Compulsive Reader

Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com
Volume 27, Issue 2, 1 February 2025

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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:

An interview with Carol Guess

The author of Sleep Tight Satellite talks about her latest book, on writing through quarantine, epiphanies, writing in second person point of view, the book’s narrative arc, compression, and lots more. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/01/29/an-interview-with-carol-guess/

A review of Home of the American Circus by Allison Larkin

Larkin has the uncanny ability to paint each person in Freya’s orbit as if they were living, breathing figures, complete with their own hopes, flaws, and secrets. Through her vivid descriptions and nuanced dialogue, each character feels indispensable to the story, enriching the tapestry of the small town and making Freya’s world achingly authentic and free from judgement. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/01/25/a-review-of-home-of-the-american-circus-by-allison-larkin/

A review of Review of God is a river running down my palm by Jeremy Ra and Aruni Wijesinghe

Poetry offers universality, and the importance of this chapbook lies in how two very different people—in background, ethnicity, gender, perception, and voice—convey this universality. Not just in theme, but in desire. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/01/23/a-review-of-review-of-god-is-a-river-running-down-my-palm-by-jeremy-ra-and-aruni-wijesinghe/

A review of Breaking Plates

Walls fall down and characters burst out of the window, singing, dancing, shouting and breaking plates. The answer is clear that these structures, which seem so solid, are fragile indeed and it’s always possible to burst forth. Breaking Plates is utterly relevant and terrific fun, a film to watch repeatedly for the sheer joy of it, and to make our own conversations with the wild women of the past. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/01/20/a-review-of-breaking-plates/

An interview with Mark Wish

On January 7, 2021, the day after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Mark Wish, along with his wife, Elizabeth, disturbed by what they’d seen on TV the previous evening, hoped to create a response, a reaction, a way to find common ground with Americans—all Americans. The product of their desire and vision? Coolest American Stories. And the first volume of this annual anthology of short stories, Coolest American Stories 2022, was wildly successful. It’s just gone to its fifth printing. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/01/17/an-interview-with-mark-wish/

Bleeding Wilds: A Review of Country Songs for Alice by Emma Binder

One of Binder’s many talents is their ability to transport you to any location at any time, but especially those environments inextricably tied to nature, to the wild, to those places that awaken instincts that lie within every human being. In one poem that takes us to “the plains” we are told, “You need hooves or adaptations, like how the fox twists her shadow into scrap metal, to camouflage herself from hunters in their cars. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/01/14/bleeding-wilds-a-review-of-country-songs-for-alice-by-emma-binder/

A review of Ekhō by Roslyn Orlando

Orlando commences in the prologue describing Ekhō. According to Mythology Ekhō (Echo) was a nymph of mount Cithaeron in Boeotia. She was cursed by the goddess Hera, who condemned her to only repeat the words of others as punishment for distracting her with incessant chatter while Zeus pursued his affairs. The poet expertly builds a picture of Ekhō, characterising her with humour and vivid imagery. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/01/11/a-review-of-ekho-by-roslyn-orlando/

Covid Kaleidoscope: A Review of Sleep Tight Satellite by Carol Guess

Sleep Tight Satellite by Carol Guess is heartbreakingly human, beautifully vulnerable, and entirely unapologetic. Guess has brought forth a rich patchwork tying together poignant remembrances of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the complex web of queer relationships and identities. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/01/10/covid-kaleidoscope-a-review-of-sleep-tight-satellite-by-carol-guess/

A review of Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece by Nasser Rabah

Oddly, or perhaps not, Nasser Rabah’s spirituality makes me think of Leonard Cohen. Maybe it’s those Zen-like questions (“Why do the details of things cough at night?” he asks in “Background Music for Life”). Or maybe it’s his vision of himself: “I am the prophet who lost his prophecy,” he writes in “Prophet of the Lost Way,” and later in the poem writes, “Die a little, and give me my first kiss: a star / to lean on and herd my pain with.” Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/01/09/a-review-of-gaza-the-poem-said-its-piece-by-nasser-rabah/

A review of Divorce Towers by Ellen Meister

Toss in an attention-averse internet celeb, a shy New Englander fleeing an abusive spouse, the theft of a bejeweled faux Fabergé egg, an enigmatic dominatrix, and a gaggle of superannuated, hilariously rapacious divorcees, and you have a combustible mix. Divorce Towers is classic Ellen Meister — fast-paced, breezy, and funny AF.If you’ve liked Meister’s other offerings, you will surely love this one. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/01/07/a-review-of-divorce-towers-by-ellen-meister/

A review of Alive: Our Bodies and the Richness and Brevity of Existence by Gabriel Weston

