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Awards & News

Garth Greenwell wins the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for his novel Small Rain (Farrar).

American documentary filmmaker Dawn Porter wins the BIO Award.

The Romantic Novel of the Year Awards shortlist is announced. The Bookseller has details.

The Atlantic looks at “What’s Next for America’s Largest Creative-Writing Conference.”

Publishers Weekly looks at the current status of book tariffs; NBC News talks with BookTokers about fears of price increases.

Reviews

NYT reviews The Griffin Sisters’ Greatest Hits by Jennifer Weiner (Morrow): “The Griffin Sisters’ Greatest Hits isn’t grimy like a rock ’n’ roll novel, or a deep meditation on the ways creative personalities and egos can clash, like the Broadway hit Stereophonic. Still, familiar tunes that go down easy often turn into big hits”; Our Beautiful Boys by Sameer Pandya (Ballantine): “This is a book that highlights how we internalize and project certain perceptions, and what we’re willing to do and say so we can feel accepted”; Authority: Essays by Andrea Long Chu (Farrar): “Such an approach is an important current within literary criticism, and a tonic against our book culture’s reflexive humanism, which can become its own kind of kitsch. But it badly damages our faith in her taste”; and Slayers, Every One of Us: How One Girl in All the World Showed Us How To Hold On by Kristin Russo & Jenny Owen Youngs (St. Martin’s): “Devotees of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the podcast are most likely the target audience for this book, but it can also be viewed as a joyful ode to the awesome ability of pop-culture arcana to create a solid community.”

Washington Post reviews Terrestrial History by Joe Mungo Reed (Norton): “For a slender book, Terrestrial History delivers an enthralling plot; complex, realized characters; and a wealth of fine-cut sentences”; and Where the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler (MCD): “It is to Nayler’s credit that he never gives way to cynicism, even when the world he has imagined here suggests that he should.”

Star Tribune reviews The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe (Europa): “There is so much going on that, by rights, it shouldn’t work. In fact, this brilliant novel works wonders.”

Briefly Noted

LitHub highlights 23 new books for the week.

Electric Lit names “The 7 Greatest Cooks in Literature.”

NPR shares “5 buzzy books out this week that look inward.”

BookRiot recommends “12 Must-Read New Queer Books Out in April 2025.”

CrimeReads appreciates the late author Ken Bruen’s noir style.

NYT has a feature on J.P. Donleavy’s 1975 advice book The Unexpurgated Code: A Complete Manual of Survival & Manners, which turns 50 this year.

Time shares an excerpt from The Perfect Game: Tetris; From Russia With Love by Henk B. Rogers (Di Angelo).

Lucasfilm will release a deluxe 20th-anniversary edition of Matthew Stover’s novelization of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, published by Penguin Random House on October 14, Collider reports.

Kate Folk discusses Sky Daddy (Random), “Moby-Dick, manifestation, and wanting things that are bad for you,” with Electric Lit.

Lynn Steger Strong talks with The Rumpus about her novel The Float Test (Mariner), “the complexities of storytelling, the trickiness of conveying time in fiction, and what inspires her revision process.”

Parade talks with about Jessica N. Turner about her new book, I Thought It Would Be Better Than This: Rise From Disappointment, Regain Control, and Rebuild a Life You Love (Worthy).

Good Housekeeping UK launches a new initiative called Good Books, featuring a curated selection of recommended reads.

Australian mystery author Kerry Greenwood has died at the age of 70. The Guardian has an obituary.

Authors on Air

NPR’s All Things Considered discusses the results and implications of a new NPR/Ipsos poll, which finds that while American adults enjoy reading, it is not a top priority.

AMC will develop a new “Great American Stories” anthology series; the first season will be an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Variety has the story.

A Minecraft Movie, with associated titles, breaks box office records, including best in history for a game-to-film adaptation, Variety reports.

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