Compulsive Reader

Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com
Volume 27, Issue 6, 1 June 2025

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

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:

The Rhymes and Reasons of James Sale: A Review of DoorWay, Vol. 3 of the English Cantos

James Sale is not using “lazy rhyme;” he is deliberately, carefully stretching the boundaries of what is acceptable rhyming convention in English formal poetry. He uses his slant rhymes, half rhymes, near rhymes, assonant rhymes, consonant rhymes, light rhymes, and syllabic rhymes with abandon. With joy. With freedom. Lavishly. He is demonstrating that our language is a language that by default doesn’t always perfectly rhyme— but when you get close, it can be as beautiful, and powerful, and in many instances, more effective than a perfect rhyme can ever be. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/05/28/the-rhymes-and-reasons-of-james-sale-a-review-of-doorway-vol-3-of-the-english-cantos/

An interview with Brian Jacobson

In this tongue-in-cheek interview, the author of Life Engineering and The Truth About the Moon and the Stars talks about his writing process, what he exclusively listens to, why he writes fiction, his ideal readers, what he does for fun, and more. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/05/24/an-interview-with-brian-jacobson/

A review of The Bayrose Files by Diane Wald

Diane Wald crafts a richly atmospheric and emotionally layered narrative, exploring themes of identity, guilt, and redemption through Violet’s journey of painful self-discovery. Vividly capturing both the familial eccentricities of an artistic community and the complexities of human relationships, this tender, unflinching story follows Violet’s struggle for self-forgiveness, becoming a moving testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/05/22/a-review-of-the-bayrose-files-by-diane-wald/

A review of Everything Must Go by Dan Flore III

In the flash fiction of Dan Flore the conflict could go either way, and often, to his readers’ benefit, it does. Everything Must Go does indeed entertains, and often his protagonist’s pain is his reader’s pleasure. The poet and memoirist John Yamrus’s introduction gives readers a good perspective on Flore’s work. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/05/19/a-review-of-everything-must-go-by-dan-flore-iii/

A review of Habitats: Poems by Katharine Whitcomb

In Habitats, it is with an accessibility and elegance that Whitcomb transports readers onto the highway, staring back in the airplane, switchbacking on the trail and across the harbor ferry. Habitats opens the aperture, disclosing intriguing moments in a rich atmosphere of spaces crafted with wonderfully strange detail. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/05/16/a-review-of-habitats-poems-by-katharine-whitcomb/

An Uneasy Utopia, Bright yet Bloody: Jordan Rothacker’s The Shrieking of Nothing

The story connects in many ways to its predecessor, 2020’s The Death of the Cyborg Oracle, but stands on its own as a wild, conceptual, playfully written ride. And though hints of Philip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard, and Aldous Huxley abound, it is utterly original—principally because its world is neither utopian, nor dystopian, but somewhere uniquely in between. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/05/13/an-uneasy-utopia-bright-yet-bloody-jordan-rothackers-the-shrieking-of-nothing/

A review of Jenny, 52 by Susan Montag

Jenny, 52 is a kind of meta fiction about the nature of storytelling, fiction versus reality, in a manner reminiscent of Philip Roth (My Life as a Man, in particular, and all of the Nathan Zuckerman novels generally). Jenny, 52 is made up of seventeen one- to three-page “chapters,” most of which are narrated in the voice of the writer Jenny. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/05/12/a-review-of-jenny-52-by-susan-montag/

A review of The Flowering Dark by Sue Lockwood

There is a lightness of touch here coupled with an assuredly quiet voice that has an expansive quality, equating the intellectual and the botanical, the flowering of ranunculus with human flowering, and the sensual nature of the earth with the rest of the universe. The poems deftly change their perspective through space and time so that all times feel concurrent and all things seem equal, continually in the state of transformation and yet always available. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/05/10/a-review-of-the-flowering-dark-by-sue-lockwood/

A review of Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong

At once informative and poetic, Hong’s writing is infused with sharp wit and biting irony, making it both engaging and nuanced. Minor Feelings serves as an essential guide for those navigating multiple identities and offers both lay and scholarly readers a profound understanding of the vast literary and artistic contributions these marginalized communities have made to the ever-evolving landscape of American culture. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/05/09/a-review-of-minor-feelings-an-asian-american-reckoning-by-cathy-park-hong/

