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Awards & News

The February Loanstars list is out, featuring top pick The Women by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin’s). 

The 2024 Lionel Gelber Prize shortlist is announced.

The 2024 Yoto Carnegie longlists are announced. Publishing Perspectives has coverage. 

The shortlist for the 2024 International Prize for Arabic Fiction is announced.

Sally Kim is named president and publisher of Little, Brown, Publishers Weekly reports. 

The Writing Freedom Fellowship announces inaugural fellows, LitHub reports. 

Earlyword’s February GalleyChat roundup is out now.

A judge partially dismisses a lawsuit against OpenAI over copyright, brought by Sarah Silverman and other authors, Reuters reports. 

Reviews

Washington Post reviews Who Owns This Sentence?: A History of Copyrights and Wrongs by David Bellos & Alexandre Montagu (Norton): “Bellos and Montagu are absolutely right that, though well-meaning, copyright has become a monstrous Frankenstein that is now out of control”; and I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition by Lucy Sante (Penguin Pr.): “Reading this book is a joy. Sante is funny and warm, and her new life (or her newfound ownership of her life) gives her journey, in retrospect, a rosy tint.” LA Times also reviews: “Just as you think she’s finding resolution, there is another caveat. Yet it’s impossible not to be moved and fascinated by Sante’s exhilarating if painful journey.”

NYT reviews A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging by Lauren Markham (Riverhead): “Getting lost is a theme. So, too, is the nostalgia propelled by other kinds of loss.”

LA Times reviews The Lede: Dispatches from a Life in the Press by Calvin Trillin (Random): “Taken as a whole, Lede paints a portrait of a disappearing journalistic world — of newspapers, mostly, but also of magazines. It contains not a whiff of sentimentality; Trillin is too clear-eyed for that.”

The Guardian reviews Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind by Molly McGhee (Astra House): “The novel grows richer as McGhee digs deeper, showing the disturbing links between Abernathy’s work and his waking world—as well as the life of the woman he begins to love.”

The Millions reviews The Book of Love by Kelly Link (Random): “Though Link’s stories often keep closer bedfellows with Karen Russell and Aimee Bender, her novel is pulpier and more bathetic, in some ways a piece of straight fantasy. To draw her characters to the reader and cut through the shapeshifting mayhem around them, Link treats traditional generic tropes as a kind of scaffolding on which to build her imaginative worlds.”

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for Fangirl Down by Tessa Bailey (Avon), the top holds title of the week. 

LJ has new prepub alerts. 

NYT suggests new romance novels.

NPR recommends 10 romance novels for Valentine’s Day. 

Reactor shares “10 Great Female Friendships in SFF.”

LJ highlights foodie rom-coms.

CrimeReads selects “The Best Psychological Thrillers of February 2024.”

Vox examines the concept of love languages, as introduced by Gary Chapman’s 1992 book The 5 Love Languages.

NYT has a feature and interview with Lucy Sante about her new memoir, I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition (Penguin Pr.). Slate also has coverage. 

Joy-Ann Reid dicusses her new book, Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America (Mariner), with Salon.

Omotara James, Song of My Softening (Alice James; LJ starred review), answers 10 questions at Poets & Writers.

WSJ writes about the literary aspirations of Gen Z model Kaia Gerber. 

Authors on Air

Author Bret Easton Ellis will make his directorial debut with a new horror film, Relapse. Variety reports. 

NPR's It's Been A Minute preaches “the gospel of bell hooks.”

FoxNews highlights the new book On Locations: Lessons Learned from My Life on Set with The Sopranos and in the Film Industry by Mark Kamine & Mike White (Steerforth). 

Julius Roberts, The Farm Table (Ten Speed), visits Today tomorrow.

Samantha Seneviratne, Bake Smart: Sweets and Secrets from My Oven to Yours (Harvest), will also appear on Today.

Josh and Katie Walters, authors of New Marriage, Same Couple: Don’t Let Your Worst Days Be Your Last Days (Thomas Nelson), will visit Tamron Hall.

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