Playwright Stoppard honored for work
Oscar-winning playwright Tom Stoppard has been awarded a major freedom-of-speech prize for his determination to “tell things as they are,” writers organization PEN announced today.
The PEN/Pinter prize was established in 2009 in memory of Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter. It goes jointly to a British writer seen as sharing Pinter’s “unflinching unswerving” gaze on society, and a “writer of courage” who has faced persecution, chosen by the British winner and PEN.
Stoppard, who scripted Oscar-winner “Shakespeare in Love,” is the author of plays including “Arcadia” and “The Real Thing.”
Celebs back California prison strike
Gloria Steinem, Jesse Jackson, Bonnie Raitt and Jay Leno have joined prison hunger strikers in calling for an end to California’s use of solitary confinement to control prison gang violence.
The four celebrities are among those who signed a letter sent Monday to Gov. Jerry Brown. The letter calls isolation units “extensions of the same inhumanity practiced at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.”
The letter to Brown was arranged by the National Religion Campaign Against Torture and local supporters of the California prison protesters.
Other notables signing the letter to Brown include political critic Noam Chomsky, activist Angela Davis, Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman and actor Peter Coyote.
Bieber billed for monkey business
German authorities have posted a public notice urging Justin Bieber to get in touch with them about an unpaid bill for his former pet monkey Mally.
Bieber failed to produce the necessary vaccination and import papers for the monkey when he arrived for a European tour in March. Mally became the property of the German government in May when the Canadian singer failed to claim his pet.
A spokesman for the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation said Bieber has one week to pay $1,500 for the monkey’s care.
Franz Boehmer said Tuesday that otherwise customs officials “have ways of making him pay” next time he enters Germany. Bieber is already on the hook for a separate $6,600 bill from Munich customs.
The birthday bunch
Actor Don Murray is 84. Jazz composer-musician Kenny Burrell is 82. Actress Geraldine Chaplin is 69. Singer Gary Lewis is 68. Actor Barry Van Dyke is 62. Entrepreneur Mark Cuban is 55. Rock musician Bill Berry is 55. Actor Wesley Snipes is 51. Musician Fatboy Slim is 50. Rock musician Jim Corr is 49. Author J.K. Rowling is 48. Actor Dean Cain is 47. Actress Annie Parisse is 38. Actor Actor-producer-writer B.J. Novak is 34.