Compulsive Reader

Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://compulsivereader.com
Volume 24, Issue 7, 1 July 2022

==============================================

IN THIS ISSUE

New Reviews at Compulsive Reader
Literary News
Competition News
Sponsored By
Coming soon

==============================================

Hello readers. Here is the latest batch of reviews and interviews:

A review of Rose Interior by Tracy Ryan

Ryan’s poems in Rose Interior explores inner space as well as the outside world of plants and animals, real or imagined, relationships, experiences and feelings. It is an exquisite and transformative collection. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/06/25/a-review-of-rose-interior-by-tracy-ryan/

Mothering machines: Sasha Stiles’ Technelegy

Whispers are words made gentler and Stiles whispers to her readers throughout Technelegy. As importantly, in Promethean fashion, her whispers are giving life to a new existence. Technelegy is the name of Stiles’ AI alter-ego. Built using a text generator called GPT-3, it draws on existing texts, borrows grammatical structures and vocabulary, and creates anew. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/06/22/mothering-machines-sasha-styles-technelegy

A review of Sapphic Touch edited by Suman Lahiry and Heidi Chappelow

Having edited three anthologies and coedited two others I know by experience what an intense and complicated job it is to compile and edit them. The editors have done a fantastic job, I really appreciated that they were ethnically inclusive and selected not only well-known poets but also emergent and new ones. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/06/17/a-review-of-sapphic-touch-edited-by-suman-lahiry-and-heidi-chappelow/

A review of Body Shell Girl by Rose Hunter

Told in vivid verse form, she recounts her reluctant initiation into the sex industry in Toronto, in response to her stark economic circumstance – always a means to an end – through the collapse of her dreams of film school and a career in filmmaking, her hardening into “the life,” to her resignation that sex work is all her life will ever amount to. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/06/15/a-review-of-body-shell-girl-by-rose-hunter/

An interview with Maren Cooper

The author of Finding Grace talks about her new book, where the idea came from, characters, influences, target readers, and on starting writing later in life. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/06/13/an-interview-with-maren-cooper/

A review of What the River Told Me by Jane Skelton

Family memories, and what is said and not said, flow through the pages in poems with a tight narrative and strong sense of truth. Reading the poems, I felt like I was entering into a temple where images, sounds and thoughts intermingled in an exuberant and exotic dance of words. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/06/11/a-review-of-what-the-river-told-me-by-jane-skelton/

A review of April at the Ruins by Lawrence Raab

This poem is so mysterious and so wonderful. Literally, it is made of wonder—some kind of dream quality that awakens spaces inside ourselves. I find myself talking to my grandfather (who I never met) whenever I smell cigarette smoke. This feels to be the material that this poem is made from. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/06/07/a-review-of-april-at-the-ruins-by-lawrence-raab/

A review of Revenants by Adam Aitken

Anyone who has read Adam Aitken’s wonderful memoir One Hundred Letters from Home will be familiar with Aitken’s particular style that encompasses artefact, the living and the dead, dream and waking, memory and loss. Aitken’s latest collection Revenants, picks up on many of those themes from One Hundred Letters Home, as well as the revisiting the setting and timeframes of Aitken’s memoir: his father travelling in the 1950s, writing letters to his mother from Singapore, or moving through Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand, weaving an absence in and out of the poems. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/06/05/a-review-of-revenants-by-adam-aitken/

A review of The Strategic Poet edited by Diane Lockward

Aside from the illuminating value of the poetry, these modern poems are a pleasure to read. While specifically published as a teaching tool for writers of poetry, anyone who appreciates contemporary poetry should find The Strategic Poet to be a valuable addition to a personal library. On top of everything else, it’s both a challenging and a fun book to study with, filled with insight, imagination, rewarding tasks, and exceptionally fine writing. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/06/04/a-review-of-the-strategic-poet-edited-by-diane-lockward/

An interview with Ben Ewell

The author of Sunday Afternoons and other Times Remembered: A Memoir talks about his new book, his influences, his target reader, the music that inspires him, his work in progress and more. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/06/01/an-interview-with-ben-ewell/

All of the reviews and interviews listed above are available at The Compulsive Reader on the front page. Older reviews and interviews are kept indefinitely in our extensive (and growing) categorized archives (currently at 2,971 which can be browsed or searched from the front page of the site.

