John Powers

1 week ago | bostonglobe.com | John Powers

Nina Kuscsik, the first official Boston Marathon female victor who helped pave the way for women’s distance running in the 1970s, died at age 86 on June 8 from respiratory failure after a decade of cognitive impairment. Ms. Kuscsik, who competed in more than 80 marathons over four decades, was in the forefront of the push to end the longstanding barriers against women running 26 miles in sanctioned races.

2 weeks ago | kuow.org | John Powers

Matthew Goode stars as Detective Chief Inspector Carl Morck in the Netflix series Dept. Q. Netflix The limitation and allure of genre stories is that they reshuffle the same handful of ideas and characters. Romance fiction is teeming with Cinderellas and Darcys. Sci-fi and fantasy keep cranking out Chosen Ones like Luke Skywalker and Katniss Everdeen.

3 weeks ago | nhpr.org | John Powers

On the stock exchange of literary acclaim, reputations rise, fall, go bust and sometimes rise again. These days, few writers have a higher valuation than Jane Austen, who's gone from being merely a great novelist to becoming a marketable brand. Beyond the scads of adaptations, we've had movies titled Austenland and The Jane Austen Book Club, Anne Hathaway playing the young Jane, and Mr. Darcys popping up everywhere from Bridget Jones' Diary to the Hallmark Channel's Mr. Darcy Trilogy.

1 month ago | nhpr.org | John Powers

Pop culture has long had a tendency toward bloat. The catchy two-minute singles of the 1950s gave way to the laborious concept albums of the '60s. The slim, mind-blowing novels of Philip K. Dick and J.G. Ballard led to the doorstops of Stephen King and Neal Stephenson. And then there's Mission Impossible, which began in 1966 as a tautly unpretentious hour-long TV series with a fantastic theme by Lalo Schifrin.

2 months ago | bostonglobe.com | John Powers

Last year, Hellen Obiri came here to defend her crown and lock in a place on Kenya’s team for the Paris Olympics, where she won the bronze medal. This time, she’ll be chasing a bit of history at Monday’s 129th Boston Marathon, bidding to become only the third woman in the modern era and first from her country to claim three consecutive titles.