Hanya Yanagihara‘s A Little Life earned its first big award win on Thursday, recipient of the Kirkus Prize for fiction, as Ta-Nehisi Coates won the nonfiction prize for Between the World and Me — and both are in contention for National Book Awards. Pam Muñoz Ryan‘s middle-grade novel Echo won the young readers’ literature prize. Longtime executive director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Hut Landon was feted this week as he retires from that position. Bookselling This Week has some testimonials from colleagues and friends reflect on his passion for, and many contributions to, the bookselling community. At Zondervan, Robyn Burwell has […]
Awards
National Book Award Finalists Include Groff, Yanagihara, Coates and More
The finalists for each of the four National Book Award categories were announced Wednesday morning on NPR’s Morning Edition. The winners will be named on November 18. The fiction list gives Booker bettors’-favorite Hanya Yanagihara another chance at a major award, along with recently-named 5 Under 35 honoree Angela Flournoy. Fiction Karen E. Bender, Refund (Counterpoint) Angela Flournoy, The Turner House (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies (Riverhead) Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles (Random House) Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life (Doubleday) Nonfiction Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau) Sally Mann, Hold Still (Little, Brown) Sy Montgomery, The Soul […]
Booker Prize to Marlon James
Marlon James won the Booker Prize for A Brief History In Seven Killings, which the judges called the “most exciting” book on the shortlist. Chair of the judges Michael Wood said they came to a unanimous decision — not always the case for the Booker — in a quick two hours. Currently living in Minneapolis, James is the first Jamaican author to win the award. Wood notes further: “This book is startling in its range of voices and registers, running from the patois of the street posse to The Book of Revelation. It is a representation of political times and […]
People, Etc.
Kelly O’Connor has been promoted to associate editor at Voyager. Geoff Shandler‘s new imprint at HarperCollins will be called Custom House and has announced some of their acquisitions from the past year. Lauren Grand Lubell has joined Chronicle Books as junior industrial designer. In addition, Marie Oishi has been promoted to managing editor, art, while Elizabeth Smith has been promoted to assistant managing editor, children’s. Bloomsbury’s Public Library Online has hired the former managing director and development manager of the Dutch national digital library Diederik van Leeuwen and Mark Knijnenburg to “drive sales and business development of the platform in the UK and Europe.” […]
Allende’s The Japanese Lover Tops November Library Reads List
The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende is the No. 1 pick for the November Library Reads list. The list also includes an excerpt of Jason Gay’s Little Victories, an excerpt of which you can start reading right now in our Buzz Books 2015: Fall/Winter ebook, as well as November #1 Indie Next Pick The Muralist by B.A Shapiro. The rest of the list features: Hannah Rothschild, The Improbability of Love (Knopf) Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, Crimson Shore (Grand Central) M.H. Boroson, The Girl With Ghost Eyes (Talos Press) Beatriz Williams, Along the Infinite Sea (Putnam) Jenn McKinlay, A Likely […]
People: Alexievich Wins Nobel, and More
Belarus journalist and author Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday, cited by the Swedish Academy for “her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.” Though Alexievich had been installed as the bettors’ favorite over the past few weeks, she is another instance of an under-translated Nobel winner in the English language: her oral history Voices From Chernobyl (1997) was published in 2005 by Dalkey Archive Press and then in paperback the next spring by Picador — and the book (with Keith Gessen’s translation) won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Earlier, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the […]