Compulsive Reader

Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com
Volume 25, Issue 3, 1 March 2023

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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 batch of reviews and interviews:

A review of Admissions: Voices within Mental Health edited by David Stavanger, Radhiah Chowdhury, Mohammad Award

Like the best anthologies, Admissions is a fluid collection where the different genres, explorations and styles of creativity inform one another, creating a montage that is inherently collective. This ‘radical empathy’ that Stavinger talks about is present throughout the book, as the different forms of pain and struggle sit together in solidarity like a supportive scaffold so that in the reading the separation between the different experiences becomes diminished and there is a sense that every perspective fits and is important. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/02/25/a-review-of-admissions-voices-within-mental-health-edited-by-david-stavanger-radhiah-chowdhury-mohammad-award/

A review of The Return by Aaron Paul Lazar

The book is fast paced, drawing you in from the first chapter, and progressing with exciting turns in a way that the book is always pleasurable and satisfying, and even the worst antagonists are treated with empathy. It’s hard not to like Gus, who is always ready to lend a helping hand or a basket of fresh picked zucchinis and corn. Lazar is a master craftsman and pays careful attention to language, plot, pacing and character so that all of the elements tie together neatly and seamlessly, description charged with rich nostalgia. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/02/24/a-review-of-the-return-by-aaron-paul-lazar/

States that Matter, a review of The Best of Tupelo Quarterly edited by Kristina Marie Darling

As a poet, my ultimate aim is to connect to my reader, so that I may get close to causing a moment of understanding, a resonance, a tapping-into of the unsayable. As a human, I feel nourished when art is not only allowed to break the mould, but it is celebrated for doing so. The rules of the universe only help us understand a fraction of what is happening to us. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/02/23/states-that-matter-a-review-of-the-best-of-tupelo-quarterly-edited-by-kristina-marie-darling/

A review of Passages by Jenni Nixon

These are certainly not poems overflowing with sentimentality. Nixon has total control of her words, and is measured and diligent in creating and intelligent and elegant narrative in poetry form, whether she writes about helping a neighbour, the compulsory acquisition of hundreds of homes for the construction of tunnels or other environmental concerns. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/02/19/a-review-of-passages-by-jenni-nixon/

A review of Text Messages from the Universe by Richard James Allen

This is philosophy at its best, to exist or not, or as Shakespeare put it “to be or not to be”. Allan makes you think, consider, and reflect, and he does it in a very clever way utilising poetic devices and intelligent lines. The poet’s voice is very convincing, whether he uses sophisticated language or everyday language, his unique style draws the reader into the narration. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/02/19/a-review-of-text-messages-from-the-universe-by-richard-james-allen/

Marina Rubin in Conversation with Stephanie Dickinson

Marina Rubin in Conversation with Stephanie Dickinson, discussing Rubin’s new book Knockout Beauty and Other Afflictions – a collection of stories of desire, damage, and human meandering. The authors discuss, among other things, influences, the advantages of being multilingual, linguistic precision, characterisation, utilising humour, the power of the first line reveal, and lots more. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/02/15/marina-rubin-in-conversation-with-stephanie-dickinson/

A review of Beauty in the Beast by Emily-Jane Hills Orford

In the original folktale, when the young woman learns to love the beast, she is surprised by his transformation. In Orford’s novel, Priya is manipulated by a male being for whom she felt an attraction, so her happy ending is not the conventional one. Instead, it arises naturally from Orford’s novel and is suitable for the 21st century. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/02/14/a-review-of-beauty-in-the-beast-by-emily-jane-hills-orford/

A review of Isle of Dogs by Jon Frankel

Isle of Dogs is full of densely plotted, exciting political intrigue and violence. But Frankel is at best when writing about the intimacies of daily life which persevere in this new world–a meal made with food grown at a garden, a woman’s relief at putting a baby to a full breast, a man picking up his child before going to work. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/02/12/a-review-of-isle-of-dogs-by-jon-frankel/

Matadors Are Metaphors, a Review of When Correlation is Causation by Heikki Huotari

It would be limiting to call these prose poems or even language poems; they eschew labels. Better to think of them as ventures in language, in reality, in the probable, and the possible. To achieve a pattern, the poet uses a number of devices. “To the horseless carriage I say get a horse.”

A Review of A Career in Books by Kate Gavino

Gavino’s characters are lived in, relatable, and funny. Their bosses are archetypal, knowable people we have all worked worth (or been). The New York they occupy is similarly vivid, and will likely be familiar to readers who have spent any amount of time in Brooklyn, commuting into the city, or hunting for lunches that cost less than $16. Duck buns anyone? Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/02/09/a-review-of-a-career-in-books-by-kate-gavino/

A review of Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín and other poems by Oisin Breen

But it’s serious, deadly serious. Written with care, and with love for language. At first sight, there seems to be something infernally unruly about Oisín Breen’s poetry, until you spot the fact that the structure is there, recognisable but bloody oneiric, lulling you into a false sense of security and then ripping itself up and changing. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/02/08/a-review-of-lilies-on-the-deathbed-of-etain-and-other-poems-by-oisin-breen/