==============================================

LITERARY NEWS

In the literary news this month, this year’s winners of the Nebula Awards, sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America include, for the Novel: A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom), Novella: And What Can We Offer You Tonight by Premee Mohamed (Neon Hemlock), and Novelette: “O2 Arena” by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki (Galaxy’s Edge 11/21). Read the full list of winners and shortlisted titles here: https://nebulas.sfwa.org/award-year/2021/

The winner of the €25,000 2022 German Nonfiction Book Prize is Die Hohenzollern und die Nazis: Geschichte einer Kollaboration (The Hohenzollern and the Nazis: History of a Collaboration) by Stephan Malinowski, a professor of European history at the University of Edinburgh, Börsenblatt reported.

The T. S. Eliot Foundation and the Poetry Society of America have announced Muriel Leung as the winner of the 2022 Four Quartets Prize for her collection Imagine Us, The Swarm (Nightboat Books, 2021). She was selected by judges Rae Armantrout, Victoria Chang, and Dante Micheaux. The judges also named two finalists: Desiree C. Bailey for her book What Noise Against the Cane (Yale University Press, 2021) and Forrest Gander for his poem “Twice Alive” from his book Twice Alive (New Directions, 2021). Muriel Leung will receive an award of $21,000 and each finalist will receive an award of $1,000.

Sabba Khan won the Jhalak Prize for Book of the Year by a Writer of Color for her debut graphic novel The Roles We Play, while Maisie Chan took the Jhalak Children’s & YA Prize for Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths, illustrated by Anh Cao. The winning authors each receive £1,000 (about $1,245) along with a unique work of art created by artists chosen for the annual Jhalak Art Residency.

The Writers’ Union of Canada announced that 20.12m: A Short Story Collection of a Life Lived as a Road by Arnolda Dufour Bowes won this year’s C$10,000 Danuta Gleed Literary Award, recognizing the best first collection of short fiction by a Canadian author published in 2021 in the English language.

The Writers’ Trust of Canada announced that Patrick James Errington (poetry) and Teya Hollier (short fiction) are winners of this year’s RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, which was established in memory of poet and short story writer Bronwen Wallace and “has a track record of identifying future Canadian writing stars.” Each winning author receives C$10,000. Errington won for his poetry collection, If Fire, Then Bird, and Hollier won for her short story collection Watching, Waiting. The other finalists for the poetry prize were Eimear Laffan for My Life, Delimited and Christine Wu for selections from Familial Hungers. The other short fiction prize finalists were Jen Batler for Ectopia Cordis and Emily Paskevics for Wild Girls. Each writer receives C$2,500.

A shortlist has been announced for the £10,000 (about $12,455) Desmond Elliott Prize, which honors a debut novel written in English and published in the U.K. and Ireland. This year’s shortlisted titles are: Iron Annie by Luke Cassidy, Keeping the House by Tice Cin, and Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer In addition, Vida Adamczewski, Rachel Cleverly and Jasmine Farndon were shortlisted for the University of East Anglia’s £4,000 New Forms Award, for an innovative and daring new voice in fiction; and Alice Franklin, Kathy Hoyle and Cate West were shortlisted for the £4,000 Laura Kinsella Fellowship, recognising an exceptional writer who has experienced limiting circumstances.

Finalists have been announced for the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, which is presented “for a short story by an African writer published in English, whether they reside in Africa or elsewhere.” The winner, who will be named July 18, receives £10,000, with the other four shortlisted writers getting £500 each. This year’s shortlisted writers are: Joshua Chizoma (Nigeria) for “Collector of Memories” (Afritondo) Hannah Giorgis (Ethiopa) for “A Double-Edged Inheritance” (Addis Ababa Noir), Nana-Ama Danquah (Ghana) for “When a Man Loves a Woman” (Accra Noir), Idza Luhumyo (Kenya) for “Five Years Next Sunday” (Disruption), Billie McTernan (Ghana) for “The Labadi Sunshine Bar” (Accra Noir).

