Compulsive Reader

Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com
Volume 25, Issue 7, 1 July 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 latest batch of reviews and interviews:

Sun-Showered Burial: A Review of Memorial With Liminal Space by Mitchell Untchs

A Memorial With Liminal Space speaks eloquently and intimately-one of those hallowed late-night conversations with someone you’ve known for a very long time. Reading this book helped me feel more connected to myself, the larger world, and loved ones that have passed, and that is a beautiful feeling I am deeply grateful for.

A review of Ravage & Son by Jerome Charyn

The grim urban setting of Ravage & Son, its violence, cast of criminals from all classes, and atmosphere of pessimism and disillusionment are characteristics of the noir genre. In Charyn’s story, we see a promising youth who was given the chance to make something of himself in the world’s terms, yet chooses a different course for several reasons and eventually is defeated by the milieu he sought to clean up.

An interview with Meredith Stricker

Meredith Stricker is an artist and poet working in cross-genre media. She is the author of six poetry collections and recipient of the National Poetry Series Award. Her most recent book, Rewild, won the Dorset prize from Tupelo Press. She co-directs visual poetry studio, a collaborative focusing on architecture in Big Sur and projects to bring together artists, writers, musicians, and experimental forms. In this candid interview she speaks to Yasmine Guiga about her new book Rewild and the challenges she faced, reader expectations, inspirations, the search for aesthetic wholeness, TS Eliot, and lots more. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/06/16/an-interview-with-meredith-stricker/

A review of Tuesday’s Child Is Full by PS Cottier

Cottier hides treasures in every poems. Some of the treasures are not easily accessible because the poet very cleverly has hidden them in abstract pictures painted with words. Consequently, some of the poems may need more than one reading to get to their meaning. Others, like a Rorschach test, open a door in your mind and allows you to search for your own meaning which can be an excellent stimulant for the imagination. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/06/15/a-review-of-tuesdays-child-is-full-by-ps-cottier/

A review of Clean by Scott-Patrick Mitchell

The work is immediately hard-hitting, engaging with both the personal and the political in a way that feels as though it is removing layers from skin, revealing a deep vulnerability that is universal. The inherent pull between the many physical, philosophical and psychological impacts of addiction, attraction, joy and loss is rendered with such tenderness that the reader can’t help but feel as though Mitchell is writing about all of us, about the perilous and flawed nature of being human. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/06/14/a-review-of-clean-by-scott-patrick-mitchell/

An interview with Adam Sass

Adam Sass spills the tea on his inspiration for writing, the relationship between his different books, his characterised settings, his themes, characters, plots, the influence of Wes Craven, literary breadcrumbs, his next YA, and lots more. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/06/10/25011/

A review of Your Lonely Nights Are Over by Adam Sass

Like any good slasher, almost every interaction is ripe with suspicion. A solo car ride with the potential killer? A real nail biter. Texting a hookup that’s already inside your house, hiding in a closet? Talk about a lethal metaphor. A drive-in located in the middle of nowhere that the killer(s) certainly have tickets to? Sounds like a fun Friday night. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/06/10/a-review-of-your-lonely-nights-are-over-by-adam-sass/

A review of The Badass Brontës by Jane Satterfield

Jane Satterfield vividly brings the Brontë sisters to life, showing them as quietly iconoclastic women in early nineteenth century England, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. While providing background in “dramatis personae” sketches and an historical outline at the end of the book, as well as copious illuminating epigraphs to many of the poems. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/06/06/a-review-of-the-badass-brontes-by-jane-satterfield/

A review of Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Many novelists have retold classics from bygone eras. One thinks of Jane Smiley’s retelling of King Lear in A Thousand Acres and Curtis Sittenfeld transforming Pride and Prejudice into Eligible. The fun in reading adaptations lies in seeing how the characters turn out in a new setting, and whether or not the author retains the theme of the original classic. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/06/04/a-review-of-demon-copperhead-by-barbara-kingsolver/

Confronting Invisible Winds: A Conversation with Rachel Rueckert about East Winds

