In Catalyst news, Barbara Boswell’s new nonfiction book And Wrote my Story Anyway (Wits University Press) was just shortlisted for the South African Humanities & Social Sciences Award in the Best Non-Fiction Single Authored Monographs category! We are proud to publish Barbara’s novel Unmaking Grace in North America.
Another of our authors, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, will be (virtually) appearing on April 9 at 2:00 pm EST at Mercer University for a reading and discussion of her new book The Theory of Flight. Check our event calendar for more info and the event Zoom link.
In other awards news, the National Book Critics Circle Award winners were announced this week, and Kenya’s Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was just nominated as author and translator for the International Booker Prize, making his novel The Perfect Nine the first work written in an indigenous African language to be longlisted.
The book business was in the headlines a lot this week, thanks to a Seattle law firm suing Amazon for colluding to fix book prices and a bill in the Maryland state senate that’s pitting libraries against publishers (and Amazon, of course). Scholastic made the decision this week to pull a book by Captain Underpants author Dav Pilkey on account of the book’s harmful racial undertones, and if you need a new writing gig, Chinese tech giant China Literature wants to hire 100,000 North American writers to help boost its web fiction mega-business sales in the US and Canada.
In celebrity book news, Sharon Stone has a new memoir, US First Lady Jill Biden is getting her own biographical comic book, Princess Beatrice has narrated a children’s book about dyslexia, and late Representative John Lewis’ posthumous graphic novel is set to be released in August. Beverly Clearly, author of the Ramona Quimby books, died at 104 this week. Here’s Book Riot’s remembrance piece, her profile in New York Times, Rachel Vorona Cote on Ramona Quimby’s priceless lessons for girls, and Scaachi Koul on being a Ramona in a world full of Susans. We also lost beloved children’s book author and illustrator Joan Walsh Anglund this week, at the age of 95.
Netflix released the first trailer for its new series Shadow and Bone, based on Leigh Bardugo’s bestselling Grishaverse novels. Buzzfeed‘s spring reading challenge has begun, there’s a Twitter war happening between William Shakespeare and Dante Alighieri (kind of), and researchers think they’ve discovered the identity of Elena Ferrante – and it’s not who you think, although she’s married to him. Yes, him.
Here’s rundown of BookTok (TikTok’s book-lover profiles) including all the questions about TikTok that you’ve been too embarrassed to ask, and while you’re at it, Vogue has a list of the top TikTok bookfluencers you should be following.
The week’s best book lists: 21 sci-fi/fantasy books with badass female leads, 13 books to celebrate Trans Day of Visibility, some brand new spring romance novels, and 9 books that will have you rethinking your relationship with your body. Here’s LitHub‘s favorite March book covers and their monthly horoscope reading list. Check out these rad books by women in STEM and children’s books by AAPI writers and illustrators. Still confused about this cottagecore fad? Bookriot has you covered with a cottagecore book round-up (plus a quick culture lesson).
For this week’s best thought-provoking reads, here’s Melissa Febos on the origins of the word “slut” and Daisy Buchanan on how literature has failed horny women – and how things are starting to heat up. A disabled millennial reader responds to the ableism in Flannery O’Connor’s work, and author Raymond Antrobus discusses his deafness and the new children’s book it inspired. An audiobook proofer gives us the inside scoop and a literary translator illuminates the similarities between translation and crossword puzzles. Nick Cornwell, son of John Le Carré, describes the extensive role his mother played in his father’s beloved work. Sulaiman Addonia reflects on living (and writing) displaced without access to books, and nonfiction writer Orville Schell discusses his transition to fiction in his 80s.
And for your weekly listens, here’s Annie Zaidi on LitHub‘s “Quarantine Tapes” on growing up in India and her fears of writing in a call-out culture, and George Takei on anti-Asian racism in conversation with the Los Angeles Times.
It’s the first week of the month, so you’re probably procrastinating as much as I am! While you’re at it, find out how an author would describe your personality in a book, enjoy these literary icons hating on other icons, and snap along with Book Riot‘s top reading nitpicks. Finally, find joy in poet Joy Harjo’s reflections on an astronomer’s photos of Earth and treat yourself with the soothing tones of John Ciardi reading his poem “Happiness”.
And in, quite potentially, the greatest news of the week, a rescue pony found his new calling delivering books to a socially-distanced book club in Wiltshire, UK.
