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Awards

The 2022 ALA Youth Media Awards were announced Monday. SLJ has full coverage. NPR also has coverage and The NYT has a feature on Newbery winner Donna Barba Higuera and Caldecott winner Jason Chin. Locus highlights Science Fiction Notable lists. NPR’s Morning Edition also has a feature on winners Malinda Lo, Carole Boston Weatherford, and Angeline Boulley.

UK’s Sunday Times Young Writer Award names its 2021 shortlist. Publishing Perspectives has details.

David Gerrold wins the 2022 Robert A. Heinlein Award.

Reviews

NYT reviews The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, trans. by Jennifer Croft (Riverhead): “is an unruly, overwhelming, vastly eccentric novel. It’s sophisticated and ribald and brimming with folk wit. It treats everything it bumps into at both face value and ad absurdum. It’s Chaucerian in its brio.” And, Perpetual West by Mesha Maren (Algonquin): “is a forceful addition to the literature of the U.S.-Mexican border and its ongoing history of tragedy and joy.” And, Fuccboi by Sean Thor Conroe (Little, Brown, & Co.): “Deeply tuned into his single character, he’s able to capture evocative moments in a fresh voice.”  Also, Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi (tordotcom): “Onyebuchi suburbanizes outer space and makes battered, almost uninhabitable provincial America the frontier.” And, Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka (Morrow; LJ starred review): “is nuanced, ambitious and compelling. Perversely, some of the novel’s propulsive power comes from the very conventions it fails to abandon.” Plus, short reviews of four historical novels, and four expectation-defying story collections.

NPR reviews Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American by Wajahat Ali (Norton): “Ali doesn't pull any punches when expressing his righteous anger against things like the moderate Muslim trope, mass incarceration, systemic racism, socio-economic inequality, and more.”

The Washington Post reviews Defenestrate by Renée Branum (Bloomsbury): “The story cuts back and forth, brimming with suspense. It’s always a joy to see a writer dig confidently into her gifts, as Branum does in Defenestrate. Her characters may fear falling, but this novel soars.”

AV Club reviews Devil House by John Darnielle (MCD): “Darnielle renders…the bad-taste curiosity that compels people to read and write true crime despite reservations—with such depth and clarity that it feels like he’s somehow culpable too. That’s good fiction writing.”

Briefly Noted

USA Today talks with Andrew Carnegie Medal winners Hanif Abdurraqib and Tom Lin about their library memories. 

LA Times talks with Wajahat Ali about his memoir, Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American (Norton).

CrimeReads has an interview with John Darnielle about the “anachronistic porn shop that inspired his latest novel,” Devil House (MCD), urban legend, and more. ElectricLit also has a conversation with Darnielle about subverting the true crime genre. 

Autostraddle talks with Morgan Thomas about “weaving in genderqueer history into” their debut story collection, Manywhere (MCD).

FoxNews shares details from Valerie Bertinelli’s new memoir, Enough Already (HarperCollins).

Parade tells why Colleen Hoover is trending on TikTok and gives title recommendations. 

Entertainment Weekly has a preview and excerpt of Stephen King’s forthcoming supernatural thriller, Fairy Tale (Scribner), due out in September.

The Millions previews notable new releases.

Autostraddle suggests "Eight Queer Punk and Counterculture Books Set in the 90s.”

ElectricLit has “7 Novels About Very Bad Rich People.”

Authors On Air

NPR’s Fresh Air interviews Dana Stevens about her new book, Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century (Atria; LJ starred review).

NPR’s It’s Been A Minute With Sam Sanders talks with Wajahat Ali about his memoir, Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American (Norton), and how “Ali uses his own story to offer strategies to make America more welcoming and compassionate."

Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin (Celadon: Macmillan) will be adapted at Hulu as an 8-part series. Deadline reports.

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