A review of Cold Truth By Ashley Kalagian Blunt

I read this book in just over a day, pushing back other commitments because I couldn’t bear to stop. The book is full of suspense which Kalagian Blunt creates in all sorts of ways. The most notable is her terrific characterisation. The main protagonist, Harlow, drives the narrative forward with just the right combination of intellectual acumen, warmth and anxiety. The reader becomes invested in Harlow and her desperate search for her missing father Scott. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/05/07/a-review-of-cold-truth-by-ashley-kalagian-blunt/

A review of Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies by Kazim Ali

Kazim Ali is a literary artist and polymath who so delights in language and possibility that he created a chrono-synclastic infundibulate safe space wherein physics are presented in a way that makes the moon even lovelier to poets and presumably presents poetry as lovely to physicists. Ali learned “how to use [his] breath to experience [his] body and the external world with deeper focus and deliberation.” Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/05/06/a-review-of-silver-road-essays-maps-calligraphies-by-kazim-ali/

An interview with Stuart Nadler

I spoke with Stuart over Zoom to discuss the dangers of beauty, the difficulties of depicting atrocity in art, and the value of humor in dark times. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/05/05/an-interview-with-stuart-nadler/

A review of G-d, Sleep, and Chaos by Alan Fyfe

Despite the profane subjects: dole queues, building sites, and the bottom of coffee cups; Fyfe elevates the ordinary to extraordinary heights with captivating imagery, and a musicality that gently lulls the reader into a meditative trance. In ‘A Song for Saint Roch’ ‘two pristine cigarettes’ are juxtaposed with ‘two (painted) apples’: elevating the former to high art reminiscent of ‘The Plastic Bag Scene’ in the film American Beauty; viewed through a poet’s lens, to seek beauty from the most mundane items. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/05/04/a-review-of-g-d-sleep-and-chaos-by-alan-fyfe/

A review of Cyborg Fever by Laurie Sheck

Cyborg Fever is a hallucinatory universe of detached disembodied voices and isolated monads – leptons, bosons, black holes, and human beings — forever striving for a ‘unified field’ but forever defeated by entropy and the forces of dissolution, vast emptiness, and disarray. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/05/03/a-review-of-cyborg-fever-by-laurie-sheck/

A review of Love Letters to Ukraine from Uyava by Kalpna Singh-Chitnis

The author, Kalpna Singh-Chitnis, exhibits great empathy for the Ukrainian people. For example, in “War: A One Way Street,” the poet “driving in [her] town,” imagines “sirens blaring, tanks rolling, / and guns pointing at people resisting.” There are no doves, no olive trees and as the stanzas unfold, she becomes “a woman raped,” “a fallen soldier,” “a father in exodus.” She has the emotional range to feel what they feel, calling herself “a person, and a nation, an ally, and an adversary.” Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/05/01/a-review-of-love-letters-to-ukraine-from-uyava-by-kalpna-singh-chitnis/

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 3,529) which can be browsed or searched from the front page of the site.

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

LITERARY NEWS

In the news this month, the shortlist has been selected for the 2025 Plutarch Award, sponsored by Biographers International Organization and the only international literary award for biography judged exclusively by biographers. The winner will be named June 6 during the BIO annual conference. The shortlist includes Cynthia Carr, for Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Stephanie Gorton, for The Icon & The Idealist: Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America (Ecco), David Greenberg, for John Lewis: A Life (Simon & Schuster), Lucy Hughes-Hallett, for The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham (Harper), Adam Shatz, for The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The Writers’ Union of Canada has released a shortlist for the C$10,000 Danuta Gleed Literary Award, which recognises “the best first collection of short fiction by a Canadian author published in 2024 in the English language.” Two finalists are also awarded C$1,000 each. The winners will be named in early June. This year’s shortlisted titles are: Perfect Little Angels by Vincent Anioke, Coexistence by Billy-Ray Belcourt, Death by a Thousand Cuts by Shashi Bhat, Code Noir by Canisia Lubrin, and Smoke by Nicola Winstanley.

