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THE PAGES OF THE SEA shortlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize in Fiction!

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We’re thrilled to share that this week, The Pages of the Sea by Anne Hawk was announced as making the fiction category shortlist for the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature! The announcement was made on Sunday, March 16, and can be read in full here.

The judges stated,

“[The Pages of the Sea] brings new energy and form to a familiar Caribbean childhood, that of the pain and desolation of the child left behind when a parent migrates . . . The prose has an immediacy that matches the girl’s intensity, as well as her confusion about what secrets the adults around her appear to be hiding.”

The winners in the three genre categories will be announced on 6 April, and the overall winner will be announced on 3 May at the 2025 Bocas Lit Fest.

The OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature is an annual award for literary books by Caribbean writers, first presented in 2011. Books are judged in three categories: poetry; fiction—both novels and collections of short stories; and literary nonfiction. A panel of three judges for each genre category determine category shortlists and winners, before the three category winners are then judged by a panel of four judges—consisting of the chairs of the category panels and the prize chair—who determine the overall winner. The author of the book judged the overall winner will receive an award of US$10,000. The other category winners will receive US$3,000.

Get your copy of The Pages of the Sea here!

ABOUT THE PAGES OF THE SEA

Shortlisted for the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize in Fiction • A Globe 100 Best Book of 2024 • A Guardian Best Fiction Book of 2024 • A CBC Best Fiction Book of the Year

On a Caribbean island in the mid-1960s, a young girl copes with the heavy cost of migration.

When her mother emigrates to England to find work, Wheeler and her older sisters are left to live with their aunts and cousins. She spends most days with her cousin Donelle, knocking about their island community. They know they must address their elders properly and change their shoes after church. And during the long, quiet weeks of Lent, when the absent sound of the radio seems to follow them down the road, they look forward to kite season. But Donelle is just a child, too, and though her sisters look after her with varying levels of patience, Wheeler couldn’t feel more alone. Everyone tells her that soon her mother will send for her, but how much longer will it be? And as she does her best to navigate the tensions between her aunts, why does it feel like there’s no one looking out for her at all?

Credit: Panagiotis Ziakas

A story of sisterhood, secrets, and the sacrifices of love, The Pages of the Sea is a tenderly lyrical portrait of innocence and an intensely moving evocation of what it’s like to be a child left behind.

ABOUT ANNE HAWK

Anne Hawk grew up in the Caribbean, the UK and Canada. She has worked as a journalist, a paralegal and was for many years a secondary school teacher. She is married and lives in London. The Pages of the Sea is her first novel.

YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize (US/Can)!

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Biblioasis is excited to share that Your Absence Is Darkness by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, translated by Philip Roughton, was longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness US and Canada Prize! The longlist announcement was made on January 15, 2025, and can be viewed here.

Originally restricted to books published in the UK, the Prize’s remit was expanded in 2022 by Lori Feathers, who launched a separate award for the US and Canada. About this year’s longlist, she says:

“In its third year, the Prize continues to grow in the number of submissions received from extraordinary small presses in the United States and Canada. As our longlist demonstrates, the work of independent publishing is vibrant and diverse. We are proud to include books in translation, works of innovative storytelling, and publishers new to our longlist. It’s a great time to celebrate the work of these publishers, authors, and translators.”

A total of $35,000 USD will be distributed to the presses and the authors. Each press with a longlisted book will receive $2,000. Five shortlisted books will be rewarded an additional $3,000 each, split equally between publisher and author, or publisher, author, and translator where applicable.

A virtual party celebrating the longlist, with publishers, authors, and translators, will take place on Wednesday, February 19 at 6pm CT. Members of the public are encouraged to join for free on Zoom. The shortlist of five books will be announced on Thursday, February 27 and the winner announced on Wednesday, March 12.

Grab your copy of Your Absence Is Darkness here!

