Latest news with #SeanCotter
Boston Globe
30-07-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Legislature leaders propose pay raise for court-appointed lawyers in effort to end work stoppage
'What we are doing over a two-year period is giving a significant pay raise to the bar advocates,' said House Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz, a North End Democrat. 'We feel that no one ever gets 100 percent in what they ask for, but this is a significant step in resolving that issue.' Advertisement The agreement unveiled Wednesday includes a $10-an-hour pay raise this year and another $10-an-hour on top of that next year, according to a summary released by Beacon Hill leaders. The bar advocates have sought $35-an-hour more this year and $25-an-hour the following year. At the lowest rung of pay, the state currently gives the attorneys in district court $65-an-hour. Advertisement It's a constitutional right, as well as state law, for people accused of a crime to have access to an attorney, even if they cannot afford it. In Massachusetts, the more than 2,500 bar advocates typically represent about 80 percent of indigent criminal defendants, with the rest covered by staff attorneys from the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the state's public-defender agency. It's unusual for states to rely so heavily on private attorneys, and that split gave the bar advocates significant leverage as they stopped taking cases. The proposal unveiled Wednesday would add $40 million to CPCS's budget to dramatically expand its ranks of staff public defenders by about 320 lawyers. The agreement also would add language to bar-advocate contracts that would lay out minimum requirements and state that any future collective action not to take assignments would be an antitrust violation. The measure will go to the full Legislature for passage on Thursday. Sean Cotter can be reached at
Boston Globe
19-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Plumbing issue closes the Brattle, but not for long
The theater staff wrote that they expect to be up and running on Tuesday, one day before the independent film festival begins its programming there. Still, the staff wrote, 'This is a big financial hit for our single-screen cinema.' They're trying to raise $12,000 to cover the costs of the closure. 'We need your help to ensure this doesn't threaten The Brattle just when we have dug ourselves out from our COVID closure,' the staff wrote, linking to a fundraising page and promising passes to future screenings and other rewards for donors. Advertisement The 22nd annual Independent Film Festival Boston is set to take place this week, showcasing 15 feature films, dozens of shorts, and more than 20 feature-length documentaries. It includes multiple days of programming at the Brattle. Festival executive director Brian Tamm said Saturday that he expects everything to go as planned there. 'We have a great lineup at the Brattle,' he said, particularly documentaries and foreign films, as well as some good 'oddball stuff.' The Brattle has a strong built-in clientele with a wide range of interests, he said, so 'We really tried to have something for each of those audiences.' Advertisement He said it's harder than ever for local theaters to stay afloat, so he hopes people step up to help the Brattle. 'Local institutions like that are so important to keep alive,' he said. Sean Cotter can be reached at
New York Times
25-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
To the Point: Short Novels Dominate International Booker Prize Nominees
The majority of the books nominated for this year's International Booker Prize, the prestigious award for fiction translated into English, are under 200 pages long. Only one is over 300 pages: Mircea Cartarescu's 627-page 'Solenoid,' translated by Sean Cotter. It is also one of the most high-profile novels on the list. Many literary critics have long touted Cartarescu as a potential Nobel Prize laureate, and the Romanian author's nominated tome concerns a schoolteacher reflecting on his life, family and disturbing dreams. The other titles, announced by the prize organizers in London on Tuesday, include Saou Ichikawa's 100-page 'Hunchback,' translated from Japanese by Polly Barton, about the sexual desires of a disabled care home resident, and Solvej Balle's 169-page 'On the Calculation of Volume I,' translated from Danish by Barbara J. Haveland, in which an antiquarian book dealer relives the same day over and again. Max Porter, the chair of this year's judging panel, said in an interview that the selection of so many short books didn't reflect a 'much-prophesied loss of attention span' among readers. The 13 titles were simply the best the panel had read, he added. Some book award judges gravitate toward long novels, he added, thinking that writing longer is harder, but finessing a short novel was an equal challenge. 'Some of these books don't have a wasted word,' Porter said. Established in 2005, the International Booker Prize was originally awarded to an author for their entire body of work. Since 2016, it has been given to a single book translated into English and published in Britain or Ireland during the previous 12 months. Last year's prize went to Jenny Erpenbeck's 'Kairos' translated by Michael Hofmann, and previous winners have included Han Kang's 'The Vegetarian' and Olga Tokarczuk's 'Flights.' The award comes with prize money of 50,000 pounds, or about $63,000, which the winning author and translator share equally. This year's other nominees include Ibtisam Azem's 'The Book of Disappearance,' translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon, which imagines a day in Tel Aviv when Israelis awake to find all their Palestinian neighbors have vanished; and Astrid Roemer's 'On a Woman's Madness,' about a woman who abandons an abusive marriage and has a series of affairs, including one with a woman. Originally published in the Netherlands in 1982, 'On a Woman's Madness' was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Awards. It was translated from Dutch by Lucy Scott. The judges will now cut the list down to six nominees, scheduled to be announced on April 8. The winner will revealed during a ceremony at Tate Modern, in London, on May 20. The full list of nominees is:
