“I want to send everyone flowers; offer free backrubs; share a glass of better wine; and stretch out on the grass to stare up at the clouds, and then (after more wine) up at the stars.” — author J. Michael Walker on learning that his All the Saints of the City of the Angels is [...]
Stories in Prizes and awards:
Notebook: Smut, honors, anger, hope and business
Sunday in San Francisco: Dirty Words: Litquake’s Tribute to Smut, “a giddy homage to titillation and obscenity … a fundraiser starring a who’s who of Bay Area writers.” Details.
Congratulations to Heyday Books founder Malcolm Margolin on his San Francisco Foundation’s Community Leadership Award. From the Heyday newsletter: “The Helen Crocker Russell Award recognizes individuals and [...]
SoCal book awards, 2008 edition
The Southern California Independent Booksellers Association has just announced the finalists for this year’s book awards. It’s a strong field and the winners will be crowned Oct. 18 at the 2008 Authors Feast in Los Angeles.
Here’s the complete list:
Fiction:
City of Thieves, by David Benioff (Penguin)
Imagine Me and You, by Billy Mernit (Shaye Arehart Books)
The [...]
California poet Kay Ryan to be Poet Laureate
Marin County poet Kay Ryan will become the 16th Poet Laureate of the of the United States, according to the New York Times.
In a 1999 essay for Dark Horse, Dana Gioia — California poet and now the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts — wrote of Ryan:
Over the past five years no [...]
Living with music and other stray notes
• Pico Iyer shares his playlist with The New York Times.
• Book Passage owner Bill Petrocelli blasts Amazon’s tax holiday in California.
• Former LAT Times Editor John Carroll offers his take on “The Future of Journalism” in a speech at the University of Kentucky.
• Author Patt Morrison reels in more top interviews to [...]
Bravo
Publishers Weekly has named Vroman’s in Pasadena, Southern California’s oldest and biggest bookstore, as Bookseller of the Year. Read more and add your comment at the Vroman’s blog.
In other bookstore news: Cody’s has a new home in downtown Berkeley … The San Francisco State University Bookstore now partners with Eco-Libris and invites customers to plant [...]
Performance art
Roshawnda Bettencourt, a student at Placer County’s Oakmont High, captured first place in California’s Poetry Out Loud state finals. She recited “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar.
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows [...]
Lit epicenter?
The National Book Critics Circle and other book types converge on San Francisco this week to announce the group’s annual award finalists and discuss this topic: Is the West Coast Driving American Literature? Hmmm.
Update: Browse the nominees here. And read a recap from Ghost Word here.
California gold
Novelist Susan Straight and nonfiction author Mike Davis have both received 2007 Lannan Literary Awards, which come with $150,000 prizes. “This will allow me to take time off from teaching to finish my new novel, the second in a trilogy about slavery and its legacy, motherhood and love,” Straight says. The Lannan website says Davis [...]
Book biz
Melony Vance, of Latitude 33 Bookshop in Laguna Beach, recaps the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association’s recent Authors Feast in LA.
The highlight of the evening was the announcement of the SCIBA Book Award winners. And the highpoint of that event was the renaming of the mystery award to The T. Jefferson Parker SCIBA Mystery [...]
SCBA Awards
The latest from LA Observed: “Los Angeles Noir, edited by Denise Hamilton, won the mystery category of the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association awards. Peony in Love by Lisa See and An Alphabetical Life by Wendy Werris were also among the winners announced Saturday night.”
Department of good works
San Francisco novelist Dave Eggers, founder of the 826 Valencia writing center for children and the McSweeney’s publishing house, has received a $250,000 Heinz Award for his work. “These recipients are an inspiration to anyone looking for proof that we as a people still have the capacity to work and invent and create our way [...]
Boyle honored
The board of the Santa Barbara Book and Author Festival has chosen novelist T.C. Boyle for the 2007 Ross Macdonald Award, an honor handed out annually to “a California writer whose life work raises the standards of literary excellence.” Boyle will receive the award and give a reading at this year’s festival, the weekend of [...]