ABOUT YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS

Longlisted for the 2024 Republic of Consciousness US and Canada Prize • A World Literature Today Notable Translation of 2024 • A Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2024

A man comes to awareness in a cold church in the Icelandic countryside, not knowing who he is, why he’s there or how he arrived, with a stranger staring mockingly from a few pews back. Startled by the man’s cryptic questions, he leaves—and plunges into a history spanning centuries, a past pressed into his genes that sinks him closer to some knowledge of himself. A city girl is drawn to the fjords by the memory of a blue-eyed gaze, and a generation earlier, a farmer’s wife writes an essay about earthworms that changes the course of lives. A pastor who writes letters to dead poets falls in love with a faraway stranger, and a rock musician, plagued by cosmic loneliness, discovers that his past has been a lie. Faced with the violence of fate and the effects of choices, made and avoided, that cascade between them, each discovers the cost of following the magnetic needle of the heart.

Incandescent and elemental, hope-filled and humane, Your Absence Is Darkness is a comedy about mortality, music, and the strange salve of time, and a spellbinding saga of death, desire, and the perfect agony of star-crossed love.

Photo Credit: Einar Falur Ingólfsson

ABOUT JON KALMAN STEFANSSON

Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s novels have been nominated three times for the Nordic Council Prize for Literature, and his novel Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night received the Icelandic Prize for Literature in 2005. In 2011 he was awarded the prestigious P. O. Enquist Award. He is perhaps best known for his trilogy: Heaven and Hell, The Sorrow of Angels (longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize) and The Heart of Man (winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize). A subsequent novel, Fish Have No Feet, was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2017.

ABOUT PHILIP ROUGHTON

Philip Roughton is a scholar of Old Norse and medieval literature and an award-winning translator of Icelandic literature, having translated works by numerous writers including Halldór Laxness. He was the winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize for his translation of Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s The Heart of Man, and shortlisted for the same prize for About the Size of the Universe.

DREAMING HOME wins the 2024 Fred Kerner Book Award!

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We’re excited to share that Dreaming Home by Lucian Childs has won the Canadian Authors’ Association’s 2024 Fred Kerner Book Award! View the official announcement here.

On Dreaming Home, one judge commented,

“From the opening sentence we know we’re in the hands of a master craftsman. This novel opens up through multiple, connected points of view into a landscape that’s deeply problematic: from the damaged father, through the gay son who refuses to accept the deal he’s been dealt, to the sister who propelled them into this abyss. Trauma impacts them all in unexpected and illuminating ways. Challenging and poignant, but ultimately joyful.”

Another judge praised,

“A poignant and sensitively written story of the profound repercussions of a forced outage of a young boy by his sibling and the decades-long fallout that ensues for him, his family members, and his lovers. Told from multiple perspectives, the narrative is compelling and heartbreaking, with a gentle hint of humour.”

The Fred Kerner Book Award is awarded annually to a Canadian Authors Association member who has the best overall book published in the previous calendar year, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

Grab a copy of Dreaming Home here!

ABOUT DREAMING HOME

Winner of the 2024 Fred Kerner Book Award • Shortlisted for the 2024 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize • A Globe and Mail Best Spring Book • One of Lambda Literary Review‘s Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books of June 2023 • A Southern Review Book to Celebrate in June 2023 • A 49th Shelf Best Book of 2023

When a sister’s casual act of betrayal awakens their father’s demons—ones spawned by his time in Vietnamese POW camps—the effects of the ensuing violence against her brother ripple out over the course of forty years, from Lubbock, to San Francisco, to Fort Lauderdale. Swept up in this arc, the members of this family and their loved ones tell their tales. A queer coming-of-age, and coming-to-terms, and a poignant exploration of all the ways we search for home, Dreaming Home is the unforgettable story of the fragmenting of an American family.

Credit: Marc Lostracco

ABOUT LUCIAN CHILDS

Lucian Childs is a fiction writer living in Toronto, Ontario. His debut novel-in-stories, Dreaming Home (Biblioasis 2023), was the winner of the Fred Kerner Book Award and was shortlisted for the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in literary fiction. He was a Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, a recipient of the Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Project Award and a finalist for the Faulkner-Wisdom Short Story Award. He is a contributing editor of Lambda Literary Award finalist, Building Fires in the Snow: A Collection of Alaska LGBTQ Short Fiction and Poetry. His stories and book reviews have appeared in the literary journals Grain, Plenitude, The Ex-Puritan and Prairie Fire, among others. For more about his work, please visit www.lucianchilds.com.

1934 wins the 2024 Speaker’s Book Award!

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We’re thrilled to share that on November 4th, 1934: The Chatham Coloured All-Stars’ Barrier-Breaking Year by Heidi LM Jacobs was named the winner of the 2024 Speaker’s Book Award. 1934 was published in June 2023 by Biblioasis. You can read the official announcement here.

The Honourable Ted Arnott, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, made the announcement at a ceremony at the Legislative Building, Queen’s Park.

Launched in 2012, the Speaker’s Book Award honours non-fiction works by Ontario authors reflecting the diverse culture and rich history of the province and its residents. Winning books are available for sale at the Legislative Gift Shop and featured in the Legislative Library.

Get your copy of 1934 here!

ABOUT 1934: THE CHATHAM COLOURED ALL-STARS’ BARRIER-BREAKING YEAR

Winner of the 2024 Speaker’s Book Award

The true story of the first Black team to win an Ontario Baseball Amateur Association championship.

The pride of Chatham’s East End, the Coloured All-Stars broke the colour barrier in baseball more than a decade before Jackie Robinson did the same in the Major Leagues. Fielding a team of the best Black baseball players from across southwestern Ontario and Michigan, theirs is a story that could only have happened in this particular time and place: during the depths of the Great Depression, in a small industrial town a short distance from the American border, home to one of the most vibrant Black communities in Canada.

Drawing heavily on scrapbooks, newspaper accounts, and oral histories from members of the team and their families, 1934: The Chatham Coloured All-Stars’ Barrier-Breaking Year shines a light on a largely overlooked chapter of Black baseball. But more than this, 1934 is the story of one group of men who fought for the respect that was too often denied them.

Rich in detail, full of the sounds and textures of a time long past, 1934 introduces the All-Stars’ unforgettable players and captures their winning season, so that it almost feels like you’re sitting there in Stirling Park’s grandstands, cheering on the team from Chatham.

Credit: Lively Creative Co.

ABOUT HEIDI LM JACOBS

Heidi LM Jacobs’ previous books include the novel Molly of the Mall: Literary Lass and Purveyor of Fine Footwear (NeWest Press, 2019), which won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour in 2020, and 100 Miles of Baseball: Fifty Games, One Summer (with Dale Jacobs, Biblioasis, 2021). She is a librarian at the University of Windsor and one of the researchers behind the award-winning Breaking the Colour Barrier: Wilfred “Boomer” Harding & the Chatham Coloured All-Stars project.

THE HOLLOW BEAST a finalist for the 2024 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S AWARD IN TRANSLATION!

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We are thrilled to share that this morning, The Hollow Beast by Christophe Bernard, translated by Lazer Lederhendler, was listed as a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation! You can check out the official finalists announcement here.

The winning books will be announced on November 13, 2024. 

Montreal-based Lazer Lederhendler is no stranger to this honour, having previously won the Governor General’s Award for French to English translation three times, including for two other Biblioasis books, The Party Wall by Catherine Leroux and If You Hear Me by Pascale Quiviger. The Hollow Beast marks his eleventh nomination overall.

Lazer commented on his nomination:

“It’s always gratifying to know that one’s work as a translator is appreciated by readers, particularly when those readers make up the peer assessment committee for this year’s GG translation award. I feel especially honoured to be part of such a remarkable group of finalists.”

“We’re very pleased that Lazer was recognized for his work translating this beast of a novel,” Biblioasis publisher Dan Wells said. “More than 150,000 words, complete with rural dialects, regional word-play, and as crazy a plot as has appeared in the past calendar year, Lazer’s work translating The Hollow Beast confirms as much as his three previous GG Awards for translation (and eight additional nominations!) that he has long been one of the pre-eminent translators in the country. This was heroic work, and I’m glad his jury of fellow translators gave Lazer an additional nod.”

The Canada Council for the Arts funds, administers and actively promotes the Governor General’s Literary Awards (GGBooks) which celebrate literature and inspire people to read books by creators from Canada. The award provides finalists and winners with valuable recognition from peers and readers across the country. The monetary award for finalists is $1,000, and $25,000 for each winning book.

Congratulations to Lazer and The Hollow Beast from all of us at Biblioasis!

Grab a copy of The Hollow Beast here!

ABOUT THE HOLLOW BEAST

Don Quixote meets Who Framed Roger Rabbit in this slapstick epic about destiny, family demons, and revenge.

Credit: Monique Dykstra

1911. A hockey game in Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula. With the score tied two-two in overtime, local tough guy Billy Joe Pictou fires the puck directly into Monti Bouge’s mouth. When Pictou’s momentum carries them both across the goal line in a spray of shattered teeth, Victor Bradley, erstwhile referee and local mailman, rules that the goal counts—and Monti’s ensuing revenge for this injustice sprawls across three generations, one hundred years, and dozens of dastardly deeds. Fuelled by a bottomless supply of Yukon, the high-proof hooch that may or may not cause the hallucinatory sightings of a technicolor beast that haunts not just Monti but his descendants, it’s up to Monti’s grandson François—and his floundering doctoral dissertation—to make sense of the vendetta that’s shaped the destiny of their town and everyone in it. Brilliantly translated into slapstick English by Lazer Lederhendler, The Hollow Beast introduces Christophe Bernard as a master of epic comedy.

ABOUT LAZER LEDERHENDLER

Lazer Lederhendler is a full-time literary translator specializing in Québécois fiction and non-fiction. His translations have earned awards and distinctions in Canada, the UK, and the US. He has translated the works of noted authors, including Gaétan Soucy, Nicolas Dickner, Edem Awumey, Perrine Leblanc, and Catherine Leroux. He lives in Montreal with the visual artist Pierrette Bouchard.

THE WORLD AT MY BACK longlisted for the National Translation Award in Prose!

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We’re thrilled to share the news that The World at My Back by Thomas Melle, translated from the German by Luise von Flotow, has been longlisted for the 2024 National Translation Award in Prose! The longlist was announced on September 5, and you can view the full announcement here.

The judges citation reads,

“With The World at My Back, author Thomas Melle takes us into the harrowing world of bipolar disorder, chronicling the effect it has had on him and his relationships. Yet he does this with such remarkable aplomb that the reader now laughs, now cries at his predicament. As an author, playwright, and translator, Melle is very much embedded in the cultural life of a German writer, and it is against that backdrop that the episodes swing from manic to depressive to clinical—all cleverly captured in Luise von Flotow’s remarkably nimble translation.”

The NTAs are awarded annually in poetry and in prose to literary translators who have made an outstanding contribution to literature in English by masterfully recreating the artistic force of a book of consummate quality. Established in 2018, the NTA, which is administered by American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), is the only national award for translated fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction that includes a rigorous examination of both the source text and its relation to the finished English work.

The shortlists for the National Translation Awards will be announced on October 10th, and the winners will be announced on October 26th at an Awards Ceremony as part of ALTA’s annual conference, ALTA47: Voices in Translation, in Milwaukee, WI. The winning translators will receive a $4,000 cash prize each.

Grab your copy of The World at My Back here!

ABOUT THE WORLD AT MY BACK

Longlisted for the 2024 National Translation Award in Prose • A Finalist for the German Book Prize • Translated into Eighteen Languages

Addicted to culture, author Thomas Melle has built up an impressive personal library. His heart is in these books, and he loves to feel them at his back, their promise and challenge, as he writes. But in the middle of a violent dissociative episode, when they become ballast to his increasingly manic self, he disperses almost overnight what had taken decades to gather. Nor is this all he loses: descending further into an incomprehensible madness, he loses friendships and his career as a novelist and celebrated playwright, but the most savage cruelty is that he no longer either knows or understands himself.

Vulnerable and claustrophobic, shattering and profoundly moving, Thomas Melle’s The World at My Back is a book dedicated to the impossibility of reclaiming what has been lost, its lines both a prayer and reminder that, on the other side of madness, other possibilities await.

ABOUT THOMAS MELLE

Born in Bonn, Germany, Thomas Melle studied at the University of Tübingen, the University of Texas at Austin, and the Free University of Berlin. His novels Sickster and 3000 Euros were finalists for German Book Prize in 2011 and 2014 respectively. Melle is also a prolific playwright and translator. His translations from English to German have ranged from plays by William Shakespeare to novels by William T. Vollmann. The World at My Back, also a finalist for the German Book Prize, was a bestseller in Germany. It was made into a highly successful stage play, and has been translated into eighteen languages. Thomas Melle lives in Berlin.

ABOUT LUISE VON FLOTOW

Luise von Flotow teaches translation studies at the University of Ottawa School of Translation and Interpretation. Her recent translations include, from German, They Divided the Sky by Christa Wolf, and Everyone Talks About the Weather…We Don’t by Ulrike Meinhof; and, from French, The Four Roads Hotel by France Théoret. She has twice been a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Literary Translation.

A WAY TO BE HAPPY longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize!

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Biblioasis is thrilled to share that Caroline Adderson‘s A Way to Be Happy (Sep 10, 2024) has been longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize! The longlist was announced this morning, on September 4 at 11:30 AM, and you can view the full list here.

In a statement, Biblioasis publisher Dan Wells writes,

“All of us at Biblioasis couldn’t be happier for Caroline. I’ve been a fan of Caroline’s work, and her short fiction in particular, since first coming across her initial collection, Bad Imaginings, in a used bookstore when I was in university: I found the stories in that collection—which we eventually reissued at the press—smart, elegant, sharp-eyed, and generously funny. The same is true of the stories in this, her third collection, A Way to Be Happy, which is as wide-ranging and deeply imagined as a collection can be, and should serve to cement Caroline’s reputation as among the leading writers in the country.”

The Giller Prize is awarded annually to a Canadian novel or short story collection published that year. The winner receives $100,000 and the shortlisted authors each receive $10,000. The shortlist will be announced on Wednesday, October 9, and the winner will be announced Monday, November 18. This year’s 2024 Giller jury was comprised of authors Kevin Chong and Noah Richler, and singer-songwriter Molly Johnson. Previous winners of the prize include Sarah Bernstein, Suzette Mayr, Esi Edugyan, André Alexis, Michael Ondaatje, and Souvankham Thammavongsa.

Get your copy of A Way to Be Happy here!

ABOUT A WAY TO BE HAPPY

Longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize

Short stories about disparate characters consider what it means to find happiness.

Credit: Jessica Whitman

Credit: Jessica Whitman

On New Year’s Eve, a pair of addicts robs a string of high-end parties in order to fund their own recovery. A recently separated woman relocates to a small northern town, where she receives a life-changing visitation, and a Russian hitman, suffering from a mysterious lung ailment, retrieves long-buried memories of his past. In the nineteenth century, a disparate group of women coalesce in the attempt to aid a young girl in her escape from a hospital for the insane. These are but some of the remarkable characters who populate these stories, all of them grappling with conflicts ranging from mundane to extraordinary. Caroline Adderson’s A Way to Be Happy considers what it means to find happiness—and how often it comes through the grace of others.

ABOUT CAROLINE ADDERSON

Caroline Adderson is the author of five novels (A Russian Sister, Ellen in Pieces, The Sky Is Falling, Sitting Practice, and A History of Forgetting), two previous collections of short stories (Pleased to Meet You and Bad Imaginings), as well as many books for young readers. Her award nominations include the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, two Commonwealth Writers’ Prizes, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. The recipient of three BC Book Prizes, three CBC Literary Awards, and the Marian Engel Award for mid-career achievement, Caroline lives and writes in Vancouver.

 

Media Hits & Awards: ON CLASS, MAY OUR JOY ENDURE, THE NOTEBOOK, and more!

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IN THE NEWS!

MAY OUR JOY ENDURE

May Our Joy Endure by Kevin Lambert, translated by Donald Winkler (Sep 3, 2024), appeared on Lit Hub‘s list of “27 new books out today.” The list was published on September 3, and you can check it out here.

