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Awards, News & Events

Sujit Sivasundaram wins the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding for his book, Waves Across the South: A New History of Revolution and Empire (Univ. of Chicago Pr.).  Publishing Perspectives has details.

Toni Ann Johnson wins the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.

The Forward Prizes for Poetry winners are announced.

The 2021 Prix Actusf De L’uchronie Shortlist for best sci-fi published in France is announced. Locus has details. 

The 2020 and 2021 Writers & Illustrators of the Future Awards are announced. Locus reports.

The NYT looks at why Nobel winner Abdulrazak Gurnah’s books are so difficult to come by. In the U.S., Riverhead Books (PRH) acquires rights to Gurnah's Afterlives, due to publish in August 2022.  Riverhead will also publish two major backlist titles by Gurnah, By The Sea, and Desertion.   

The LA Times Festival of Books announces live event for April 23 and 24, 2022.The speaker lineup will be announced on March 14th.

"Hachette launches Khan's video guide to writing cultural diversity in fiction." The Bookseller reports.  

Reviews

The NYT reviews Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart (Random; LJ starred review): "a perfect novel for these times and all times, the single textual artifact from the pandemic era I would place in a time capsule as a representation of all that is good and true and beautiful about literature. I hope the extraterrestrials who exhume it will agree." And, Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood by Mark Oppenheimer (Knopf): “As a former religion columnist for The New York Times and host of a popular podcast, Unorthodox, for Tablet, an online magazine, Oppenheimer is sympathetic to the ways Jewish culture stands at the crossroads of proud resistance and self-protective withdrawal, bold activism and self-effacement.” Plus, paired reviews of Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor (Catapult) and Storm by George R. Stewart (NYRB Classics).

The Washington Post reviews Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan (Harper Muse; LJ starred review): “a beautiful follow-up to Becoming Mrs. Lewis. It’s a love letter to books and stories with a meaningful message. Megs and her family learn that fantastical tales are more than mere ways to appease young children. Stories are nourishment for the souls that need joy the most, and sometimes they’re the only thing that can help us understand life.” Also, Baggage: Tales from a Fully Packed Life by Alan Cumming (Dey St.; LJ starred review): “doesn’t extend far enough chronologically to delve into many of the actor’s more recent feats, such as his almost-one-man Macbeth; CBS’s Instinct, in which his character was a news-making instance of an openly gay lead figure on an American broadcast drama; or, a couple of mentions aside, The Good Wife. Even a drawn-out dinner, it seems, can’t do justice to such a venturesome life.” And, I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins (Riverhead): “an audaciously candid story about the crush of conflicted feelings that a baby inspires — particularly for a woman who regards the nursery as a place where ambition, freedom and sex die.” Plus, Wholehearted Faith: Embracing Uncertainity, Risk, and Vulnerability on the Path to God by Rachel Held Evans and Jeff Chu (HarperOne): “It may feel like cold comfort, a generic consolation, to say that a person lives on in her books, in her words, and in the people those words touched. But in these pages, Evans reminds us that ‘the crucial thing to remember is that with God, death is never the end of the story.’ Death is not the end of her story, either.”

The LA Times reviews Trashlands by Alison Stine (MIRA): “Stine builds a world in which dark times have descended. And yet, she insists, the things that make us human persist. This is her ballad to love in a time of darkness — future and present.” And, Going There by Katie Couric (Little, Brown, & Co.): “There is no relentless people-pleasing in her fearlessly frank memoir, a wildly entertaining and often emotional ride through the volatile media landscape of the last 40 years in which no subject is off limits.”

The Guardian reviews Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time by Teju Cole (Univ. of Chicago Pr.): “To read this book is to enjoy the generosity of his thought, to be invited into a contemplation of your inner life, to embrace the complexity of others, and to see in the darkness not only despair but also understanding and even refuge.”