Rachel Rueckert is an award-winning writer, editor, and teacher. She holds an MFA in nonfiction from Columbia University as well as an M.Ed from Boston University. As a seventh-generation Utahn, her favorite subjects include place, family, mental health, unconventional spirituality, and climate change. In this in-depth interview, Rachel speaks about her new memoir East Winds. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/06/02/confronting-invisible-winds-a-conversation-with-rachel-rueckert-about-east-winds/

A review of A Dangerous Daughter by Dina Davis

Ivy’s recovery only begins when the blame, punishment and shaming stops, thanks to an empathetic Freudian psychoanalyst who helps Ivy understand the nature of her illness. Davis’ writing is subtle and powerful throughout the book, focusing on Ivy’s growing sense of self and a slow, nonlinear healing process that rings true. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2023/06/01/a-review-of-a-dangerous-daughter-by-dina-davis/

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 3,160) 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, The Society of Authors announced this year’s Authors’ Awards shortlists across 11 categories, including the ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award, the Betty Trask Prize, the Paul Torday Memorial Prize, the Queen’s Knickers Award, the McKitterick Prize, the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize, and the inaugural Authors with Disabilities and Chronic Illnesses) Literary Prize. The winners will be honoured July 29 at a ceremony presented by Joanne Harris and keynote speaker Val McDermid, at Southwark Cathedra in London. The winners share a prize fund of more than £100,000. Check out the complete Authors’ Awards shortlists, including judge comments, here (and in a nice trend that seems to be increasing I note that there are a few self-published and quite a few small press titles): https://www2.societyofauthors.org/2023/05/24/a-sign-that-our-literary-future-is-in-good-hands-announcing-the-2023-soa-awards-shortlists/

The winners of the IndieReader Discovery Awards, sponsored by IndieReader, have been announced. Winners in the many categories can be seen here: https://indiereader.com/2023/06/announcing-the-2023-discovery-awards-winners/. The winners of the fiction awards are: For the Minds and Wills of Men by Jeff Lanier, Still, the Sky by Tom Pearson, Last Liar Standing by Danielle M. Wong, and for Nonfiction: The C.R. Patterson and Sons Company by Christopher Nelson, What They Couldn’t Take by Adira James, and Me Power by LaNysha T. Adams

The Writers’ Trust of Canada announced that Cooper Skjeie (poetry) and Zak Jones (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.Skjeie won for his poetry collection Scattered Oblation. Jones won for his short story collection So Much More to Say. The other finalists for the poetry prize were diasporic dissonance by Kyo Lee and Notes on the Non-Place by Dore Prieto. The other short fiction prize finalists were Mama’s Lullabies by Vincent Anioke and Triggered by Zilla Jones. Each writer receives C$2,500.

The 35th annual Lambda Literary Awards, celebrating excellence in LGBTQ literature, were presented in 25 categories at a ceremony held in New York City last week. You can see all of the winners and the winners of five special awards here: https://lambdaliterary.org/awards/2023-winners/

We Own the Sky by Rodman Philbrick (Scholastic Press) has won the New-York Historical Society’s $10,000 Children’s History Book Prize, honouring “the best American history book for middle readers ages 9-12, fiction or nonfiction.”

Roger Reeves won the 2023 Griffin Poetry Prize, which is designed to “encourage and celebrate excellence in poetry,” for his collection Best Barbarian. The winner receives C$130,000, with the other finalists awarded C$10,000. The Big Melt by Emily Riddle has won the inaugural Canadian First Book Prize, sponsored by the Griffin Poetry Prize. Riddle receives C$10,000.

The T. S. Eliot Foundation and the Poetry Society of America have named Courtney Faye Taylor as the winner of the 2023 Four Quartets Prize for her collection Concentrate (Graywolf Press, 2022). She was selected by judges Terrance Hayes, Hoa Nguyen, and Geoffrey G. O’Brien, who hailed her work as “a statement of poetics as well as a vision of existential struggle . . . where the poet is detective and witness, poems as an accumulating series of lyric takes.” The judges also named Brenda Hillman for “The Sickness & the World Soul” from her collection In a Few Minutes Before Later (Wesleyan University Press, 2022) and Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué for his book Madness (Nightboat Books, 2022). Courtney Faye Taylor will receive an award of $21,000, and each finalist will receive an award of $1,000.

