2008 TV-Turnoff Week

2008 TV-Turnoff Week

WASHINGTON — The Center for SCREEN-TIME Awareness has designated Monday through April 27 as National TV-Turnoff Week 2008.

It has also chosen the work of Cleveland area children’s book illustrator and former Austintown resident John Ferguson to exemplify this year’s theme: “Power Down —Dream Big,”

Posters designed by Ferguson are on display in 30,000 libraries, schools and bookstores nationwide. His artistic skills also grace the pages of three picture books authored by Julie Goulis and published by Bubblegum Books LLC of Cleveland.

U.S. writer is among finalists for Orange Prize

LONDON — American writer and first-time novelist Patricia Wood is among six finalists for the Orange Prize for fiction by women.

Wood, 54, is nominated for her debut novel “Lottery,” the tale of a jackpot winner that was inspired by her own father’s $6 million win in the Washington State lottery.

The shortlist also includes two other first novels — “The Outcast” by Britain’s Sadie Jones and “Lullabies for Little Criminals” by Heather O’Neill of Canada — and “Fault Lines” by France-based Canadian Nancy Huston, “When We Were Bad” by Britain’s Charlotte Mendelson, and “The Road Home” by British novelist Rose Tremain.

The $60,000 prize is open to any novel by a woman published in English.

The winner will be announced June 4 during a ceremony in London.

Rumsfeld penning memoir

NEW YORK — Donald H. Rumsfeld, the powerful former defense secretary and architect of the Iraq War, is working on a memoir to be published by Penguin Group (USA) in 2010.

Books by such former Bush administration officials as treasury secretary Paul O’Neill and CIA director George Tenet have come out, but Rumsfeld’s take is from the highest level so far.

He will receive no advance for the currently untitled book, only money for expenses. Profits will be donated to a foundation he started, whose projects include grants to “promising young individuals” interested in public service.

Memoir by Mass. governor

NEW YORK — Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, his state’s first black governor and a close ally of presidential candidate Barack Obama, is writing a memoir that will be published in 2010 by Broadway Books, an imprint of Random House Inc.

The deal is worth $1.35 million and nine publishers competed for the book, currently untitled, according to agent Todd Shuster of the Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency. Patrick, 51, will donate some of his royalties to A Better Chance, a nonprofit educational organization that helped Patrick attend the Milton Academy near Boston.

Combined dispatches