Things have been… interesting in the US recently, and there will certainly be. some stories to tell about the last four years. As the Associated Press reports, “In 2021 and beyond, look for waves of releases about the Trump administration and about the president’s loss to Democratic candidate Joe Biden.” But as for a book from Trump himself, “Several publishers told the AP that they don’t believe Trump will have the same global appeal as former President Barack Obama […] Any publisher signing with Trump or a top administration official might face the anger not just of Trump critics among the general public, but from within the industry.”
Scholastic announced a three-book deal with Ruby Bridges. Bridges, who at age six de-segregated New Orleans’ all-white William Frantz Elementary School on November 14, 1960, will “pen three new picture books to bring her trailblazing story to a new generation of children,” Publishers Weekly reports. Sadly, this week saw the death of Bridges’ mother Lucille. Of her own childhood, Lucille told the Courier-Journal in a 2009 interview, “The bus would come pick up the white kids, but I couldn’t go to school. I would watch them go with tears in my eyes. I prayed if I ever got married, I wanted my kids to go to school.”
Two of our thriller authors have been in the news lately. Joanne Hichens’ thriller Divine Justice (Jan 2021) just got a great review in Publishers Weekly: “Staccato prose moves the action along at a machine-gun pace reminiscent of classic hard-boiled mysteries,” and Max Annas chatted with The Big Thrill magazine‘s Michael Sears about his newest release, The Farm, translated by Rachel Hildebrandt Reynolds. Divine Justice releases in January, and The Farm is out now.
“I hope no writer alive ever has to pay ten times what they were paid to secure the rights to a piece of art that helped them, and others, accept life. If nothing else, I hope every writer alive never ceases believing in the rugged majesty of revision.” Wonderful essay at LitHub by Kiese Laymon on why he bought back the rights to two of his books.
Another great essay for your reading pleasure at NPR from Danyel Smith on why Sade is part of her lifelong soundtrack: “I turned my Sade up because a religious belief in music kept me sane. Some of us believed it would save everyone. I could not have known then that Sade would speak for and to me in every decade of my life.” The essay is part of a series of essays celebrating the 20th anniversary of 20 albums, so there’s an added bonus of really feeling just how old you are when you see which albums were released 20 years ago and not the five years it feels like in your head (or maybe that’s just me?).
Someone spent their pandemic time solving a literary mystery. CrimeReads has the story of comedy writer, John Finnemore, who is only the third person to solve “a nearly-impossible mystery-novel puzzle called Cain’s Jawbone. […] a 100-page murder mystery in which all the pages had been reprinted out of order, preventing the readers from following along to discover the culprit.”
In awards news, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been voted the best Women’s Prize for Fiction winner. Adichie was chosen in a public vote from a list of all 25 winners of the prize. Adichie was recently in the news when she released Zikora, a short story and her first fiction release since 2013’s Americanah. As reported in Oprah magazine, “The standalone short story, which explores one woman’s bumpy road to motherhood, will be released through Amazon Original Stories, and is free for Amazon Prime and Kindle Unlimited subscribers. Zikora is available to purchase for non-subscribers, too.”
Here at Catalyst, we’re gearing up for our annual #ReadingAfrica Week event. Join us on December 6-12 by using the hashtag #ReadingAfrica across social media on posts that spotlight African literature. To get you started, we’ve created a booklist featuring some of our favorite books and authors, which you can check out at Bookshop. We’ve also added a few more hashtags in the mix to show the range of languages you can find African literature. Check out this post at LitNet to learn more about #OokInAfrikaans, #siyafundaisiZulu, #siyafundaisiXhosa and more!
