Compulsive Reader

Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://compulsivereader.com
Volume 24, Issue 8, 1 Aug 2022

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IN THIS ISSUE

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

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

A review of Cora’s Kitchen by Kimberly Garrett Brown

Kimberly Garrett Brown has written an outstanding novel which rings true as a depiction of a budding writer and conveys an important message about overlapping, concurrent forms of oppression. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/07/30/a-review-of-coras-kitchen-by-kimberly-garrett-brown/

A review of Breathing Lake Superior by Ron Rindo

I was drawn to the novel because of geographic sentiment, being a Canadian raised on a small farm in the rigorous climate of Northern Ontario, and having relatives who live on the northern shore of Lake Superior. I was soon caught up in a timely story, full of vivid imagery and unforgettable characters – a tragedy in a beautiful landscape. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/07/26/a-review-of-breathing-lake-superior-by-ron-rindo/

A review of How Icasia Bloom Touched Happiness by Jessica Bell

Like the best sci fi writers, Bell doesn’t hesitate to draw out the parallels between her futuristic world and our own, using the imaginary to highlight the all-too-real. What is also obvious is that there are some aspects of life that are core to happiness, no matter the context: love, empathy, and care. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/07/23/a-review-of-how-icasia-bloom-touched-happiness-by-jessica-bell/

A review of Witches, Women and Words by Beatriz Copello

In Beatriz Copello’s powerful and imaginative poetry collection Witches, Women & Words, witches are seers, healers and instigators of change who are capable of restoring balance both to society and to the individual. They embody that intuitive and creative side of ourselves that reveals a deeper truth. The poems are visceral, full of irony and wisdom, taking the reader on a transformative journey that ultimately expresses hope. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/07/22/a-review-of-witches-women-and-words-by-beatriz-copello/

A review of Our Laundry, Our Town by Alvin Eng

For Alvin Eng, a Chinese American punk rocker who is now an educator and a playwright, this has meant ‘a spiritual state of homelessness,” moving between the Foo J. Chin Chinese Hand Laundry and an American frame of reference. This reflective and personal narrative is his first memoir, and a change from his dramatic writing. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/07/21/a-review-of-our-laundry-our-town-by-alvin-eng/

An interview with Jane Enright

The author of Butter Side Up talks about her new book its unique hybrid of memoir and how-to, the book vs her speaking gigs, the accompanying playbook, Jane’s Jam and how the two should be used together, and more. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/07/11/a-review-of-a-longing-for-impossible-things-by-david-borofka/

A review of A Longing for Impossible Things by David Borofka

Regardless of the failings of his narrators and assorted ne’er do well characters, these tales are told in a generous, recognizably human voice, marking Borofka as a writer in whose company you’ll find deep pleasure. Characters’ failings are both unflinchingly observed and held in tender, witty regard, even after a lifetime of screw ups. Most are wrestling with the gap between their modest youthful dreams and the limits imposed by adult realities. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/07/08/a-review-of-how-to-be-be-between-by-bastian-fox-phelan/

A review of How to Be Between by Bastian Fox Phelan

Bastian Fox Phelan’s memoir How to Be Between leans right into these societal norms, exposing them for the controlling mechanisms that they are, designed to make use feel chronically inadequate so we’re easier to sell to or control. These norms force an unnatural binary between male and female, attractive and unattractive, straight and queer. How to Be Between rejects these binaries and instead offers up the possibility of living a life without such constraints. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/07/08/a-review-of-how-to-be-be-between-by-bastian-fox-phelan/

An interview with Bad Mothers, Bad Daughters’ Maya Sonenberg

Irish novelist and short story writer Shauna Gilligan interviews Bad Mothers, Bad Daughters’ author Maya Sonenberg about the stories in her new book and how they echo one another, notions of identity, artefacts, family dynamics, time and perspective, emotions, transitions, and lots of other things both deep and fun. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/07/07/an-interview-with-bad-mothers-bad-daughters-maya-sonenberg/

Empathy and Memoir: A Review of Cheryl Klein’s Crybaby

As a thirty-nine year old woman who is navigating fertility clinics and the adoption process, I inhaled this book, which is about a woman, Klein, trying to have a baby. In my online yoga class, we are asked to stretch up to the point where it hurts. This is how far Klein takes her writing: to the point it hurts, presumably for her and definitely for the reader. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2022/07/03/empathy-and-memoir-a-review-of-cheryl-kleins-crybaby

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 2,983) which can be browsed or searched from the front page of the site.

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LITERARY NEWS

In the literary news this month, Finalists have been named for the Forward Prizes for Poetry, which are awarded in three categories: the £10,000 (about $12,265) Forward Prize for Best Collection, the £5,000 (about $6,135) Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection, and the £1,000 (about $1,225) Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. The winners will be announced November 28. This year’s book finalists for Best collection are Pilgrim Bell by Kaveh Akbar,
Sonnets for Albert by Anthony Joseph, Cain Named the Animal by Shane McCrae, All the Men I Never Married by Kim Moore, and The Illustrated Woman by Helen Mort. For First collection, Rifqa by Mohammed El-Kurd, English Summer by Holly Hopkins, Some Integrity by Padraig Regan, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head by Warsan Shire, and Amnion by Stephanie Sy-Quia.

