Nobel Prize-winning British author Doris Lessing dies aged 94

LONDON - British author Doris Lessing, whose powerful feminist and anti-colonial writing won her the Nobel Literature Prize, died on Sunday at the age of 94.

The author's longtime agent and friend Jonathan Clowes said Lessing had died peacefully at her London home in the early hours of the morning.

"She was a wonderful writer with a fascinating and original mind," Clowes said.

"It was a privilege to work for her and we shall miss her immensely."

Best known for the 1962 novel "The Golden Notebook" which is today considered a landmark feminist work, Lessing became the oldest winner of the Nobel Literature Prize in 2007.

She penned more than 50 novels ranging from political critiques to science fiction -- many of them inspired by her own experiences of a lonely childhood in Africa and involvement in radical leftist politics.

She was out grocery shopping when she was announced as the winner of the Nobel Literature Prize, and only found out when she returned home to find journalists swarming on her doorstep.

Her reaction was a characteristic: "Oh, Christ."

Nicholas Pearson, her editor at HarperCollins, said Lessing's life and career had been "a great gift to world literature".

"She wrote across a variety of genres and made an enormous cultural impact," he said in a statement.

"Even in very old age she was always intellectually restless, reinventing herself, curious about the changing world around us, always completely inspirational. We'll miss her hugely."

Charlie Redmayne, CEO of HarperCollins UK, said Lessing was "a compelling storyteller with a fierce intellect and a warm heart".

Tributes poured in for the writer on Twitter, while the Swedish author Per Wastberg pronounced her "one of the world's greatest contemporary writers".

"At an advanced age, she wrote some very beautiful works," Wastberg told the Swedish news agency TT.

"I think her books will pass into posterity."

Lessing published her first novel "The Grass Is Singing" in 1950. She went on to pen operas, short stories and two plays as well as dozens of other novels, including several science fiction works.

On granting her the Nobel Literature Prize, the Swedish Academy praised the "scepticism, fire and visionary power" with which she had examined her own society.

Among the other awards she has won are the Prix Medicis in 1976 and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 1995.

Born in what is now Iran in 1919, Lessing was raised by British parents in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. She taught herself from the age of 13 by reading authors such as Dickens and Tolstoy.

After running away from her second husband and moving to Britain in 1949, she became involved in the British Communist Party but resigned in 1956 at the time of the Hungarian uprising.

She became an increasingly outspoken critic of corruption and embezzlement by African governments and repeatedly used her razor-sharp writing to attack colonialism.

She was barred entry to South Africa in 1956, but was finally able to revisit in 1995, after the fall of apartheid.

Twice divorced, Lessing is survived by a daughter and two granddaughters.

source: interaksyon.com

Bestselling Irish author Maeve Binchy dies

LONDON - Maeve Binchy, one of Ireland's most beloved writers, has died in Dublin after a short illness at the age of 72, Irish media reported on Tuesday.

Binchy was revered for such novels as "Light a Penny Candle," "Tara Road," and "Circle of Friends," which was adapted for the screen in 1995. She sold more than 40 million books worldwide.






Her novels and short stories often examined the friction between tradition and modernity in Ireland. Her works have been translated into 37 languages.

Born in the Dublin suburb of Dalkey in 1940, she began her career as a teacher before moving into a distinguished career as a newspaper journalist and writer.

She then moved to London, where she became the London editor of The Irish Times newspaper.

Her first novel, "Light a Penny Candle," was published in 1982 and became a bestseller.

She later published dozens of novels, novellas and collections of short stories, including "The Copper Beech," "Silver Wedding," "Evening Class," and "Heart and Soul."

She announced her retirement in 2000, but continued writing. Her last novel, "Minding Frankie," was published in 2010.

Binchy lived in Dalkey until her death, not far from where she grew up.

She is survived by her husband, the writer Gordon Snell. –Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Marion Cunningham, Author of Learning to Cook, Dies

Learning to Cook author Marion Cunningham, widely considered the mother of American cooking, died on Wednesday in Walnut Creek, Calif., after suffering a series of medical conditions, including Alzheimer's disease and respiratory problems, The New York Times reports. She was 90.

Among her many gifts to the family dining table was the simple philosophy that parents and children should share evening mealtimes together, so kids might learn table manners and how to engage in dinner conversation. She was also a champion of simple American fare – roast chicken, salad with iceberg lettuce and strawberry shortcake. (The Times shares her coffeecake recipe along with its obituary.)

"Marion was a traditionalist, but an enlightened traditionalist," Alice Waters, founder of the Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, told the Los Angeles Times. "She could appreciate every conceivable food, the way she could connect with every conceivable person."

"Food is more than fodder," the former Marion Enwright, a Southern California native, wrote in the preface to The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, the standard kitchen text (since 1896) that she was hired to revise in the late 1970s. "It is an act of giving and receiving because the experience at table is a communal sharing."

A remarkable woman by all accounts, as a young housewife married to a lawyer Cunningham simply couldn't afford frozen convenience foods. As she told the Los Angeles Times in 1990, when the family lived in Laguna Beach, Calif., old friends from school started arriving in droves. To feed the throng, said Cunningham, "I made casseroles, stews, soups and big hearty salads with thick creamy dressings. All good to eat and cheap to make."

In her 30s she struggled with alcoholism and agoraphobia – but overcame them both, and in the early '70s she took a cooking class from celebrated chef James Beard. It was her first far-ranging trip, and a friendship was born. So was a career: Beard recommended Cunningham to publisher Alfred A. Knopf for the update of the Fannie Farmer book.

Her other books included The Breakfast Book, Cooking with Children and Lost Recipes, and she had her own Food Network show, Cunningham & Company.

Among her many honors were the Grand Dame award from Les Dames d'Escoffier in 1993, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the James Beard Foundation in 2003.

source: people.com