The list features Heather O’Neill’s blurb:

“Baroque and philosophical, May Our Joy Endure captures the sensibilities and excesses of the elite. A novel about the housing crisis told from the perspective of those causing it . . . Lambert’s writing is lyrical and rapturous. In this book, he proves himself a satirical and whimsical Robespierre, hailing from small town Quebec.”

May Our Joy Endure also featured on All Lit Up‘s list of “Book Recommendations to follow The Rage Letters.” The article was posted on August 28, and you can read it here.

Grab May Our Joy Endure here!

THE NOTEBOOK

The Notebook by Roland Allen (Sep 3, 2024) was excerpted in The Walrus. The excerpt, titled “Moleskine Mania: How a Notebook Conquered the Digital Era,” was published online on August 30, and you can read it in full here.

Roland Allen contributed a feature to the Globe and Mail, which published online on August 30. You can check out the article, “In a world of screens, the humble notebook remains the best way to learn,” here.

The Notebook was also reviewed in Angelus News on August 30. You can read the full review here.

Reviewer Heather King writes,

“[The Notebook] celebrates the age-old practice of writing things down—numbers, images, thoughts, dreams—and charts the evolution of this handy, humble little item that many of us consider indispensable.”

Grab The Notebook here!

THE FUTURE

The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou (Sep 5, 2023) was featured on CBC Books’ list, “These 14 writers recently won some of Canada’s biggest literary awards.” The list, which highlighted The Future‘s 2024 Canada Reads win and Carol Shields Prize longlisting, was posted on August 30, and you can read it here.

Grab The Future here!

THE PAGES OF THE SEA

The Pages of the Sea by Anne Hawk (Sep 17, 2024) appeared on Toronto.com’s list of “25 books worthy of a place at the top of your to-read pile.” The list was posted on September 1, and you can read it in full here.

Grab The Pages of the Sea here!

CROSSES IN THE SKY

Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia by Mark Bourrie (May 21, 2024) was featured on 49th Shelf‘s list of recommendations, “Grappling With History.” The article was posted on August 26, and you can check it out here.

Marianne K. Miller writes,

“Mark Bourrie tackles the mythology around the Jesuit missionary priest, Jean de Brebeuf. It is a different story than the one you thought you knew.”

Get Crosses in the Sky here!

HELLO, HORSE

Hello, Horse by Richard Kelly Kemick (Aug 6, 2024) was reviewed in Everything Zoomer! The review was posted online on August 15, and you can read it here.

Everything Zoomer writes,

“The year 2024 has Richard Kelly Kemick, whose wild imagination and fresh insights cast a spell in Hello, Horse; every entrancing story casts off in a different direction, with a genuine ‘wait? what?!’ moment you did not see coming . . . Kemick, a poet and playwright and National Magazine Award gold medal-winner, is one to watch.”

Grab Hello, Horse here!

AWARDS NEWS!

ON CLASS

We’re thrilled to share that On Class by Deborah Dundas is a nominee for the 2024 Heritage Toronto Book Award. The nominees were announced on September 3, 2024, and you can check out the full list here.

The Heritage Toronto Book Award highlights the breadth and depth of Toronto’s heritage, covering topics from music history, to public infrastructure, to immigration and multiculturalism. The award ceremony will take place on Monday, October 28, 2024 at The Carlu (444 Yonge Street).

Grab a copy of On Class here!

DREAMING HOME shortlisted for the 2024 Fred Kerner Book Award!

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We’re excited to share that Dreaming Home by Lucian Childs has been shortlisted for the Canadian Authors’ Association’s 2024 Fred Kerner Book Award! The shortlist was announced on July 21, and you can check out the full list here.

On Dreaming Home, one judge commented,

“From the opening sentence we know we’re in the hands of a master craftsman. This novel opens up through multiple, connected points of view into a landscape that’s deeply problematic: from the damaged father, through the gay son who refuses to accept the deal he’s been dealt, to the sister who propelled them into this abyss. Trauma impacts them all in unexpected and illuminating ways. Challenging and poignant, but ultimately joyful.”