Alive takes us on a tour of the body by chapter, from bones to lungs to kidney to womb. Weston works hard to turn an anatomy tutorial into a story – or perhaps infuse a story with a bit of a tutorial. Each section provides a scientific and historical overview of the organ in question, a personal narrative of a patient, and often a journey into the role of the treating physician. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/01/05/a-review-of-alive-our-bodies-and-the-richness-and-brevity-of-existence-by-gabriel-weston/

Poems as Reliquaries: Diane Seuss, Modern Poetry and Contemporary Faith

The origins of Seuss’ work, as she reminds us repeatedly in Modern Poetry, are unpretentious. Her literary intellect has been assembled piecemeal from disparate elements, some Colette and Conrad here, a little Baudelaire and Morrison there. More importantly, her poetic prowess has evolved from a lifetime in lowdown trenches. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/01/03/on-poems-as-reliquaries-diane-seuss-modern-poetry-and-modern-faith/

A Review of The Strings Are Lightning And Hold You In by Chee Brossy

The Strings Are Lightning And Hold You In, is a poetry collection that transcends time and history, weaving stories of tradition with the unfolding events of the present, connecting the wild with the domestic, and masterfully interlocking the spiritual with the tangible. In this collection, words become a conduit for much more than a story and yet are almost too little to contain its incandescent quality. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/01/02/the-strings-are-lightning-and-hold-you-in-by-chee-brossy/

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 categorised archives (currently at 3,466) which can be browsed or searched from the front page of the site.

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LITERARY NEWS

In the news this month, The longlist has been selected for the 2025 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, which carries a prize of $50,000 and is sponsored by the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre, at the Department of Culture and Tourism–Abu Dhabi. The shortlist will be announced on February 19 and the winner on April 24. Recent winning IPAF novels which have been published or are forthcoming in English include Mohammed Alnaas’s Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table (winner 2022, anticipated publication in 2026 from HarperVia) and A Mask, the Colour of the Sky (winner 2024, forthcoming from Europa Editions in 2026). A Mask the Colour of the Sky has already been published in Italian (edizione/e) and Greek (Salto) and will be published in Portuguese and Spanish. The full longlist can be seen here: https://arabicfiction.org/en/node/2448

Winners have been announced for the 2025 Pacific Northwest Book Awards, sponsored by the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association and selected by PNBA booksellers. The winners include Eve by Cat Bohannon (Knopf), It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over by Anne de Marcken (New Directions), Log Life by Amy Hevron (Simon and Schuster), Coexistence by Billy-Ray Belcourt (W.W. Norton), Becoming Little Shell by Chris La Tray (Milkweed Editions), and Wild and Distant Seas by Tara Karr Roberts (W.W. Norton).

Banyan Moon by Thao Thai (Mariner Books) has won the $5,000 Crook’s Corner Book Prize for the best debut novel set in the American South. The prize was founded as a collaboration between the Southern restaurant Crook’s Corner in Chapel Hill, N.C., which closed in 2021, and the Crook’s Corner Book Prize Foundation.

Nominations have been made for the 2025 Philip K. Dick Award, sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and the Philip K. Dick Trust and honouring the best science fiction published in paperback original form in the U.S. in the previous year. The award ceremony, sponsored by the Northwest Science Fiction Society, will take place on April 18 at Norwescon 47. This year’s nominees are: City of Dancing Gargoyles by Tara Campbell (Santa Fe Writers Project), Your Utopia: Stories by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur (Algonquin Books), Time’s Agent by Brenda Peynado (Tordotcom), The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar (Tordotcom), Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit), and Triangulum by Subodhana Wijeyeratne (Rosarium Publishing).

Three finalists have been selected for the Story Prize. The winner will be announced March 25 at a private event that will be livestreamed here: http://thestoryprize.org/ and will feature readings by and interviews with the finalists, capped by the announcement of the winner. The winner receives $20,000 and an engraved silver bowl; the two runners-up each receive $5,000. The finalists: Highway Thirteen by Fiona McFarlane (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven by Ruben Reyes Jr. (Mariner Books), and Ghost Pains by Jessi Jezewska Stevens (And Other Stories).

Peter Gizzi has won the 2024 TS Eliot Prize, worth £25,000 for Fierce Elegy (Penguin). Fierce Elegy was chosen from a shortlist of 10 that also included Signs, Music (Raymond Antrobus, Picador), Lapwing (Liverpool University Press, Hannah Copley), The Penny Dropping (Helen Farish, Bloodaxe Books), High Jump as Icarus Story (Gustav Parker Hibbett, Banshee Press), Eleanor Among the Saints (Rachel Mann, Carcanet), Adam (Gboyega Odubanjo, Faber), Scattered Snows, to the North (Carl Phillips, Carcanet), Rhizodont (Katrina Porteous, Bloodaxe Books), and Top Doll (Karen McCarthy Woolf, Dialogue Books). The TS Eliot Prize, which is judged by established poets, is the most valuable prize in British poetry. Last year’s winner was Jason Allen-Paisant, for Self-Portrait as Othello (Carcanet).

