She failed a test for the blood booster erythropoietin, or EPO, just before the New York City Marathon last year — just before she was to pick up a $500,000 World Marathon Majors prize based on her performances over a two-year cycle.
The program's director, Michael Kelleher, selects 60 experts each year to nominate established and newer writers for the prize, based on an overall body of work and future promise.
One is that more people will become aware of an arts prize based on merit, rather than on the economic relationship between the involved parties (if the prize is for things you watch or hear) or on the social relationships between the involved parties (if the prize is for something you read).
Kentaro Hagiwara of Japan was given the Sundance/NHK International Filmmaker Award, a $10,000 prize based on past work and the script for a follow-up movie; Mr. Hagiwara previously directed a short film called "Super Star" and his next project is a coming-of-age romance called "Spectacled Tiger".
Twenty seven years after its initial publication, "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie has received yet another accolade: on Thursday it won the Best of the Booker prize, based on an online poll in which it was pitted against five other shortlisted titles.