NPR reviews Lore Olympus: Volume One: Volume One by Rachel Smythe (Del Rey): “Smythe's take on classic myth is anything but hidebound. These gods play the same interpersonal games that dominate today's sexually frank, cell-phone-mediated social world.”

The Atlantic reviews Renegades: Born in the USA by Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen (Crown): “the irony of Renegades, which is likely destined to bounce around the same echo chambers that its authors bemoan, is that it only emphasizes the limits of politics-as-culture.”

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for Better Off Dead, by Lee Child & Andrew Child (Delacorte Press), the buzziest book of the week.

People has an interview with Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell about her new book, Her Honor: My Life on the Bench...What Works, What's Broken, and How to Change It (Celadon: Macmillan), and “the case that pushed her to retire.” People also talks with Andrew McMahon about staring down his demons in new memoir, Three Pianos (Princeton Architectural Press: Chronicle Books).

Salon interviews Jen Senko about her new book, The Brainwashing of My Dad: How the Rise of the Right-Wing Media Changed a Father and Divided Our Nation—And How We Can Fight Back (Sourcebooks).

Vogue has an interview with Melissa Lozada-Oliva about her debut, Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse (Astra House), about Selena’s legacy.

The NYT looks at why Nobel winner Abdulrazak Gurnah’s books are so difficult to come by.

Slate explores “why everyone’s reading books about trees.”

Good Morning America shares an essay penned by author Gabrielle Union, You Got Anything Stronger? (Dey Street Books), about “the struggles of Black women in Hollywood.”

Gina Schock shares a photo show from her new book, Made In Hollywood: All Access with the Go-Go’s (Black Dog & Leventhal), with People.

Vox extols the pleasures of reading The Housewives: The Real Story Behind the Real Housewives by Brian Moylan.

People shares details about Alyssa Milano’s new book of essays, Sorry Not Sorry: Stories I Have Lived (Dutton).

The CrimeReads roundtable discusses “horror in the age of Covid.” 

Selma Blair will release a new memoir, Mean Baby (Knopf) in April 2022. People has the story.

Time shares an excerpt from My Body by Emily Ratajkowski (Metropolitan).

Popsugar has an excerpt of the forthcoming Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed: 15 Voices from the Latinx Diaspora (Flatiron: Macmillan), due out next week.

Tor has an excerpt from Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu (Tin House Books), due out in February, 2022.

The Millions previews Thank You, Mr. Nixon: Stories by Gish Jen (Knopf), due out in January 2022. 

Bustle recommends 8 must-reads for the week.

LitHub has “15 new books coming out today."

NPR shares suggestions for age-appropriate Halloween reading and watching for kids. 

The Washington Post suggests where to start reading Ramsey Campbell, a must for horror fans. 

T&C has “Horror Books to Read For a Chilling Halloween”

“Arnold Hano, Author of a Bleachers’ View Baseball Classic, Dies at 99.” The NYT has an obituary.

Authors On Air

NPR’s Fresh Air talks with Katie Couric about her buzzy new memoir, Going There (Little, Brown, & Co.).

NPR’s Book of the Day features State of Terror by Louise Penny and Hillary Rodham Clinton (S. & S.: St. Martin’s).

Dune gets a theater-only sequel release in 2023. PBS NewsHour reports. The LA Times reassures Zendaya fans “she’ll be a big deal in the sequel.”

NPR’s Morning Edition talks with Sam Quinones about The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth (Bloomsbury; LJ starred review), about the dangers of fentanyl.

NPR’s All Things Considered talks with Kati Marton, The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel (S. & S.), about Angela Merkel's impact on the world. 

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (Hanover Square Press: HarperCollins) will be adapted into a series. Deadline has the story.

Rachael Ray, This Must Be the Place: Dispatches & Food from the Home Front (Ballantine) will visit Drew Barrymore tomorrow. Deepak Chopra, MD, Abundance: The Inner Path to Wealth (Harmony: PRH) will be on Ellen. 

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