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Awards, News & Book Clubs

Winners of the Minnesota Book Awards are announced; Kao Kalia Yang makes history by winning three award for three different books, including two for children, Star Tribune reports.

Poet and University of Iowa writing program director Christopher Merrill wins the Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature. Publishing Perspectives has details.

The shortlist for the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize is announced. CBC has coverage.

Oprah selects Matriarch by Tina Knowles (One World) for her book club. NYT publishes a feature profile of Knowles, LA Times has an interview with Knowles, and USA Today shares revelations from her memoir.

Reese Witherspoon selects Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry (Berkley; LJ starred review) for her May book club.

Author Jeff Kinney, who will publish his 20th Diary of a Wimpy Kid book, Partypooper (Amulet), in October, will donate 20,000 books each month ahead of its release. USA Today has the story.

Old Fox Books and a retired U.S. Navy commander launch Operation Caged Bird to provide access to books withdrawn from the naval academy library, Shelf Awareness reports.

Reviews

NYT reviews The Acid Queen: The Psychedelic Life and Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary by Susannah Cahalan (Viking): “The Acid Queen reveals a painfully unrealized woman, a lifelong seeker whose reliance on the I Ching marks the most visible edge of a spiritualism born of too much acid, hashish and Ritalin”; and four new poetry collections: Hardly Creatures: Poems by Rob Macaisa Colgate (Tin House), Doggerel: Poems by Reginald Dwayne Betts (Norton; LJ starred review), Close Escapes by Stephen Kuusisto (Copper Canyon), and Other Times, Midnight by Andrea Ballou (Persea).

Washington Post reviews Big Chief by Jon Hickey (S. & S.): “At its best, Big Chief illuminates the slushy places where convictions turn into slogans and back again. Hickey is so sure-footed that I’ll follow wherever he goes next”; and A Training School for Elephants by Sophy Roberts (Atlantic Monthly): “Ironically, as in so many African tales by earlier generations of White storytellers, it’s the animals who ultimately steal the show.”

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry (Berkley; LJ starred review), the top holds title of the week.

NPR suggests five new books for the week.

Vulture recommends six audiobooks for the month.

Reactor shares “Five SFF Works About Unlikely Global Superpowers.”

BookRiot highlights eight underrated horror books.

ElectricLit has “7 Graphic Memoirs About Motherhood.”

Cynthia Erivo will narrate a new audiobook edition of Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked, People reports.

People writes about Titanic captain Edward Smith’s death, as explored in the new book Titanic Legacy: The Captain, His Daughter and the Spy by Dan Parkes (Amberley).

Authors on Air

James Patterson and Duane Swierczynski’s forthcoming thriller Billion-Dollar Ransom (Little, Brown), due out September 1, will get a feature adaptation, Deadline reports.

Alice Oseman announces that the Heartstopper Netflix series, based on her graphic novels, will conclude with a feature film. GMA has the story.

PBS News Hour talks with author Mayukh Sen about the new book Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star (Norton).

LitHub shares a literary guide to the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.

Amity Gaige fields book club question for her novel Heartwood (S. & S.) on Today.

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