Quick Takes: Name that morgue

Ten leading crime writers are competing for the honor of having a morgue named after them.

Scotland’s University of Dundee said Monday that it would name its new morgue and research facility after whichever writer gets the most votes in an online poll and fundraising effort.

Kathy Reichs, Lee Child, Tess Gerritsen, Harlan Coben, Mark Billingham and Val McDermid are among the authors taking part in the “Million for a Morgue” campaign. Each person who votes donates $1.60 to a money-raising campaign. The university hopes to raise $1.6 million for the new facilities at its Center for Anatomy and Human Identification.

The other authors involved are Jeffrey Deaver, Jeff Lindsay, Stuart MacBride and Peter James.

—Associated Press

Florida ballet has a new leader

Nicholas T. Goldsborough, a Los Angeles-based arts fundraiser, has been appointed the executive director of the Miami City Ballet, the company is announcing this week.

Goldsborough has helped raise funding for prominent U.S. arts institutions, including the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Valley Performing Arts Center and the Harman Center for the Arts in Washington, D.C.

Goldsborough joins the respected classic ballet troupe at a time of transition. Just last month, founding artistic director Edward Villella, 75, announced his retirement, which will cap one of ballet’s most enduring and distinguished careers.

—Debra Levine

Jim Ladd will talk to listeners

Los Angeles rock radio stalwart Jim Ladd will return, temporarily for now, to the airwaves Saturday, from 4 to 7 p.m. on KFI-AM (640) to field calls from listeners about his departure last week from his longtime slot at KLOS-FM (95.5) as part of a corporate buyout.

Ladd told The Times on Monday that he has been offered the spot on KFI by program director Robin Bertolucci because he didn’t get to have a final show before leaving KLOS.

“She’s a fan and said she wanted me to have the opportunity to come on and let the audience say hello and vent,” said Ladd. “This is not a goodbye show; it’s more of hello and going on to the next phase of the live show.”

—Randy Lewis

Latifah to go the talk-show route

Queen Latifah, who has scored in music and movies, is getting ready to join the ranks of Ellen DeGeneres and Wendy Williams: She’s entering the talk-show arena.

Or re-entering. She had a short-lived daytime talk show from 1999 to 2001.

But now she’s ready to try again. The Oscar-nominated actress will be launching a syndicated daytime talk show for fall 2013. It will be produced by her production company, Flavor Unit Entertainment, along with Overbrook Entertainment and Sony Pictures Television. Latifah, along with Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith of Overbrook Entertainment, will be among the executive producers.

—Greg Braxton

Collection by Winehouse due

Amy Winehouse’s record company will release a collection of previously unreleased tracks, including several new songs and alternate takes of earlier releases the singer made before her death from an alcohol overdose in July.

“Lioness: Hidden Treasures” consists of a dozen tracks spanning some of the five-time Grammy-winning singer’s earliest recording sessions in 2002 through her final studio session earlier this year with Tony Bennett, when the singers dueted on the pop classic “Body and Soul.”

Among the other songs scheduled for release Dec. 5 are the bossa nova classic “The Girl From Ipanema,” which she recorded in Miami when she was 18 and started working with producer Salaam Remi, a demo version of the “Back to Black” song “Wake Up Alone,” a slower alternative take on “Valerie” and her rendition of Leon Russell’s “A Song for You.”

—Randy Lewis

Getting an early look at ‘Tintin’

Steven Spielberg’s “The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn” will be the closing-night screening at AFI Fest.

The Hollywood festival — which kicks off Thursday evening with the world premiere of Clint Eastwood’s “J. Edgar” — will conclude with a gala screening of the animated 3-D picture Nov. 10 — more than a month before it opens in the U.S.

—Amy Kaufman