A review of The Alphabet According to Several Strange Creatures by Simon Nader

Containing 26 well crafted parts, written in poetic couplets, this body of work exercised us of assonance, allegory, homonyms, rhyme, as well as other distinguished poetic techniques. These techniques charge this body of work and set it ablaze. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/02/07/a-review-of-the-alphabet-according-to-several-strange-creatures-by-simon-nader/

A review of Sea Skins by Sophia Wilson

Wilson works every word with the precision of a linguist, drawing out the sounds of words, “The tick-tock knock of one hundred clocks” or “three shells cantering takka tak takka tak”. Alliteration, rhythm, rhyme, parataxis – the poems employ a range of techniques that make them aurally beautiful. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/02/06/a-review-of-sea-skins-by-sophia-wilson/

A review of Smog Mother by John Wall Barger

The unsayable inevitably finds its way into Smog Mother, not just in fantastic dreams, but in the ugliness of life and death, in the rushing precipices we face and try not to. Barger takes the role of poet to the letter when he lets disaster unfold in his work. You can feel that he barely blinks in the face of this darkness, not because he is unfeeling, but to take it all in. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/02/05/a-review-of-smog-mother-by-john-wall-barger/

A review of Oh My Rapture by Gemma White

Hidden amongst all the coarseness and slang words there is gentleness and poignancy, as you read page by page you can feel it. There is a voice impregnated in the words of the poems that are like two forces, forces that propel and repel each other. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/02/04/a-review-of-oh-my-rapture-by-gemma-white/

A review of Dug-Up Gun Museum by Matt Donovan

Donovan’s poems, sensitive and unflinchingly brave, pull us through this grisly reality, showing our country’s stubborn and sick fascination with guns, and downright reverence. We are expected to bury our human dead, and accept that guns will be dug-up. Not as relics, but as emblems of American freedom. New guns will be manufactured and purchased every day. Made to do what guns do. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/02/03/a-review-of-dug-up-gun-museum-by-matt-donovan/

A review of Pipette by Kim Chinquee

According to the Oxford American Dictionary, a pipette is “a slender tube used in a lab for transferring or measuring small quantities of liquids.” In Kim Chinquee’s slim, debut novel Pipette, the author examines a large mixture of themes through the eyes of Elle, a part-time lab technician working in the early days of COVID.

An interview with Dale Griffin

The author of The Last Lion of Karkov talks about his new book, his characters and the process of creating feisty female protagonists, his inspiration and why he’s donating his sales to Girls, Inc, his new work-in-progress and lots more.

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 3,095) 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, Jessica Au has won Australia’s richest single literary prize, the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards worth $100,000 for her novel, Cold Enough for Snow. The judges commended Au on her masterful ability to slip between memory and the present, noting the work opens up new horizons for Australian literature. Cold Enough for Snow was also awarded the Prize for Fiction. You can check out my review here: https://compulsivereader.com/2022/02/21/a-review-of-cold-enough-for-snow-by-jessica-au/ and interview with Jessica here: https://anchor.fm/compulsivereader/episodes/Jessica-Au-on-Cold-Enough-For-Snow-e1epc31/a-a7fa65g. Also awarded were John Harvey for The Return (Drama), Lystra Rose for The Upwelling (Indigenous Writing), Eda Gunaydin for Root and Branch: Essays on inheritance (Non-Fiction), Gavin Yuan Gao for At the Altar of Touch (Poetry), Kate Murray for We Who Hunt the Hollow (Writing for Young Adults), Mick Cummins for One Divine Night (Unpublished Manuscript) and Karlie Noon and Krystal De Napoli for Astronomy: Sky Country (People’s Choice Award).

The finalists in six categories for the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Awards and the John Leonard Prize for First Book have been announced. The recipient of the 2022 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing is Jennifer Wilson. Joy Harjo is receiving the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, The winner of the Toni Morrison Achievement Award, recognizing “institutions that have made lasting and meaningful contributions to book culture,” is City Lights Books, San Francisco, Calif. The full, extensive list of finalists in all categories can be seen here: https://www.bookcritics.org/2023/01/31/national-book-critics-circle-announces-finalists-for-publishing-year-2022/

A longlist has been released for the €100,000 Dublin Literary Award, which is sponsored by Dublin City Council to honour a single work of fiction published in English. Nominations include 29 novels in translation with works nominated by libraries from 31 countries around the world. If the winning book has been translated, the author receives €75,000 and the translator receives €25,000. The shortlist will be announced March 28 and the winner May 25, as part of the International Literature Festival Dublin. Check out the complete International Dublin Literary Award longlist here: https://dublinliteraryaward.ie/news/longlist-for-the-2023-dublin-literary-award-is-revealed/

Shortlists have been announced for the 2023 Rathbones Folio Prize, which recognises “works of literature in which the subjects being explored achieve their most perfect and thrilling expression.” The winner in each of the three categories–fiction, nonfiction and poetry–receives a £2,000 prize; the overall winner, receives an additional £30,000. To see the shortlisted titles, click here: https://www.rathbonesfolioprize.com/

