Every year, Broadway brings an exciting group of emerging talents to the spotlight. This new season of theatrical talent and innovators are certain to wow audiences everywhere. Last year’s 10 Broadway Stars to Watch honored Jessica Stone of “Kimberly Akimbo” and Tony winner J. Harrison Ghee from “Some Like It Hot.” And in 2020, although Broadway was closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Variety honored Tony winner Michael R. Jackson, the writer and composer of the musical “A Strange Loop,” director Schele Williams and stage manager and producer Cody Renard Richard.

Ahead of the release of her YouTube docuseries, Dancing With the Devil, Demi Lovato spoke to the New York Times about her 2018 heroin overdose, revealing that she “woke up legally blind in an intensive-care unit.” Per the Times, it took “about two months” for Lovato to regain enough sight to read a book, with blind spots making it “nearly impossible to see head-on.” “It was interesting how fast I adapted,” Lovato said.

Crime fictionObituaryMC Beaton obituaryCrime fiction writer who created the detectives Hamish Macbeth and Agatha RaisinThe best known pseudonym of the crime writer Marion Chesney Gibbons, who has died aged 83, was MC Beaton, although she also wrote as Jennie Tremaine, Sarah Chester, Ann Fairfax and Charlotte Ward. But all these names were eclipsed by those of two of her fictional creations, Hamish Macbeth and Agatha Raisin. Chesney Gibbons wrote more than 160 novels in the romance and historical genres, but major success came with her switch to crime fiction and the introduction in 1985 of her Scottish police hero Macbeth.

Other livesObituaryPam BakerMy mother Pam Baker, who has died of cancer aged 79, was a remarkable woman. Born in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, in 1936 she travelled, as a nine-year-old, with her parents to Singapore, where her father was Britain's comptroller of patents and trademarks for the far east. In 1942 she and her mother escaped the Japanese invasion on one of the last boats to leave. Her father was interned in the Changi concentration camp and was the senior British civilian at the eventual Japanese surrender, receiving the sword of the second in command.

When John Prine died on April 7 due to complications from COVID-19, he didn't just leave behind a rich recorded legacy. He also left behind works in progress — threads and sketches from a fruitful late career marked by wistful, plainspoken reflections on a life well lived. On Friday, Prine's label released his last recorded song: "I Remember Everything," which he wrote with longtime collaborator Pat McLaughlin and recorded with prolific Nashville producer Dave Cobb.