A treasured possession
At this week’s James Beard Foundation awards — the SF Chronicle called them “Academy Awards of the culinary industry” — California author Mollie Katzen’s classic Moosewood Cookbook (Ten Speed Press, 1997) was inducted into the foundation’s Cookbook Hall of Fame. This is a distinction given to cookbooks that the foundation deems to have made “a [...]
Lauded
McSweeney’s won the 2007 National Magazine Award for excellence in Fiction, honoring “the quality of a publication’s literary selections.” Among the other finalists in the category: The New Yorker and Zoetrope All-Story. The awards were presented by the American Society of Magazine Editors this week in NYC. See a list winners and finalists in [...]
The hot list
Granta’s list of twenty-one Best Young American Novelists includes four California authors: Daniel Alarcon (Lost City Radio), Yiyun Li (A Thousand Years of Good Prayers), Maile Meloy (Liars and Saints), and ZZ Packer (Drinking Coffee Elsewhere). From Granta:
A little over a decade ago Granta devoted an issue to new fiction by the twenty writers it [...]
Pulitzer day in California
Kenneth R. Weiss, Usha Lee McFarling and Rick Loomis of the Los Angeles Times win today “for their richly portrayed reports on the world’s distressed oceans” (explanatory reporting); Jonathan Gold of LA Weekly for “his zestful, wide ranging restaurant reviews, expressing the delight of an erudite eater” (criticism).
Surprise!
Children’s author Susan Patron, a collections manager at the Los Angeles Public Library, won this year’s prestigious Newbery Medal. From The Washington Post:
Patron won for “The Higher Power of Lucky,” the story of a motherless 10-year-old in a tiny town in the California desert. Her win “was a big surprise to everyone, including me,” [...]
New (and newish) tidbits
… from here and there:
• Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti receives one of France’s top cultural honors: Commandeur des Arts et Lettres.
• Michael Wolff expounds in Vanity Fair on Billionaires and Broadsheets.
• AP’s Lynn Elber does a Q&A with Tavis Smiley, the L.A. talk show host with two books on the New York Times bestseller list. [...]
Notebook: Smut, honors, anger, hope and business
Sunday in San Francisco: Dirty Words: Litquake’s Tribute to Smut, “a giddy homage to titillation and obscenity … a fundraiser starring a who’s who of Bay Area writers.” Details.
Congratulations to Heyday Books founder Malcolm Margolin on his San Francisco Foundation’s Community Leadership Award. From the Heyday newsletter: “The Helen Crocker Russell Award recognizes individuals and [...]
SoCal book awards, 2008 edition
The Southern California Independent Booksellers Association has just announced the finalists for this year’s book awards. It’s a strong field and the winners will be crowned Oct. 18 at the 2008 Authors Feast in Los Angeles.
Here’s the complete list:
Fiction:
City of Thieves, by David Benioff (Penguin)
Imagine Me and You, by Billy Mernit (Shaye Arehart Books)
The [...]
California poet Kay Ryan to be Poet Laureate
Marin County poet Kay Ryan will become the 16th Poet Laureate of the of the United States, according to the New York Times.
In a 1999 essay for Dark Horse, Dana Gioia — California poet and now the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts — wrote of Ryan:
Over the past five years no [...]
Living with music and other stray notes
• Pico Iyer shares his playlist with The New York Times.
• Book Passage owner Bill Petrocelli blasts Amazon’s tax holiday in California.
• Former LAT Times Editor John Carroll offers his take on “The Future of Journalism” in a speech at the University of Kentucky.
• Author Patt Morrison reels in more top interviews to [...]
Bravo
Publishers Weekly has named Vroman’s in Pasadena, Southern California’s oldest and biggest bookstore, as Bookseller of the Year. Read more and add your comment at the Vroman’s blog.
In other bookstore news: Cody’s has a new home in downtown Berkeley … The San Francisco State University Bookstore now partners with Eco-Libris and invites customers to plant [...]
Performance art
Roshawnda Bettencourt, a student at Placer County’s Oakmont High, captured first place in California’s Poetry Out Loud state finals. She recited “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar.