Books from 14 countries and 10 languages are among the 15 winners of English PEN’s translation awards, which are selected “on the basis of outstanding literary quality, the strength of the publishing project, and their contribution to U.K. bibliodiversity.” The winners include–for the first time–a title from Mali and the first memoir by a Sudanese woman to be translated from Arabic to English. The full list can be found here: https://www.englishpen.org/posts/news/pen-translates-winners-announced-2/

he Association of American Publishers has unveiled finalists for the 2023 Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE) Awards honouring scholarly works published in 2022. To see the 105 finalists in 40 subject categories, click here: https://publishers.org/news/association-of-american-publishers-announces-finalists-and-category-winners-for-2023-prose-awards/The subject category winners will compete for four awards–excellence in biological and life sciences, humanities, physical sciences and mathematics, and social sciences. The winners of those awards will compete for the top prize of the PROSE awards, the R.R. Hawkins Award.

Walter Mosley is the recipient of the 2023 CWA Diamond Dagger, which is sponsored by the Crime Writers’ Association and recognizes “authors whose crime writing careers have been marked by sustained excellence, and who have made a significant contribution to the genre.” Mosley is the author of more than 60 books that have been translated into 25 languages.

The 2022 LiBeratur Award, a German literary award given to female writers from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Arab world, was was awarded to the German edition of Ora, Ora de Hitori Igumo (I, I’m going alone) by Chisako Wakatake (published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha), Jeder geht für sich allein (translated by Jürgen Stalph). Alongside Ora, Ora de Hitori Igumo (I, I’m going alone) there were two other candidates from Japan for the LiBeratur Award this year, Hiromi Ito’s The Thorn-Puller and Mieko Kawakami’s Heaven. A total of 13 books from Nigeria, China, Chile, Israel, Haiti, and Argentina and other countries were nominated for the award. Seven books including the three from Japan were shortlisted for the award. It is a historic first for a Japanese author to win this award since its inception.

The Millions has published its biannual Great Book Preview, listing 85 highly anticipated books of the first half of 2023, including new work from Nicole Chung, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Claire Dederer, Brian Dillon, Samantha Irby, Heidi Julavits, Catherine Lacy, Mario Vargas Llosa, Rebecca Makkai, Fernanda Melchor, Lorrie Moore, Jenny Odell, Curtis Sittenfeld, Clint Smith, Zadie Smith, Brandon Taylor, Colm Tóibín, and more. To check it out visit: https://themillions.com/2023/01/most-anticipated-the-great-2023a-book-preview.html

The finalists for the 19th annual Story Prize, a $20,000 award for authors of short fiction, have been announced. The winner will be announced on March 15. The finalists are as follows: Natural History by Andrea Barrett (W.W. Norton), Bliss Montage by Ling Ma (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty (Tin House).

Mystery Writers of America has named Michael Connelly and Joanne Fluke its 2023 Grand Masters, the 2023 Raven Award recipients are Crime Writers of Color and Eddie Muller, and the ‘Strand’ magazine will receive the Ellery Queen Award. They will accept their awards at the 77th Annual Edgar Awards Ceremony, which will be held on April 27, 2023 at the Marriott Marquis Times Square in New York City. MWA’s Grand Master Award represents the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing and was established to acknowledge important contributions to this genre, as well as for a body of work that is both significant and of consistent high quality.

Finalists have been unveiled for the $50,000 Gotham Book Prize, which honors works that either are about New York City or set in New York City. The winner will be named in April. The 2023 finalists are: Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana, Activities of, Daily Living by Lisa Hsiao Chen, Big Girl by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Trust by Hernan Diaz, The Deceptions by Jill Bialosky, Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez, An Honest Living by Dwyer Murphy, Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion by Bushra Rehman, Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta by James Hannaham, Three Muses by Martha Anne Toll, and The Sewing Girl’s Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America by John Wood Sweet.

Joy Harjo has won the 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, awarded biennially by the Yale University Library through the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library to an American poet for the best book published during the previous two years or for lifetime achievement in poetry. The judging panel honoured Harjo for her book Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years and for her lifetime achievement in and contributions to American poetry. The prize includes a cash award of $175,000.

PEN America has announced the finalists for the 2023 PEN America Literary Awards, which include the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award; PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection, PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel; PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection; PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay; PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award; PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography; PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction; PEN Award for Poetry in Translation and PEN Translation Prize. The finalists can be seen here: https://pen.org/literary-awards/announcing-the-2023-pen-america-literary-awards-finalists/?fbclid=IwAR0Tv6b0M4JAduXl6yR71F0k2a9kpPr_mg24_3IL-w9E0rKrAveYJ7uIiZk

Have a great month!

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COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations Debra Guyette who won a copy of The Last Lion of Karkov by Dale Griffin.

Congratulations also to Karen Wadkin who won a copy of I’m Never Fine by Joseph Lezza.

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

We also have a copy of Golden Bridge: New Poems by Jennifer Maiden. To win send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line: “Golden Bridge”.

Finally, we have a copy of The Beautiful Misfits by Susan Reinhardt. To win send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line: “The Beautiful Misfits”.

Good luck!

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