On June 11, 2022, we announced the winners of the 34th Annual Lambda Literary Awards. These winners were selected by a panel of over 60 literary professionals from more than 1,300 book submissions from over 300 publishers.In addition to the winners below, five special honors were awarded: Kalynn Bayron (Kenan Prize), Aisha Sabatini Sloan (Cordova Prize), Ching-In Chen & Morgan Thomas (Markowitz Prize) , Jobert Abueva (Samuel Prize), Vi Khi Nao & Silas House (Duggins Prize). Winners include Brian Broome, for Punch Me Up to the Gods (Mariner); Lee Lai, for Stone Fruit (Fantagraphics); Aurielle Marie, for Gumbo Ya Ya (University of Pittsburgh Press); Brontez Purnell for 100 Boyfriends (MCD); Sarah Schulman for Let the Record Show (FSG); and Jeanne Thornton for Summer Fun (Soho Press). You can watch the full awards ceremony here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDOeSCl-U3Y

The 2022 Australian Booksellers Association Booksellers’ Choice Award winners were announced last night at the ABA gala dinner in Sydney. The winners included ABA Nielsen Bookdata Adult Fiction Book of the Year: Love & Virtue by Diana Reid (Ultimo Press),
ABA Nielsen Bookdata Adult Non-Fiction Book of the Year: Love Stories by Trent Dalton (4th Estate Australia), ABA Kids’ Reading Guide Book of the Year: Rabbit, Soldier, Angel, Thief by Katrina Nannestad (ABC Books).

Ruth Ozeki has won the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction with her fourth novel The Book of Form and Emptiness. At an awards ceremony in Bedford Square Gardens, London – hosted by novelist and Women’s Prize Founder Director, Kate Mosse – the 2022 Chair of Judges, Mary Ann Sieghart presented Ruth with the £30,000 prize, endowed by an anonymous donor, and the ‘Bessie’, a limited edition bronze figurine by Grizel Niven. You can watch the award streamed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIotiSh12y8&mc_cid=41fb3f0c6b&mc_eid=45d2c5cece

Kalani Pickhart won the New York Public Library’s 2022 Young Lions Fiction Award for her book I Will Die in a Foreign Land at a ceremony held at the Stephen A. Schwarzman building on June 16. The award, which comes with a $10,000 prize, is given annually to an American writer age 35 or younger for either a novel or a collection of short stories. The finalists for this year’s award were: Mateo Askaripour for Black Buck, Alexandra Kleeman for Something New Under the Sun, Tom Lin for The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, Dantiel W. Moniz for Milk Blood Heat, and Kalani Pickhart for I Will Die in a Foreign Land.

News of the Dead by James Robertson has won the £25,000 2022 Walter Scott Prize, honoring the best historical novel published in the U.K., Ireland or Commonwealth.

Douglas Kearney’s Sho and Tolu Oloruntoba’s The Junta of Happenstance were the international and Canadian category winners respectively of the 2022 Griffin Poetry Prize, which is designed to “raise the profile of poets and poetry in Canada, and internationally, for works written in, or translated into, English.” Each winner receives C$65,000, with the other finalists awarded C$10,000.

Malorie Blackman won the PEN Pinter Prize, which is awarded annually to “a writer of outstanding literary merit resident in the U.K., the Republic of Ireland or the Commonwealth who, in the words of Pinter’s Nobel Prize in Literature speech, casts an ‘unflinching, unswerving’ gaze upon the world and shows a ‘fierce intellectual determination… to define the real truth of our lives and our societies.’ “

Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688 by Clare Jackson has won the £50,000 2022 Wolfson History Prize, celebrating “a work of historical non-fiction which combines excellence in research and writing with readability for a general audience.” This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the prize.

Ann Shin’s The Last Exiles won the C$20,000 English-language fiction Trillium Book Award, which is given to “recognize excellence, support marketing and foster increased public awareness of the quality and diversity of Ontario writers and writing.” Bardia Sinaee took the C$10,000 prize in the poetry category for Intruder. The winner of the C$20,000 French-language Trillium Book Award was Robert Marinier for Un conte de l’apocalypse, and the C$10,000 French-language poetry prize went to Chloé LaDuchesse for Exosquelette.

Finally, phew, Ukranian writer and musician Serhij Zhadan has won the €25,000 2022 German Peace Prize, which will be presented at a ceremony in Frankfurt’s St. Paul’s Church on October 23 during the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Have a great month!

==============================================

COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Susan Benedict who won a copy of Sunday Afternoons and Other Times Remembered by Ben Ewell.

Congratulations to Sabine Blanch who won a copy of Finding Grace by Maren Cooper.

Our new site giveaway is for a copy of Love and Other Monsters in the Dark by K B Jensen. To win send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line: “Love and Other Monsters” and your postal address in the body of the email.

We also have a copy of The Desire Card by Lee Matthew Goldberg to giveaway. To win send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line: “The Desire Card” and your postal address in the body of the email.

Good luck, everyone!

==================================================