committed, as always, to being the most essential and engaging news source for the people of Atlanta, Georgia and the South,” Morse wrote.

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  • Book Review: In ‘All This Could Be Yours,’ a novelist on book tour is stalked by a stranger

    Author Hank Phillippi Ryan has written a crime novel titled “All This Could Be Yours” about an author on tour to promote a crime novel titled “All This Could Be Yours.” As Ryan says in an endnote, it’s very meta.

    The fictional author is Tess Calloway, a woman and mother who quit a well-paying corporate job where she felt “invisible” in order to pursue her dream of becoming a novelist. The hero of Tess’s book is Annabelle, a woman who defies the limitations society places of women in order to do what she wishes with her “one life.”

    As Tess’s book tour opens, her debut novel is already on The New York Times bestseller list. At each stop, she is greeted by adoring crowds, mostly women who chant “One life!” and proclaim that Annabelle inspired them to change their own.

    Nevertheless, the tour is exhausting. Every day takes Tess to a new city, a different hotel, a fresh crowd of admirers. She has to rely on FaceTime to keep in touch with her husband and two young children, and her vivid imagination tortures her with fears about what could be going wrong at home.

    Before long, however, odd things start happening on the tour. She finds a mysterious locket in a hotel room night stand. At another stop, someone breaks into her room and leaves a pair of earrings. A sheet of paper with a vaguely threatening message is slid under her door. Someone takes her carry-on from an airplane overhead bin.

    Worse, Tess starts getting uncomfortable personal questions about her past at bookstore appearances and on social media — uncomfortable because she has long harbored a dark secret. It’s one that she fears would destroy her new career and her family if it were ever revealed.

    In Tess, Ryan has created a likeable, compelling, complex character who struggles to come to terms with her past and finds the courage to confront the danger she faces. The story starts slowly, the tension building page by page toward a series of twists that readers are unlikely to see coming.

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    Bruce DeSilva, winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, is the author of the Mulligan crime novels including “The Dread Line.”

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    AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

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