Code Noir by Canisia Lubrin (Soft Skull Press) has also won the $150,000 2025 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, the largest English-language literary prize in the world for women and non-binary authors. The four finalists each receive $12,500.

Winners of the 2025 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America and honouring the best in mystery fiction, nonfiction, and television, were announced. Best Novel: The In Crowd by Charlotte Vassell (Doubleday), Best First Novel by an American Author: Holy City by Henry Wise (Atlantic Monthly Press), and Best Paperback Original: The Paris Widow by Kimberly Belle (Park Row Books/Harlequin). For the full list of winners in all categories visit: https://mysterywriters.org/mystery-writers-of-america-announces-the-2025-edgar-award-winners/

The book winners and finalists of the 2025 Pulitzer Prizes include, for Fiction: James by Percival Everett (Doubleday), History (two winners): Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War by Edda L. Fields-Black (Oxford University Press) and Native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal (Random House). For Biography: Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life by Jason Roberts (Random House). For Memoir: Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls (MCD), for Poetry: New and Selected Poems by Marie Howe (W. W. Norton & Company), and for General nonfiction: To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement by Benjamin Nathans (Princeton University Press).

Finalists have been selected for the $100,000 2025 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, in association with the National Library of Israel, which honours “emerging writers who explore the Jewish experience in a profound and original way.” The winner will be announced later this month. The finalists include Toby Lloyd, for Fervor (Avid Reader Press), Benjamin Resnick, for Next Stop (Avid Reader Press), Sasha Vasilyuk, for Your Presence Is Mandatory (Bloomsbury Publishing), and Janice Weizman, for Our Little Histories (Toby Press).

The Griffin Poetry Prize has named Margaret Atwood as the 2025 recipient of the Lifetime Recognition Award, given to international artists working in poetry.

The Story Circle Network has announced the winners of its Sarton and Gilda Women’s Book Awards, which are open to women authors whose work is published in English in the U.S. and Canada. The Sarton Award recognizes books that “are distinguished by the compelling ways they honor the lives of women and girls and are limited to books published by independent authors and publishers.” The Gilda Prize honours comedian Gilda Radner. Winners receive a cash prize of $100, a commemorative award, gold seals, and a virtual seal for their websites, as well as advertising in SCN’s e-letters and website and a year’s membership in SCN. This year’s winners are: Sarton Award: Memoir: Hiding for My Life: Being Gay in the Navy by Karen Solt (She Writes Press), Contemporary fiction: Almost Family by Ann Bancroft (She Writes Press), Historical fiction: Traces by Patricia L. Hudson (University Press of Kentucky), Nonfiction: Garden Inventories: Reflections on Land, Place and Belonging by Mariam Pirbhai (Wolsak and Wynn Publishers), and Young adult fiction: Don’t Pity the Desperate by Anna B. Moore (Unsolicited Press). For the Gilda Prize: Nearly Departed: Adventures in Loss, Cancer, and Other Inconveniences by Gila Pfeffer (The Experiment).

Winners of the 2025 Age Book of the Year Awards were named at the opening night of the Melbourne Writers Festival. The winning authors received A$10,000. Vortex by Rodney Hall won the Age Book of the Year award for fiction and Lech Blaine’s memoir Australian Gospel won the Age Book of the Year nonfiction award.

British Book Awards have been announced. The overall book of the year was Patriot by the late Alexei Navalny, which also won in the non-fiction narrative category. In addition, Margaret Atwood was given the Freedom to Publish Award, and the British Book Award for Social Impact went to Kate Mosse, writer and founder of the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Winners in the book categories were: Fiction: James by Percival Everett, Debut Fiction: Butter by Asako Yuzuki, translated by Polly Barton, Crime & Thriller: Hunted by Abir Mukherjee, Pageturner: Faebound by Saara El-Arifi, Discover: poyums by Len Pennie, Non-Fiction: Lifestyle & Illustrated: What I Ate in One Year by Stanley Tucci, Non-Fiction: Narrative Winner: Patriot by Alexei Navalny, translated by Arch Tait and Stephen Dalziel, Children’s Fiction: Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hot Mess by Jeff Kinney, Children’s Non-Fiction: Wilding: How to Bring Wildlife Back by Isabella Tree, illustrated by Angela Harding
Children’s Illustrated: Jonty Gentoo: The Adventures of a Penguin by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler, Audiobook, Fiction (tie): Bunny vs Monkey by Jamie Smart, narrated by Ciaran Saward and My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes, and Audiobook: Non-Fiction: Sociopath by Patric Gagne.

