Landscape architect Laurie Olin; architects Maya Lin, James Stewart Polshek; artists Kiki Smith and Cindy Sherman; playwright Tony Kushner; poet Rosanna Warren; and composer T.J. Anderson have all been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Every year the academy elects new members to fill vacancies left by artists, composers, poets, and architects who have passed away during the previous year. This year those elected to the 250-member organization remain members for life. Each year, the academy honors artists, writers, composers, and architects who are not members with cash prizes ranging from $2,500 to $75,000.

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MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL NOMINEES NAMED Eighteen finalists have been named for the first ever Man Booker International Prize, which recognizes a living fiction writer for lifetime achievement and is worth £60,000 ($114,000).They are Margaret Atwood, Saul Bellow, Gabriel García Márquez, Gunter Grass, Ismail Kadare, Milan Kundera, Stanislaw Lem, Doris Lessing, Ian McEwan, Naguib Mahfouz, Tomas Eloy Martinez, Kenzaburo Oe, Cynthia Ozick, Philip Roth, Muriel Spark, Antonio Tabucchi, John Updike, and A.B. Yehoshua.

The prize will be awarded once every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language. The first winner will be announced in June in London. Sponsored by the Man Group, which also sponsors the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, the Man Booker International Prize differs from the annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction in that it highlights one writer’s continued creativity, development, and overall contribution to fiction.