Another judge praised,

“A poignant and sensitively written story of the profound repercussions of a forced outage of a young boy by his sibling and the decades-long fallout that ensues for him, his family members, and his lovers. Told from multiple perspectives, the narrative is compelling and heartbreaking, with a gentle hint of humour.”

The Fred Kerner Book Award is awarded annually to a Canadian Authors member who has the best overall book published in the previous calendar year, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

The winner will be announced at a virtual Fred Kerner Book Award readings event in early September, with the event date to be announced in August.

Get a copy of Dreaming Home here!

ABOUT DREAMING HOME

Shortlisted for the 2024 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize • Shortlisted for the 2024 Fred Kerner Book Award • A Globe and Mail Best Spring Book • One of Lambda Literary Review‘s Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books of June 2023 • A Southern Review Book to Celebrate in June 2023 • A 49th Shelf Best Book of 2023

When a sister’s casual act of betrayal awakens their father’s demons—ones spawned by his time in Vietnamese POW camps—the effects of the ensuing violence against her brother ripple out over the course of forty years, from Lubbock, to San Francisco, to Fort Lauderdale. Swept up in this arc, the members of this family and their loved ones tell their tales. A queer coming-of-age, and coming-to-terms, and a poignant exploration of all the ways we search for home, Dreaming Home is the unforgettable story of the fragmenting of an American family.

Credit: Marc Lostracco

ABOUT LUCIAN CHILDS

Lucian Childs is a fiction writer whose debut, Dreaming Home (Biblioasis 2023), was shortlisted for the 2024 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in literary fiction. He was a Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and a finalist for the Faulkner-Wisdom Short Story Award. He is a contributing editor of the Lambda Literary finalist, Building Fires in the Snow: a collection of Alaska LGBTQ short fiction and poetry. His stories and reviews have appeared in the journals Grain, The Puritan, Plenitude, and Prairie Fire, among others. Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, he currently resides in Toronto, Ontario.

Media Hits: A WAY TO BE HAPPY, THE EDUCATION OF AUBREY MCKEE, THE NOTEBOOK, and more!

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IN THE NEWS!

A WAY TO BE HAPPY

A Way to Be Happy by Caroline Adderson (Sep 10, 2024) has received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews! The starred review will appear in their August print issue, and was published online on July 4. Check it out here.

Kirkus writes,

“Adderson . . . is a deft, masterful storyteller whose literary fiction surely deserves more attention.”

Order A Way to Be Happy here!

HELLO, HORSE

Hello, Horse by Richard Kelly Kemick (Aug 6, 2024) was listed in Reactor‘s “Can’t Miss Indie Press Speculative Fiction for July and August 2024.” The article was posted on July 3, and you can read it here.

Tobias Carroll writes,

“These stories include a number of strange visions of the not-so-distant future—and throw some ghosts into the mix as well. “

Get Hello, Horse here!

THE NOTEBOOK

Roland Allen, author of The Notebook (Sep 3, 2024), was interviewed on Ryan Holiday’s podcast The Daily Stoic. The episode aired on June 26, and is available to listen to here.

Order The Notebook here!

THE HOLLOW BEAST

The Hollow Beast by Christophe Bernard, translated by Lazer Lederhendler (Apr 2, 2024), was reviewed in the Manhattan Book Review. The review was published online for their June issue, and is available to read here.

Reviewer Eric Smith writes,

“Bernard’s hilarious tome is a hundred-proof fever dream of bizarre scenarios and Canada’s most outlandish cast of characters . . . But readers beware. Your technicolor nightmares will be fueled by The Hollow Beast.”

Grab The Hollow Beast here!

AWARD NEWS!

THE EDUCATION OF AUBREY MCKEE

The Education of Aubrey McKee by Alex Pugsley (May 7, 2024) has been longlisted for the 2024 Toronto Book Awards! The longlist was announced on July 4, and you can read it here.

Toronto Public Library has created a special reading list of the 2024 longlisted titles, here. The shortlist for the 2024 Toronto Book Awards will be announced later this summer and a winner will be named in a prize ceremony November 7.

Grab The Education of Aubrey McKee here!

Or, check out the first book, Aubrey McKee, here.

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