#women's prize for fiction 2023

[alexsfictionaddiction]

The Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023 Winner is Announced!

It’s here -the winner of this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction was announced last night and to be quite honest, I am delighted with the result! It was a very strong shortlist and I’m not sure how the judges decided between the vast majority of them but it is now over.

The winner is...

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver!

I read this incredibly enchanting, immersive, special feat of literature in October without really knowing how I’d get along with it. I haven’t read David Copperfield and know very little about that story, so I didn’t know whether I’d really get everything that Kingsolver was trying to tell me in this novel. It’s also a pretty hefty book, so I won’t pretend that I wasn’t slightly intimidated by because of that too. I had multiple reasons to leave it on my TBR but on a cold autumnal night, something told me to just take the plunge and pick it up.

I can honestly say that I will never forget Demon as a character. His story is relentlessly bleak but his relationships with his friends bring a wealth of light into his life and the pages of the book. The setting of Lee County, Virginia and the horrors of the opoid crisis that ripple far beyond the addicts themselves are so vivid and I was completely captivated by Kingsolver’s wonderful prose and expert storytelling ability. 

I’m pretty sure I said in each of my Women’s Prize posts this year that it was a clear winner for me and I’m so happy that the judges could see it for the amazing book that it is. It did win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year too and I know there was some talk amongst Women’s Prize followers that its Pulitzer win could dampen its chances of winning the Women’s Prize too. Again, I’m overjoyed that it obviously didn’t come into the decision making!

Demon Copperhead’s win also makes Barbara Kingsolver the first ever woman to win the prize twice, having first won in 2010 with The Lacuna. I am yet to read any of her other books but I will be doing some research into them to try and find any that interest me. I ladored her writing in Demon, so I have no doubt that she’ll have some others that I love just as much.

If you haven’t picked up the very worthy winner of the Women’s Prize 2023, you simply have to because I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy it. I know its size might look scary and the fact that it’s won more than one literary prize might even amplify its intimidation levels for some but it really is a beautiful, insightful, thought-provoking novel. You should know by now that I am not a big ‘high brow literature’ reader, so the fact that I loved it should tell you that it is very accessible for popular fiction readers who love character-driven, epic life stories.

I have to say that I am really sad that the Women’s Prize season is now over. It’s a time of year that my nerdy, bookish heart looks forward to all year and having pretty much completed the longlist for the first time this year (I’m about to complete the last one -yay!), I’m already getting pumped to do it all again! 

Next year, there will be a non-fiction Women’s Prize running alongside the fiction one. Promoting women’s non-fiction is an amazing thing for them to be doing but I think I would have preferred them to run it at a different time of year. Having both of them at the same time could mean that one overshadows the other and that one of them (probably the new non-fiction one because fiction tends to have a wider readership anyway) will get lost. We don’t know the number of books that will be longlisted for the non-fiction prize yet but if it’s 16 like its fiction sister, that’s 32 books to read in around a three month period?! I will be waiting to see the longlist of both prizes before deciding exactly what I’m going to be reading from each or whether I just concentrate on one next year. I’d like to read at least some of the non-fiction list but I may end up being highly selective with it -we’ll see!

What do you think of the Women’s Prize winner this year? Have you read the fantastic Demon Copperhead? What are your thoughts on next year’s new Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction? Are you excited for it? Let me know!

Until next time, happy reading!

-Love, Alex x

[brian-in-finance]

Twitter 📚 Event Info 🎟️ Tickets

Trespasses

Set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a shattering novel about a young woman caught between allegiance to community and a dangerous passion.

Amid daily reports of violence, Cushla lives a quiet life with her mother in a small town near Belfast. By day she teaches at a parochial school; at night she fills in at her family's pub. There she meets Michael Agnew, a barrister who's made a name for himself defending IRA members. Against her better judgment - Michael is not only Protestant but older, and married - Cushla lets herself get drawn in by him and his sophisticated world, and an affair ignites. Then the father of a student is savagely beaten, setting in motion a chain reaction that will threaten everything, and everyone, Cushla most wants to protect.

