Small Things Like These takes the political fiction award, while Sally Hayden’s My Fourth Time, We Drowned takes the matching nonfiction honour. Read more
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Author: GR
Why is the ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ author wanted for questioning in a murder?
It’s all resurfaced just before the movie’s release thanks to a recent article in the Atlantic by its editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, which updates and doubles down on a piece he wrote for the New Yorker in 2010. Back when Owens was known as the co-writer of a couple works of nonfiction, Goldberg published an 18,000-word exposé on Owens and her now-ex-husband, Mark, revealing that the couple — along with Mark’s son Christopher — were suspected by Zambian authorities of being involved in the killing of an alleged poacher (a homicide caught on camera) along with possible other criminal activities. Read more
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Ada Limón named new U.S. poet laureate
Limón has published six poetry collections and is the host of the podcast The Slowdown. She also teaches in the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte. Read more
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Some Surprising Good News: Bookstores Are Booming and Becoming More Diverse
More than 300 bookstores have opened in the past couple of years — a revival that is meeting a demand for “real recommendations from real people.” Read more
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Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty
Talty’s prose is flawless throughout; he writes with a straightforward leanness that will likely appeal to admirers of Thom Jones or Denis Johnson. But his style is all his own, as is his immense sense of compassion. Night of the Living Rez is a stunning look at a family navigating their lives through crisis — it’s a shockingly strong debut, sure, but it’s also a masterwork by a major talent. Read more
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New Reality TV Show Aims to Discover America’s Next Great Author
America’s Next Great Author is dedicated to including writers who aren’t normally given a seat at the table in mainstream publishing. Contestants don’t have to be graduates of elite MFA programs that basically guarantee an open door to the book business. Read more
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Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman
The book’s real strength is its ability to evocatively raise profound questions about humanity’s relationship with and responsibility to animals and the larger environment in the course of its often (darkly) comic action … A dire warning, sick joke, and perceptive critique of a species of very questionable intelligence: humanity. Read more
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The Norwegian library with unreadable books
Some of the world’s most celebrated authors have written manuscripts that won’t be published for a century – why? Richard Fisher visits the Future Library in Oslo to find out. Read more
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Belfast poet Michael Longley wins €250,000 Feltrinelli Poetry Prize
Longley has become one of the most successful poets Northern Ireland has ever produced. His trophy cabinet includes the Whitbread Poetry Award, the TS Eliot Prize and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. Read more
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Maddie Mortimer wins the Desmond Elliott prize for Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies
The ‘sprawling and ambitious’ debut centres on the author’s relationship with her mother, who died of cancer in 2010. Read more
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