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Awards & News

Margo Jefferson wins 2023 Rathbones Folio Book of the Year Prize for her memoir Constructing a Nervous System (Pantheon; LJ starred review). The Guardian has coverage. Scary Monsters by Michelle De Kretser (Catapult) wins the Rathbones Folio Prize for fiction, and Quiet: Poems by Victoria Adukwei Bulley (Knopf) wins the prize in poetry. Publishing Perspectives has details.

Jon Meacham receives the 26th Annual Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Award.

Kitty Kelley wins the 2023 BIO Award. 

The 2023 Imadjinn Awards finalists are announced.

The 2023 British Book Awards shortlists are announced.

In a statement yesterday, ALA condemned ongoing threats against libraries. 

The man exonerated in Alice Sebold rape case will receive $5.5 million. USA Today reports. 

Sarah Jessica Parker, Lauren Groff, and Meg Medina will keynote at the 2023 U.S. Book Show. Publishers Weekly has details and a lineup. 

Reviews

NYT reviews Skinfolk: A Memoir by Matthew Pratt Guterl (Liveright): “Guterl’s strengths as a writer show in his unflinching analysis of this and other racially complicated scenes, but what’s often lost is how these scenes connect to and define the family story”; Tanya: Poems by Brenda Shaughnessy (Knopf): “In Shaughnessy’s hands, this refusal to relinquish the people she loves can’t be brushed off as mere denial. It suggests something greater, more devoted and complicated, which I am still trying to learn from her work, and for which I am grateful”; The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts by Soraya Palmer (Catapult): “This is a book written with the gods of storytelling in mind; it highlights what stories can do—that it’s not just the stories that evolve with each telling, but we ourselves who are rearranged too”; Ada’s Room by Sharon Dodua Otoo, tr. by Jon Cho-Polizzi (Riverhead): “Ada’s Room feels less like a novel—something with complex characters and genuine tension, moral or otherwise—than a novel-length treatise on the idea of systemic oppression”; and The Great Reclamation by Rachel Heng (Riverhead): “A novel that investigates the price of change through the lives of the Lee family, a nucleus so intimately rendered that readers will find themselves missing the characters long after putting the book down.”

LA Times reviews The New Earth by Jess Row (Ecco): “Ultimately, The New Earth is all about resurrection. If Row isn’t pulling a jumper back to safety, he’s reasserting the value of fiction about fiction—or finding fresh ground for the American family novel.”

The Guardian reviews Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld (Random): “While Sittenfeld knows the dramatic value of putting obstacles in the path of characters you’re rooting for, she also isn’t above giving readers what they want—and that’s exactly what she does in this affable, intelligently crafted tale of work and love.”

NPR reviews Above Ground by Clint Smith (Little, Brown): “In Smith’s narrative, nothing is static and yet there is a reason behind every change. That is not to say that it is all for a good reason, or that it all works out.”

Briefly Noted

Victor LaValle, Lone Women (One World), answers 7 questions at Essence. 

Alex Mar discusses her book, Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy (Penguin Pr.), and a broken justice system with Shondaland. 

NYT profiles Matthew Pratt Guterl and his new book, Skinfolk: A Memoir (Liveright). 

Jhumpa Lahiri will publish a new collection, Roman Stories (Knopf), in October. LitHub has a preview.

ElectricLit has “March Madness: Book-to-TV Adaptations Edition.”

Book Riot writes about J.R. Moehringer, “ghostwriter to the stars.” 

LitHub shares 18 new books for the week. 

Seattle Times suggests new paperbacks for April. 

OprahDaily suggests “10 African Writers to Read This Year.”

HipLatina recommends “11 Iconic Latina Poets Whose Work Everyone Needs to Read.”

BookRiot highlights new releases for the week, 9 twisty suspense novels, and Black voices in speculative short fiction. 

Authors On Air 

Rachel Heng discusses her new book, The Great Reclamation (Riverhead), on B&N’s Poured Over podcast.

Killers of the Flower Moon, directed by Martin Scorsese and based on the book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann, gets an October release date. Deadline reports.

Author Jodi Picoult denounces Florida book bans on GMA. 

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