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Awards & News

The 2023 Dublin Literary Award shortlist is announced.

Salman Rushdie, Alice Oseman, Mererid Hopwood, and Serhiy Zhadan will receive Hay Festival Medals in May. 

Publishing Perspectives reports on the new “SALT” project focusing on translating South Asian literature into English.

According to a press release, Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial will publish the English-language editions of Javier Castillo’s The Snow Girl and The Soul Game. In related news, following the success of its The Snow Girl adaptation, Netflix announced the screen adaptations of Castillo’s bestsellers El juego del alma and El cuco de cristal.

Reviews

The Washington Post reviews Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld (Random): “What makes all this particularly delightful is that the woman narrating Romantic Comedy is hyper-aware of the conventions of romantic comedy, and she knows full well that real life is no fairy tale”; and Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What To Do About It by Daniel Knowles (Abrams): “We could cross our fingers and hope that American legislators will soon, out of the goodness of their hearts, start acting more like Parisian ones, at least on transit issues. But for more useful, realistic answers, readers will have to look elsewhere.”

NPR reviews Biography of X by Catherine Lacey (Farrar; LJ starred review): “Just when you think you have a handle on Biography of X, it escapes the stack of assumptions where you thought you’d put it, like a profile or an obituary you’d started reading in yesterday’s tossed-out paper.” The Guardian also reviews: “It makes you think afresh about America and American history. It roves over the muddy trenches of identity politics while saying things that are original and not parti pris. At its centre, X is a charismatic, tantalising figure who takes aim at all orthodoxies.”

LA Times reviews Hang the Moon by Jeannette Walls (Scribner): “Hang the Moon, definitely succeeds in seamlessness, its narrative of Roaring ’20s country life roller-coastering along. But the novel becomes more intriguing once you know its rural Virginian petty dynasts correspond to the Tudors at the height of British rule”; and Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin (Henry Holt): “The novel is haunted and haunting, but it is not relentlessly grim.”

Tor reviews Chlorine by Jade Song (Morrow; LJ starred review): “Less coming-of-age story than an acute treatise on transformation, Chlorine follows Ren through the arduous journey of cleaving herself and her body to the exacting standards of elite athleticism.”

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for Loyalty by Lisa Scottoline (Putnam), the top holds title of the week. 

LJ’s Barbara Hoffert has new prepub alerts in music & dance, language, literature & philosophy, and thrillers.

Esquire profiles Brandon Sanderson on building a fantasy empire. 

Vulture writes about how “Emily Henry cracked the modern romance novel.”

Time has a feature on Cheryl Strayed, who executive produced the Hulu series based on her book Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice from Dear Sugar (Vintage).

Alex Mar, Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy (Penguin Pr.), and Sarah Weinman, Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts To Set Him Free (Ecco; LJ starred review), discuss true crime and storytelling at CrimeReads. 

Clint Smith discusses his new poetry collection, Above Ground (Little, Brown; LJ starred review), and balancing “love, joy, dread, and fear,” at Shondaland. Smith also answers Elle’s “Shelf Life” literary survey. 

Collin Hansen talks with FoxNews about his new biography, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation (Zondervan). 

Tiffani Thiessen previews her forthcoming second cookbook at People. Here We Go Again: Recipes and Inspiration To Level Up Your Leftovers, written with Rachel Holtzman (Worthy Books), will publish in September. 

The Millions writes about AI and “intrinsic value of writing.”

USA Today suggests 10 memoirs. 

CrimeReads recommends 10 alternate-history thrillers.

Good Housekeeping shares “15 Best BookTok-Recommended Books to Read in 2023.”

“Dubravka Ugresic, Who Wrote of Dislocation and Exile, Dies at 73.” NYT has an obituary. 

“Bill Zehme, Author with a Knack for Humanizing the Famous, Dies at 64.” NYT has an obituary. 

Authors On Air

Colleen Oakley discusses how her grandma inspired the friendship in her new book, The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise (Berkley), with NPR’s All Things Considered. 

Dr. Arline T. Geronimus talks about her new book, Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society (Little Brown, Spark), on NPR’s Fresh Air.

Chris Chalk will play James Baldwin in Feud: Capote’s Women on FX. Shadow & Act has details.

Black Candle Women by Diane Marie Brown (Graydon House) will be adapted as a series. Deadline reports. 

Jerry Torre’s memoir The Marble Faun of Grey Gardens will be adapted for film. Deadline reports. 

Clint Smith, Above Ground (Little, Brown; LJ starred review), will visit with Stephen Colbert tomorrow.

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