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows [...]
Lit epicenter?
The National Book Critics Circle and other book types converge on San Francisco this week to announce the group’s annual award finalists and discuss this topic: Is the West Coast Driving American Literature? Hmmm.
Update: Browse the nominees here. And read a recap from Ghost Word here.
California gold
Novelist Susan Straight and nonfiction author Mike Davis have both received 2007 Lannan Literary Awards, which come with $150,000 prizes. “This will allow me to take time off from teaching to finish my new novel, the second in a trilogy about slavery and its legacy, motherhood and love,” Straight says. The Lannan website says Davis [...]
Book biz
Melony Vance, of Latitude 33 Bookshop in Laguna Beach, recaps the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association’s recent Authors Feast in LA.
The highlight of the evening was the announcement of the SCIBA Book Award winners. And the highpoint of that event was the renaming of the mystery award to The T. Jefferson Parker SCIBA Mystery [...]
SCBA Awards
The latest from LA Observed: “Los Angeles Noir, edited by Denise Hamilton, won the mystery category of the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association awards. Peony in Love by Lisa See and An Alphabetical Life by Wendy Werris were also among the winners announced Saturday night.”
Department of good works
San Francisco novelist Dave Eggers, founder of the 826 Valencia writing center for children and the McSweeney’s publishing house, has received a $250,000 Heinz Award for his work. “These recipients are an inspiration to anyone looking for proof that we as a people still have the capacity to work and invent and create our way [...]
Boyle honored
The board of the Santa Barbara Book and Author Festival has chosen novelist T.C. Boyle for the 2007 Ross Macdonald Award, an honor handed out annually to “a California writer whose life work raises the standards of literary excellence.” Boyle will receive the award and give a reading at this year’s festival, the weekend of [...]
A treasured possession
At this week’s James Beard Foundation awards — the SF Chronicle called them “Academy Awards of the culinary industry” — California author Mollie Katzen’s classic Moosewood Cookbook (Ten Speed Press, 1997) was inducted into the foundation’s Cookbook Hall of Fame. This is a distinction given to cookbooks that the foundation deems to have made “a [...]
Lauded
McSweeney’s won the 2007 National Magazine Award for excellence in Fiction, honoring “the quality of a publication’s literary selections.” Among the other finalists in the category: The New Yorker and Zoetrope All-Story. The awards were presented by the American Society of Magazine Editors this week in NYC. See a list winners and finalists in [...]
The hot list
Granta’s list of twenty-one Best Young American Novelists includes four California authors: Daniel Alarcon (Lost City Radio), Yiyun Li (A Thousand Years of Good Prayers), Maile Meloy (Liars and Saints), and ZZ Packer (Drinking Coffee Elsewhere). From Granta:
A little over a decade ago Granta devoted an issue to new fiction by the twenty writers it [...]
Pulitzer day in California
Kenneth R. Weiss, Usha Lee McFarling and Rick Loomis of the Los Angeles Times win today “for their richly portrayed reports on the world’s distressed oceans” (explanatory reporting); Jonathan Gold of LA Weekly for “his zestful, wide ranging restaurant reviews, expressing the delight of an erudite eater” (criticism).
Surprise!
Children’s author Susan Patron, a collections manager at the Los Angeles Public Library, won this year’s prestigious Newbery Medal. From The Washington Post:
Patron won for “The Higher Power of Lucky,” the story of a motherless 10-year-old in a tiny town in the California desert. Her win “was a big surprise to everyone, including me,” [...]
New (and newish) tidbits
… from here and there:
• Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti receives one of France’s top cultural honors: Commandeur des Arts et Lettres.
• Michael Wolff expounds in Vanity Fair on Billionaires and Broadsheets.
• AP’s Lynn Elber does a Q&A with Tavis Smiley, the L.A. talk show host with two books on the New York Times bestseller list. [...]
Meet the authors of the California Authors Directory. Visit the directory to discover writers like Christina Meldrum, a Bay Area attorney whose book Madapple was just released this month. “In debut novelist Christina Meldrum's mesmerizing literary mystery, 