24th Annual Lambda Literary Award Finalists (carried by SPD)

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[complete list]

Maribor Wins Northern California Book Award!

Congratulations to Angelos Sakkis and our own John Sakkis, winners of the 2011 Northern California Book Award for Poetry in Translation. They were honored for their translation of Greek poet Demosthenes Agrafiotis's Maribor, published by the Post-Apollo Press. To learn more about the title and to buy it, click here.

What do these people have in common with John Beer?

Circumspections from an Equestrian Statue by Jaimy Gordon

Congratulations to 2010 National Book Award Winner for Fiction Jaimy Gordon

Circumspections from an Equestrian Statue Jaimy Gordon $14 | paper | 76 pp. Burning Deck June 1979 ISBN: 9780930900786 LAST COPIES! SORRY, THIS ITEM IS SOLD OUT! Fiction. Early novella by National Book Award winner Jaimy Gordon. Frontispiece and five ornamental initials by Dennis Hlynski. “CIRCUMSPECTIONS FROM AN EQUESTRIAN STATUE in length between a story and a novel, is one of her most delightful works. It has a precise historical setting: General Burnside has returned from the American Civil War (he was the North's worst general, by some margin) to build his house, be elected governor of Rhode Island, and become famous for the cut of his whiskers (‘sideburns’). Having, after four years of marriage, no child, he engages P. Mariam Wishey, ‘pioneer of gynecology,’ to examine his wife. (I would like to think Wishey is historical, but I’ve yet to find a reference to him.) This situation is complicated by the ghost of Burnside’s nephew, who disappeared during the battle of Fredericksburg—the General’s great fiasco—and by the fact that Mrs. Burnside is not (as everyone in the story seems to assume) asexual. It is a tightly constructed and very funny story in limpid prose”—Keith Waldrop.

Cash Prizes for Translators & Authors

In great news for translators of poetry and fiction, today it was announced that Amazon will begin funding the Best Translated Book Award given each year by Three Percent at the University of Rochester.  Both the translators and the authors will receive $5,000.

Publisher's Weekly article can be found here.

In past years, SPD-distributed books have been well-represented on both the long and the short list for the Best Translated Book Award, so with luck one of the many wonderful translators connected to SPD publishers may take home a substantial prize soon!

Keith Waldrop on Radio Open Source

National Book Award winner Keith Waldrop in conversation with Christopher Lydon.

To listen, click here.

O Canada!

NEWSFLASH: Jim Bartley of the Toronto Globe picks Amphibian, by Carla Gunn from Coach House Books, and The Briss, by Michael Tregebov from New Star Books, as among the Top 5 first-fiction books of 2009:

AMPHIBIAN Carla Gunn $17.95 | paper | 220 pp. Coach House Books ISBN: 9781552452141 Fiction. In AMPHIBIAN, we meet nine-year-old Phineas William Walsh who has an encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world. He's obsessed with animals; it's practically all he talks about. He spends all his spare time watching the Green Channel and researching obscure facts on the internet or in books. And he's worried sick about what humans are doing to the planet and its other animals. So when his Grade 4 class gets a pet frog—a White's Tree Frog from Australia—it becomes the perfect focus for all Phin's worrying. Carla Gunn's work has been published in the Globe and Mail, the National Post and heard on CBC radio. Along with writing, she teaches psychology. This is her first novel.

THE BRISS Michael Tregebov $19 | paper | 240 pp. New Star Books ISBN: 9781554200436 Fiction. There is a Jewish proverb that goes: "Grandchildren are your reward from God for not having murdered your children." And so THE BRISS begins, with Sammy, the father of two grown children he would like to choke the life out of. His daughter Marilyn has just ended an affair that should have been kept a secret. In the meantime, his younger son, Teddy, who had left months ago on a ten-day Birthright Israel tour, got himself mixed up with gush shalom Israelis who introduced him to a diaspora Palestinian woman visiting her ailing grandmother in Ramallah. Teddy falls in love with her, and, well, knocks her up. Sammy, who fought in Israel in '48 but moved back home to Winnipeg years ago, a move he has regretted, is forced into an angry struggle with his son that reveals all their unresolved emotional conflicts. A wildly entertaining and poignant novel, THE BRISS explores, on a personal level, family relationships, and on a political level, the continuing debate about Jewish identity and its connection to Israel and Palestine.

Lily Hoang Receives 2009 PEN/Beyond Margins Award for CHANGING

Congratulations to SPD author Lily Hoang, recipient of a 2009 PEN/Beyond Margins Award for her novel CHANGING.






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