The shortlist has been released for the £5,000 Klaus Flugge Prize, which recognises “the most promising and exciting newcomer to children’s picture book illustration.” The winner will be named September 11. This year’s shortlisted illustrators are: Emma Farrarons for My Hair Is as Long as a River, written by Charlie Castle, Mikey Please for The Café at the Edge of the Woods, Rhian Stone for Grandad’s Star, written by Frances Tosdevin.

Carys Davies has won the £10,000 RSL Ondaatje Prize, which recognises a distinguished work of fiction, nonfiction or poetry, evoking the spirit of a place, for her novel Clear, published in the U.S. by Scribner.

Your Presence Is Mandatory by Sasha Vasilyuk (Bloomsbury Publishing), a first novel, has won the $100,000 2025 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, which, in association with the National Library of Israel, honours “exceptional work of emerging writers in the examination and transmission of Jewish life, culture and identity.”

Finalists have been unveiled for the £3,000 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction as well as the Orwell Prize for Political Writing (nonfiction), both of which recognise works that strive to meet Orwell’s own ambition “to make political writing into an art.” The winners will be named June 25. Finalists for all four Orwell Prize categories are available here: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-prizes/finalists/

The winners of the 2025 NSW Literary Awards have been announced, with a total of $360,000 awarded across 14 categories. The winner of the Book of the Year Award ($10,000), chosen from among the winners of the each of the awards, was 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem by Nam Le. Other winners include Fiona McFarlane, who won the $40,000 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction for Highway 13; James Bradley, who won the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction Deep Water; and Hasib Hourani who won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry for rock flight. For the full list of winners and judge’s comments visit: https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/awards/nsw-literary-awards

Two books have won the $50,000 Gotham Book Prize: Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York’s Greatest Borough by Ian Frazier (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Movement: New York’s Long War to Take Back Its Streets from the Car by Nicole Gelinas (Fordham University Press). The authors will split the prize.

Palestinian author Yasmin Zaher’s debut novel The Coin won the £20,000 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize, celebrating international literary excellence in all its forms–including poetry, novels, short stories and drama–by authors 39 years old or under.

Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi (And Other Stories/Consortium) has won the 2025 International Booker Prize, which honours “the best works of long-form fiction or collections of short stories translated into English and published in the U.K. and/or Ireland.” The £50,000 prize money is divided equally between authors and translators. Heart Lamp is the first collection of short stories to win the prize and is the first winner originally written in Kannada, one of the languages of India.

Michelle de Kretser has won this year’s $60,000 Stella Prize for her intriguing novel, Theory & Practice, which as its title suggests not only investigates what fiction is but also what it could be. This is De Kretser’s first Stella Prize win. She is one of only a few women to have won the Miles Franklin twice, for The Life to Come (2018) and Questions of Travel (2013), both shortlisted for the Stella. The Stella Prize, established in 2012 to address the underrepresentation of women writers, expanded from 2019 to include the work of non-binary writers.

Dawn Macdonald won the C$10,000 Canadian First Book Prize, awarded annually by the Griffin Poetry Prize, for Northerny. The prize also includes a six-week residency in Italy in partnership with the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. Burton will be invited to read from her book at this year’s Griffin Poetry Prize readings on June 4 in Toronto.

Have a great month.

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

COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to LuAnn Morgan who won a copy of It All Felt Impossible: 42 Years in 42 Essays by Tom McAllister.

Congratulations also to Kathy Prokhovnik who won a copy of WW III: New Poems by Jennifer Maiden.

Our new giveaway is for a copy of Measure of Devotion by Nell Joslin. To win, send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “Measure of Devotion” and your postal address in the body of the mail.

We also have a copy of The Heart is Meat: An 80s Memoir by Michael Backus. To win, send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “The Heart is Meat” and your postal address in the body of the mail.

Good luck!

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