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Awards, News & Events

The 2022 Aurora Awards ballot is announced, Locus reports. Titles are nominated by members of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association. 

The 2022 Deutsche Science Fiction Preis finalists are also out. Locus has details.

The £25,000 Walter Scott Prize shortlist for historical fiction is announced.

Oprah Winfrey will interview Viola Davis about her forthcoming memoir, Finding Me (HarperOne) for Oprah + Viola: A Netflix Special Event, which will air on April 22, prior to the book’s April 26 release. Essence has the story.

"Maryland Concedes Legal Loss on Library Law," reports Publishers Lunch. PW also has coverage. 

Reviews

NYT reviews Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life by Delia Ephron (Little, Brown & Co.; LJ starred review): “let’s not forget, Delia Ephron is part of the team who created You’ve Got Mail. If there’s such a thing as a feel-good memoir, this is it.” And, Blind Owl by Sadeq Hedayat, trans. by Sassan Tabatabai (Penguin Classics): “The new Penguin Classics edition provides a much-needed and clear translation by the Iranian American scholar Sassan Tabatabai, but its introduction does little to settle the place of Hedayat or his puzzling masterpiece.” Also, Things They Lost by Okwiri Oduor (Scribner; LJ starred review): “Oduor has produced page after page of gorgeous, elegiac prose. Dense and rich as a black Christmas cake and alternately whimsical, sweet and dark, Things They Lost is a complex work, brimming with uncompromisingly African magical realism, about the ambiguity of toxic mother-daughter relationships and the urgently restorative nature of friendship.” And, Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient by Theresa Brown (Algonquin): “This is the disconnect at the heart of “Healing.” A caregiver receiving care suddenly understands an essential truth — empathy is essential to alleviating suffering.” And, If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga (Graywolf; LJ starred review): “This novel has a global, diasporic outlook; within it, we are all implicated.” Plus, The Forever Prisoner: The Full and Searing Account of the CIA’s Most Controversial Covert Program by Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy (Atlantic Monthly Pr.; LJ starred review): “is impressively thorough, but at times it wallows in the details rather than mastering them. We get a little lost in the acronym-rich language of the bureaucrats, and the repeated accounts of waterboarding and other horrors, vivid at first, become numbing after a while.”  Finally, The Very Last Interview by David Shields (New York Review Books): “Despite the broad cultural exploration promised in the jacket copy, Shields has produced a narrow, nihilistic investigation into the vicissitudes of his own career.”

Briefly Noted

Robin Roberts discusses her new book, Brighter by the Day: Waking Up to New Hopes and Dreams, written with Michelle Burford (Grand Central), with USA Today. USA Today also talks with Molly Shannon about her new book, Hello, Molly! ,written with Sean Wilsey (Ecco), and the accident that killed her mother.

OprahDaily has an interview with Susan Cain about her new book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole (Crown).

Melissa Rivers talks with FoxNews about her new book, Lies My Mother Told Me: Tall Tales from a Short Woman (Post Hill Press), and finding laughter again after grief. 

Electric Lit interviews Melissa Chadburn about her debut novel, A Tiny Upward Shove (FSG), and “tapping into her cultural heritage as a Filipino American writer.”

Reyna Grande talks to The Rumpus about her novel, A Ballad of Love and Glory (Washington Square Press), and offers “a corrective version of American history that engages omitted historical facts.”

LA Times features critic and author Donald Brackett’s new book, Yoko Ono: An Artful Life (Sutherland House).

Tordotcom shares an excerpt of Siren Queen by Nghi Vo (Tordotcom; LJ starred review), due out May 10.

People highlights Kelly Ripa’s upcoming memoir, Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories (Dey Street), due out September 27.

Ted Cruz announces his new book, Justice Corrupted: How the Left Weaponized Our Legal System, will be published by Regnery on September 13. FoxNews reports.

OprahDaily highlights the new book, Women Talk Money: Breaking the Taboo (S. & S.), including an essay from editor Rebecca Walker about bringing more women into positions of financial power, and the foreward by Alice Walker. 

The Rumpus shares daily poems for National Poetry Month.

The Millions offers notable new releases for the week.

CBC highlights 27 Canadian books coming out in April.

Parade shares “32 Bestselling Authors Pick the Best Mysteries and Thrillers of All Time.” 

Seattle Times suggests 4 audiobooks to help identify and dismantle ableist attitudes and stigmas. 

Electric Lit has “14 Books About Refugees Trying to Reach Europe.”

BookRiot extols the virtues of taking an anti-burnout, reading vacation.

Authors On Air

NPR’s Fresh Air talks with Molly Shannon about finding healing after tragedy in her new book, Hello, Molly! ,written with Sean Wilsey (Ecco).

NPR’s Morning Edition celebrates 100 years of Margery Williams’s The Velveteen Rabbit.

Robin Roberts, Brighter by the Day: Waking Up to New Hopes and Dreams (Grand Central) looks back on 20 years at Good Morning America with advice to her younger-self. 

Ukranian novelist Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees trans. by Boris Dralyuk (Deep Vellum Publishing), talks about “preserving his country’s culture during war,” on the PBS NewsHour.

Delia Ephron discusses her new book, Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life (Little, Brown & Co.; LJ starred review), at Good Morning America.

NPR’s Morning Edition talks with Michael Meyer about Benjamin Franklin's Last Bet: The Favorite Founder's Divisive Death, Enduring Afterlife, and Blueprint for American Prosperity (Mariner).

Julia Haart, Brazen: My Unorthodox Journey from Long Sleeves to Lingerie (Crown), will be on The View tomorrow.

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