The shortlists for the Australian 2025 Indie Book Awards have been announced. The list includes, for fiction, Dusk by Robbie Arnott (Picador Australia), Cherrywood by Jock Serong (Fourth Estate Australia), The Ledge by Christian White (Affirm Press), and Juice by Tim Winton (Hamish Hamilton). Announced early in the award calendar year, The Indie Book Awards are now considered the forerunners of all major Australian book awards. The Awards cover the best Australian books in six categories: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Debut Fiction, Illustrated Non-Fiction, Children’s books (up to 12yo) and Young Adult (12+).The Category Winners and the Overall Book of the Year Winner will be announced at a virtual awards event on Monday 24 March 2025. For the full shortlist, visit: https://www.indiebookawards.com.au/

Giramondo, Fitzcarraldo Editions and New Directions have announce the shortlist for the 2024 Novel Prize, a biennial award for a book-length work of literary fiction written in English by published and unpublished writers around the world. Selected from 1,100 submissions, the five books shortlisted for the 2024 Novel Prize are: How to Live Together by Rey Conquer, Touch Me Now by Neal Amandus Gellaco, Porcupine by Nick Holdstock, Ruins, Child by Giada Scodellaro, and Moss House by Hollen Singleton. The Novel Prize offers US$10,000 to the winner and simultaneous publication in Australia and New Zealand by the Sydney-based Giramondo, in North America by the New York-based New Directions, and in the UK and Ireland by the London-based Fitzcarraldo Editions. The prize rewards novels which explore and expand the possibilities of the form, and are innovative and imaginative in style. The winner will be announced in February 2025 and published in early 2026.

Winners have been unveiled in four categories for the Nero Book Awards, celebrating outstanding books and writers from the U.K. and Ireland. Sponsored by Caffè Nero, the prizes are run in partnership with the Booksellers Association and Brunel University London. This year’s Nero Book Awards category winners are: Fiction: Lost in the Garden by Adam S. Leslie, Nonfiction: Maurice and Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story of Shipwreck, Survival and Love by Sophie Elmhirst, Debut fiction: Wild Houses by Colin Barrett , and Children’s fiction: The Twelve by Liz Hyder, illustrated by Tom De Freston. From these four category winners, one book will be selected as the overall winner and recipient of the Nero Gold Prize for Book of the Year, to be named March 5 in London. Each category winner receives £5,000 with the overall winner getting an additional £30,000.

The longlist has been selected for the $35,000 Republic of Consciousness Prize, United States and Canada, honouring “the commitment of small presses to exceptional literary merit.” The shortlist of five books will be announced on February 27, and the winner on March 12. Each press with a longlisted book will receive $2,000. Five shortlisted books will be given an additional $3,000 each, split equally between publisher and author, or publisher, author, and translator. The longlist: Like a Sky Inside by Jakuta Alikavazovic, translated by Daniel Levin Becker (Fern), To & Fro by Leah Hager Cohen (Bellevue Literary Press), Melvill by Rodrigo Fresán, translated by Will Vanderhyden (Open Letter), Lesser Ruins by Mark Haber (Coffee House Press), Tidal Lock by Lindsay Hill (McPherson & Company), Overstaying by Ariane Koch, translated by Damion Searls (Dorothy, a publishing project), The Case of Cem by Vera Mutafchieva, translated by Angela Rodel (Sandorf Passage)
Your Absence Is Darkness by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, translated by Philip Roughton (Biblioasis), Gifted by Suzumi Suzuki, translated by Allison Markin Powell (Transit Books)
and Lublin by Manya Wilkinson (And Other Stories).

Songs for the Brokenhearted by Ayelet Tsabari (Random House) has won the Association of Jewish Libraries’ Jewish Fiction Award. Tsabari receives $1,000 and an invitation to attend the 2025 digital conference of the Association of Jewish Libraries, June 23–26. Three honour books were also recognised: The Hebrew Teacher by Maya Arad, translated by Jessica Cohen (New Vessel Press), Displaced Persons: Stories by Joan Leegant (New American Press), and Rules for Ghosting by Shelly Jay Shore (Dell).