The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest by Edward Chancellor (Grove Atlantic) has won the $50,000 2023 Hayek Book Prize, sponsored by the Manhattan Institute. The Price of Time traces the history of interest from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia, through debates about usury in Restoration Britain and John Law’s ill-fated Mississippi scheme, to the global credit booms of the 21st century.

Barbara Kingsolver won the £30,000 Women’s Prize for Fiction for her novel Demon Copperhead (Harper). She is the first double winner of the prize in its 28-year history. In addition to the cash award, Kingsolver received the “Bessie,” a limited-edition bronze figurine by Grizel Niven.

Edwidge Dantica won the 2023 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, which recognises writers “who have demonstrated exceptional achievement in the short story form.” She will be honoured December 1 at the annual PEN/Malamud Award Ceremony, held in partnership with American University.

Perpetual as Trustee, alongside Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund, announced the shortlist for the 2023 Miles Franklin Literary Award. The authors will be competing for one of the most prestigious literary prizes in Australia, with the winner receiving $60,000. The list includes: Hopeless Kingdom by Kgshak Akec (UWA Publishing), Limberlost by Robbie Arnott (Text Publishing), Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au (Giramondo Publishing), Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran (Ultimo Press), The Lovers by Yumna Kassab (Ultimo Press), and Iris by Fiona Kelly McGregor (Pan Macmillan Australia). According to the judges, “The 2023 Miles shortlist celebrates six works that delve deeply into archives and memory, play confidently with style and structure and strike new grounds in language and form. From deeply immersive tales to polished jewels of craft, from lyrical mappings of land to convention-breaking chronicles, this is novel-writing at its freshest and boldest.” Each of the 2023 shortlisted authors receives $5,000 from the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund. The 2023 winner will be announced on 25 July 2023.

Robert Macfarlane has won the inaugural C$75,000 Weston International Award, honouring “career achievement of an international author whose body of nonfiction work, written in English or widely available in translation, has advanced our understanding of the world.” The award is sponsored by the Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation and administered by the Writers’ Trust of Canada.

The winners of the Firecracker Awards, sponsored by the Community of Literary Magazines & Presses (CLMP) and given to “the best independently published books of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry and the best literary magazines in the categories of debut and general excellence,” have been announced. Each winner in the books category receives $2,000: $1,000 for the press and $1,000 for the author. Winners in the books categories are: Fiction: Brother Alive by Zain Khalid (Grove Atlantic). Creative Nonfiction: Optic Subwoof by Douglas Kearney (Wave Books). Poetry: Customs by Solmaz Sharif (Graywolf Press). In addition, Christine Holbert, founder and publisher of Lost Horse Press, was presented with the 2023 Lord Nose Award, given in recognition of “a lifetime of superlative work in literary publishing.”

Finally, The 2023 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards winners were announced at the State Library of Western Australia. The Red Witch: A Biography of Katharine Susannah Prichard by Nathan Hobby took home the Premier’s Prize for Book of the Year, sponsored by Writing WA. Wild Australia Life, written by Leonard Cronin and illustrated by Chris Nixon won the Premier’s Prize for Children’s Book of the Year. Australian gothic fiction novel Banjawarn by Josh Kemp won the Premier’s Prize for an Emerging Writer. The Daisy Utemorrah Award for Unpublished Indigenous Junior and Young Adult Fiction (administered by Magabala Books) was awarded to Uncle Xbox (Book 2) – Getting Dusty by Nukunu man Jared Thomas. The night’s major winner was Tracy Ryan, who won the $60,000 Western Australian Writer’s Fellowship.

Have a great month!

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COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Anna Xu who won a copy of Toward the Corner of Mercy and Peace by Tracey Buchanan.

Congratulations also to Shawn Andree, who won a copy of Hope for the Worst by Kate Brandt.

Congratulations to Andrew Beck who won a copy of The Lord’s Tusks by Jeffrey Ulin.

Our new site giveaway is for a copy of But She Looks Fine: From Illness to Activism by Olivia Goodreau. To win send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line: “But She Looks Fine” and your postal address in the body of the email.

We also have a copy of What We Leave Behind by Christine Gallagher Kearney to give away. To win send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line: “What We Leave Behind” and your postal address in the body of the email.

Good luck everyone!

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