The Crime Writers’ Association celebrated winners in 11 categories of the 2022 Dagger Awards, which “honor the very best in the crime writing genre.” Ray Celestin received two Daggers for his novel Sunset Swing, including the CWA Gold Dagger for the crime novel of the year as well as the Historical Dagger. Other winners included M.W. Craven for Dead Ground (best thriller), Janice Hallett for The Appeal (best debut), and Julia Laite for The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey: A True Story of Sex, and Crime and the Meaning of Justice (nonfiction). Check out the complete list of Dagger winners here: https://thecwa.co.uk/awards-and-competitions/the-daggers

Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer has won the £10,000 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize, which celebrates the best first novel published in the U.K. or Ireland. Organisers called Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies “a lyrical exploration of one woman’s body and the illness that inhabits it.”

Ntsika Kota was named overall winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and will receive £5,000 for his work “and the earth drank deep.” Kota is the first person from Eswatini to take the prize.

Ada Limón has been named the 24th poet laureate of the United States, succeeding Joy Harjo. She will begin performing her duties, which include “rais[ing] the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry,” this fall, and will open the Library of Congress’s annual literary season on September 29 with a reading of her work in the Coolidge Auditorium in Washington, D.C.

The Suitcase: Six Attempts to Cross a Border by Frances Stonor Saunders has won the £3,000 2022 PEN Ackerley Prize, which is dedicated to memoir and autobiography. The book traces the author’s father’s “long journey as a boy escaping Bucharest during the Second World War to become a refugee in Turkey, Egypt, South Africa.”

Jennifer Down has won this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award for her novel Bodies of Light. Jennifer said it was ‘a profound honour’ to win the prestigious award. ‘I’m still pinching myself. To be longlisted, and then shortlisted, among authors whose works I’ve long read and admired, already felt like a stroke of exceptional fortune. I was, and am, elated to be in the company of writers embracing stylistic, thematic and formal diversity, whose works explore such different slivers of “Australian life”.’ The Miles Franklin Literary Award is Australia’s most prestigious literature prize. For information on all the shortlisted titles visit: https://www.perpetual.com.au/insights/jennifer-down-wins-the-2022-miles-franklin-literary-award

Kenyan writer Idza Luhumyo won the £10,000 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story “Five Years Next Sunday,” which was published in Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa and won the Short Story Day Africa Prize. She is the fifth Kenyan writer to win the Caine Prize after Binyavanga Wainaina (2002), Yvonne Owuor (2003), Okwiri Oduor (2014) and Makena Onjerika (2018).

Slough House by Mick Herron has won the £3,000 2022 Harrogate Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. True Crime Story by Joseph Knox was “highly commended,” and Michael Connelly won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award for his writing career.

Cate Kennedy won first place in the open category of the 2022 Furphy Literary Awards for her short story ‘Art and Life’, receiving $15,000 and an invitation to participate in a residency program in Shepparton. Lisa Moule took second place for ‘The Game’ and was awarded $3000, while Natalie Vella took third place for ‘Winter is for Regret’, receiving $2000. The shortlisted stories will be collected in The Furphy Anthology 2022, which will be published with Hardie Grant Books later this year. Originally established in 1993 as the Joseph Furphy Commemorative Literary Prize, which was open to Goulburn Valley residents, the award was relaunched as a national prize in 2020 and is administered by the Furphy family in Victoria.

Each of the award winners will receive $10,000 thanks to the Copyright Agency’s cultural fund. Jennifer Down’s Miles Franklin award winning novel Bodies of Light is joined on the fiction shortlist by In Moonland (by Miles Allinson), Cold Enough for Snow (Jessica Au), After Story (Larissa Behrendt), The Signal Line (Brendan Colley) and Love & Virtue (Diana Reid). The last two are debut novels. The shortlist for non-fiction consists of: Whole Notes: Life Lessons Through Music by Ed Ayres; Leaping Into Waterfalls: The Enigmatic Gillian Mears by Bernadette Brennan; The Boy in the Dress by Jonathan Butler; The Uncaged Sky: My 804 Days in an Iranian Prison by Kylie Moore-Gilbert; Astronomy: Sky Country by Karlie Noon and Krystal De Napoli; and Childless: A Story of Freedom and Longing by Sian Prior.

Finally, a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio has sold in New York for $2.4m. Published in 1623, seven years after the Stratford-upon-Avon writer’s death, it features 36 manuscripts. They include 18 plays that would have otherwise been lost, such as Macbeth and The Tempest, About 750 copies of the First Folio were originally printed, but only 232 have survived, auctioneers Sothebys said, and only a handful of those are in private collections. Along with the King James Bible it has been described as the most important work in English literature.

Have a great month!

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COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Desmond Warzel who won a copy of Love and Other Monsters in the Dark by KB Jensen.

Congratulations to Vicki Wurgler who won a copy fo The Desire Card by Lee Matthew Goldberg.

Our new site giveaway is for a copy of Midstream by Lynn Sloan. To win send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line: “Midstream” and your postal address in the body of the email.

We also have a copy of Winter’s Reckoning by Adele Holmes to giveaway. To win send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line: “Winters Reckoning” and your postal address in the body of the email.

Finally, we have a copy of Self/less by AViVA to giveaway. To win send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line: “Self/less” and your postal address in the body of the email.

Good luck, everyone!

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