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Awards & News

The Anthony Awards finalists are announced.

The 2023 Indigenous Voices Award finalists are announced. CBC has coverage. 

The 2023 Trillium Book Awards finalists are announced.

Penguin Random House and Sourcebooks have acquired Callisto Media. Publishers Lunch reports. Read about the deal here.

Speculation abounds around what might be the real book behind 4C Untitled Flatiron Nonfiction Summer 2023 (Flatiron).  Alison Stine provides commentary on “The mystery of the Taylor Swift memoir,” at Salon. The Guardian covers the "Taylor Swift Effect" on preorders, and Variety confirms that Swift is not the mystery author, but that the title has a 1 million print-run and will have "global appeal and massive publicity." 

Pearson plans to use more AI tools and calls generative AI a “significant positive opportunity.” The Bookseller covers the news. 

Findaway Voices eliminates Spotify distribution fee. Publishers Lunch reports. 

Scribd updates its terms of service in reaction to AI developments. Publishing Perspectives reports. 

VIZ Media will offer translated chapters of popular manga to North American audiences on the same day they are released in Japan. Seattle Times reports. 

A new USPS forever stamp features an illustration from Tomie dePaola’s Strega Nona.

Reviews

NYT reviews The Guest by Emma Cline (Random): “Cline’s old-fashioned prose style at times had me in a shimmering state of déjà vu, bringing to mind the nimbleness and nuance of John Cheever, who also captured the rot beneath wealthy suburbia.” The Washington Post weighs in: “Cline writes in a sleek, cool style that conveys both Alex’s naivete and her mirthless irony. The young woman’s astonishment is subtly imbued with Cline’s sometimes witty, often piercing critique of America’s class system.” The Guardian also reviews: “You don’t have to read The Guest as a slant treatise on neoliberal precariousness and alienation, or as an even broader one on metaphysical estrangement – but it’s all there should you want it. Or just take it to the beach and savour every page.”

NYT also reviews: When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach by Ashlee Vance (Ecco): “In some of its best sections, Vance’s book is an exuberant ride, happily hopping around the Pacific Rim from Kwajalein Atoll to California, from New Zealand to Kodiak Island, reveling in the do-it-yourself ethos of the new space business.”; Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane (Harper; LJ starred review): “He’s said this one might be the ‘nice mic drop’ that ends his publishing career. Read him while you can.”

USA Today reviews The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece by Tom Hanks (Knopf), giving it 3 out of 4 stars: “Hanks’ book is a needed reminder that movies don’t make themselves and no one person, especially not the star, deserves all the credit.”

NPR reviews Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer (Knopf): “As a thinker, Dederer is smart, informed, nuanced and very funny.”

The Washington Post reviews Harold by Steven Wright (S. & S.): “Harold is often funny, and its refusal to stay in one place means it never feels labored. But: Is it a novel?”

LA Times reviews Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World by Henry Grabar (Penguin Pr.): “The problems are immense. The solutions remain unclear. Grabar says we are ‘so deep in the parking crater people can’t see beyond its edge.’ His highly entertaining take on a serious subject will persuade more people to at least take a good look.”

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece by Tom Hanks (Knopf), the top holds title of the week. Entertainment Weekly has a new interview with Hanks. 

LJ's Barbara Hoffert has new prepub alerts for pop fiction and historical fiction. 

May’s EarlyWord GalleyChat spreadsheet is available now.

Hannah Matthews, You or Someone You Love: Reflections from an Abortion Doula (Atria), talks with The Rumpus about “healing power of helping others feel heard.”

Connie Wang discusses her new book, Oh My Mother!: A Memoir in Nine Adventures (Viking), and the bond between Asian mothers and daughters, with PopSugar. 

Poets&Writers has a Q&A with Jennifer Lunden, author of American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body’s Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life (Harper Wave).

Laura Dern and Diane Ladd, Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love (and Banana Pudding) (Grand Central), answer Elle’s Shelf Life literary questionnaire.

Stephen Marche, who recently wrote the novella Death of an Author with the aid of AI, argues for a “new kind of literary curation,” in an essay for The Atlantic. 

Esquire asks: “Do Great Actors Make Great Novelists?”

CBC highlights Canadian nonfiction for spring.

BookRiot shares new books for the week.

LitHub has 21 new books for the week. 

T&C suggests the best books for May. 

The Guardian has the top 10 books about motherhood. 

Time shares 8 books for Mother's Day. 

Authors On Air

Aaron Hamburger talks with NPR’s All Things Considered about his new book, Hotel Cuba (Harper Perennial). 

Tom Hanks discusses Nora Ephron’s influence on his new novel, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece (Knopf), on Q with Tom Power.

T.J. Newman, Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421 (Avid Reader; LJ starred review), writes an open letter to Deadline readers about the importance of dreams and never giving up. 

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