Penguin Random House Australia is buying Text Publishing, the highly regarded independent publisher with headquarters in Melbourne, Australia. The deal includes an unusual “charter of independence,” which allows Text “to retain full publishing control as we continue our work of acquiring, editing, curating, designing, marketing, publicising and selling rights in our books.” Founded in 1990 by Diana Gribble and Eric Beecher as a joint venture between Text Media and Reed Publishing, Text is now majority owned by publisher Michael Heyward and Penny Hueston, in partnership with Maureen and Tony Wheeler, the founders of Lonely Planet. For a time, Canongate and Fairfax Media were investors. Text will continue to be sold in Australia and New Zealand by Penguin Random House Australia, and Text will continue to sell its books in the U.K. (For historical context: you can read my review of Hilary McPhee’s book Other People’s Words which explores her first collaboration with Di Gribble and its subsequent takeover by PRH here: https://compulsivereader.com/2003/03/20/a-review-of-hilary-mcphees-other-peoples-words/.)

I love a good audiobook – it’s a whole different but equally immersive experience to reading a book. The reading itself is an art which can enhance, or ruin the experience. The finalists in 28 categories have been chosen for the 2025 Audie Awards, sponsored by the Audio Publishers Association. Winners will be revealed at the 30th annual Audie Awards, to be hosted by Amy Sedaris and held March 4 in New York City. To see the finalists, click here: https://www.audiopub.org/audies-finalists-2025-pr

Nominations have been made for the 2025 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honouring the best in mystery fiction, nonfiction, and television and sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America. Winners will be celebrated at the 79th annual Edgar Awards on May 1 in New York City. To see the nominees, click here: https://mysterywriters.org/2025-edgar-award-nominations/

Winners have been announced for the 74th National Jewish Book Awards and include:10/7: 100 Human Stories by Lee Yaron (St. Martin’s), which won the Everett Family Foundation Book of the Year Award. Songs for the Brokenhearted by Ayelet Tsabari (Random House) won the JJ Greenberg Memorial Award in Fiction. The Story of Your Obstinate Survival by Daniel Khalastchi (University of Wisconsin Press) won Berru Award for Poetry in Memory of Ruth and Bernie Weinflash. The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (Avid Reader Press/S&S) won the Debut Fiction Goldberg Prize. Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew by Emmanuel Acho and Noa Tishby (Simon Element) won the Education and Jewish identity Award in Memory of Dorothy Kripke.In addition, Aaron Lansky, founder of the Yiddish Book Center, won the Mentorship Award in Honour of Carolyn Starman Hessel. Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg won a Lifetime Achievement Award on the occasion of the publication of his latest book, The Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism (The Jewish Publication Society/University of Nebraska Press). Other winners and finalists in several categories can be seen here: https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/pb-daily/74th-national-jewish-book-award-winners

Finalists have been selected in six categories for the National Book Critics Circle Awards, along with shortlists for the John Leonard Prize for First Book and the Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize. Winners will be named on March 20 in New York City. This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the NBCC Awards. Check out the complete list of finalists here: https://www.bookcritics.org/awards/

Rick Herron is the recipient of the 2025 CWA Diamond Dagger, which is sponsored by the Crime Writers’ Association and recognises “authors whose crime writing careers have been marked by sustained excellence, and who have made a significant contribution to the genre.” The Diamond Dagger will be presented at the annual CWA Dagger Awards on July 3.

The 2025 shortlist for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards has been revealed. Celebrating 40 years, the VPLAs recognise the best in Australian writing across nine categories and this year’s shortlist suite also includes the inaugural John Clarke Prize for Humour Writing, named in honour of the late, great satirist and actor. Winners will be announced at a special ceremony live-streamed on The Wheeler Centre website on Wednesday 19 March. At the ceremony, AUD$315,000 will be gifted to the winners, including the prestigious overarching Victorian Prize for Literature and an additional $2,000 provided by The Wheeler Centre for the People’s Choice Award. Explore the shortlist here: https://www.wheelercentre.com/victorian-premier-s-literary-awards/2025-victorian-premier-s-literary-awards?utm_source=wordfly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=28Jan25WheelerNewsletter&utm_content=version_A&promo=8311

Finally, The American Library Association announced the winners of the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. The medal winners each receive $5,000; all finalists will be honoured in June during the ALA’s annual conference. The winners are, for fiction: James by Percival Everett (Doubleday) and for Nonfiction: A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko (Scribner).

Have a great month.

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COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Denise Carlson who won a copy of Grit & Grace: The Transformation of a Ship & a Soul by By Deborah Rudell.

Our new giveaway is for a copy of All This Can Be True by Jen Michalski To win, send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “All This” and your postal address in the body of the mail.

We also have a copy of The Color of Noon by Eugene Datta. To win, send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “The Color of Noon” and your postal address in the body of the mail.

Good luck!

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