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Awards & News

The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction shortlist is announced. People has coverage.

The Plutarch Award longlist is announced. 

Heinz Janisch and Sydney Smith win Hans Christian Andersen Awards, Publishers Weekly reports.

The Xingyun Awards finalists are announced. Locus has details.

NYPL announces 21 winners of its national teen writing contest on the freedom to read.

Raymond Pun is elected to the ALA presidency for 2025–2026.

Associated Press reports about librarian fears of “new penalties, even prison, as activists challenge books.”

Leslie Henriques, cofounder of independent publisher Ulysses Press, has died at the age of 76. PW has more on her life.

Reviews

 NYT reviews The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo (Flatiron; LJ starred review): “Reading Bardugo is an immersive, sensual experience…. One can’t help sinking into Luzia and Santángel’s world and wishing never to leave”; The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by Hampton Sides (Doubleday): “But Sides isn’t just interested in retelling an adventure tale. He also wants to present it from a 21st-century point of view”; There’s Going To Be Trouble by Jen Silverman (Random): “Silverman’s novel is framed around how one chooses to participate in protest, but its heart lies in how its characters allow relationships and loss to guide their personal philosophies”; The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains by Clayton Page Aldern (Dutton): “But that is just another kind of mutation: an antibody response. This great transformation is already deforming our inner lives in ways we are only beginning to comprehend”; and The Limits by Nell Freudenberger (Knopf): “Perhaps the key theme of Freudenberger’s career is dislocation—the idea that seeing the foreign in the world can elicit, too, the foreign within us—and Nathalie, the book’s watchful conscience, personifies this idea.”

Washington Post reviews Fi: A Memoir of My Son by Alexandra Fuller (Grove): “This book is a sharp ax. By its end, I was moved and devastated yet somehow strengthened.”

Datebook reviews Somehow: Thoughts on Love by Anne Lamott (Riverhead): “Somehow: Thoughts on Love is a reminder—for those who need one—that it’s never too late to listen for the proverbial still small voice, the one within us that the world does its best to drown out, that it’s never too late to choose love.”

The Rumpus reviews The Audacity by Ryan Chapman (Soho): “Victoria’s delusional self-importance cultivates an almost messianic belief in herself that she is nearing a world-changing breakthrough, a conviction so powerful that others end up believing it too.”

Autostraddle reviews Trouble by Lex Croucher (St. Martin’s Griffin): “For a delightfully queer historical romcom with equal parts humor and pathos and a delicate blend of romance and character growth, you really can’t do any better than Lex Croucher’s Trouble.”

 Briefly Noted

LitHub highlights 24 new books for the week. 

CBC suggests “18 Canadian comics and graphic novels to check out in spring 2024.”

FoxNews highlights 20 popular BookTok books.

NYT has an interview with Doris Kearns Goodwin, who discusses her new memoir, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s (S. & S), and selling the house she lived in with her late husband. 

At BBC, Percival Everett discusses his book, James (Doubleday; LJ starred review), and how he found inspiration on the tennis court.

Lauren Wesley Wilson discusses her new book, What Do You Need?: How Women of Color Can Take Ownership of Their Careers To Accelerate Their Path to Success (Hay House), with Ebony. 

Reactor writes about “Octavia Butler, Audre Lorde, and the Power of Pleasure.”

The Next Big Idea Club shares “5 Books to Read if the Eclipse Inspired You.” 

Time considers the “significance of eclipses in movies, TV shows and books.”

Entertainment Weekly shares a cover reveal and excerpt from I Might Be in Trouble by Daniel Aleman (Grand Central), due out in December.

ElectricLit shares “7 Novels Set in Refugee Camps.”

Authors on Air

Anne Lamott talks about her new book, Somehow: Thoughts on Love (Riverhead), on B&N’s Poured Over podcast. 

NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour provides a guide to Stephen King. 

Dolores Redondo’s “Baztan” novel series will be adapted for television, Variety reports.

Hanif Abdurraqib, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Random), will be on CBS Mornings tomorrow.

Leigh Bardugo, The Familiar (Flatiron; LJ starred review), will appear on GMA tomorrow. 

Also tomorrow, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization (Holt; LJ starred review) will be on Live with Kelly and Mark.

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