As tender as it is unflinching, Trespasses is a heart-pounding, heart-rending drama of thwarted love and irreconcilable loyalties, in a place what you come from seems to count more than what you do, or whom you cherish.

Goodreads

Remember when we learned we may hear an accent much like Ma’s on 24 May when Caitríona reads from Trespasses? ☘️

[lilianeruyters]

Tara M. Stringfellow || Memphis

Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023 Longlist Memphis is the story of the women in the North family, told by Joan. Her story is the main one; the perspective of some of the other women gets mixed with hers in separate chapters however, which results in a broader perspective of the family history. Interlaced with many important moments in Black American history. The story starts when Joan, her mother…

[queerographies]

[Detransition, baby][Peters Torrey]

Con "Detransition, baby" Torrey Peters indaga i tabù più pericolosi del genere, del sesso e delle relazioni, regalandoci un romanzo originale, spiritoso e profondamente commovente.

Reese ha tutto, o quasi: l’amore di Amy, un appartamento a New York, un lavoro che non le fa troppo schifo. Insomma, la quotidianità borghese che le donne trans delle generazioni precedenti alla sua potevano solo sognare. Le manca solo un figlio. Ma quando Amy decide di tornare a essere Ames, sperando che la vita da uomo sia più facile, Reese si ritrova a sfuggire la solitudine nell’unico modo…

[funkopersonal]

Here's your daily reminder that...

Jews are only 0.2% of the worlds population but...

Jews make up 14% of the World Total and 38% of the United States of America total winners for the Nobel Prize for Literature (source).

Of the 965 individual recipients of the Nobel Prize and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences between 1901 and 2023, at least 214 have been Jews or people with at least one Jewish parent, representing 22% of all recipients. (source)

Jews make up 14% of the total winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 18% of the total winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; 53% of the total winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction (source).

Jews make up 39% of the total winners of the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award for Best Play; 54% of the total winners of the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical (with 62% of all Composers and 66% of all Lyricists of Best Musical-winning productions being Jewish) (source).

Jews make up 40% of the total winners of the Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Original Screenplay; and 34% of the total winners of the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (source).

Although Jews constitute only 3% of the U.S. population...

80% of the nation’s professional comedians are Jewish (source).

90% of American comic book creators are jewish (source)

38% of the recipients of the United States National Medal of Science are Jewish (Source).

Jews are very successful, with educational levels higher than all other U.S. ethnic groups with the exception of Asian Americans, and income levels the highest of all groups. Six out of ten Jewish adults have college degrees, and 41% of Jewish families report a household income of $75,000 or more” (source)

Jews are a minority across the globe. We've been historically opressed and hated. But these key figures from history are all Jewish and loved, yet many don't even know they're jewish (or they don't know these people in the first place!):

Stan Lee (birth name: Stanley Martin Lieber) - An American comic book writer and editor, Former executive vice president and publisher of marvel Comics, creator of iron-man, spider-man, and more.

Albert Einstein - a Theoretical physicist, Received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, developed the theory of relativity and the "worlds most famous equation"  (E = mc^2), and more.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, co-authored the initial law school casebook on sex discrimination, co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU in 1972, and more.

Jack Kirby (birth name: Jacob Kurtzberg) - an American comic book artist, co-creator of Captain America, one of the most influential comic book artists

Harry Houdini (birth name: Erich Weisz) - a Hungarian-American escape artist, illusionist, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts.

Emma Lazarus - An American author remembered for her sonnet "The New Colossus," Inspired by The Statue of Liberty and inscribed on its pedestal as of 1903.

Julius Rosenthal, Lillian Wald, Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, Stephen Wise, and Henry Moskowitz - Jewish activists that helped form the NAACP along with W.E.B. Dubois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell.

Mark Zuckerberg - Founder and CEO of Meta, a businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook, and within four years became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire Harvard alumni.

Joseph Pulitzer - a politician and newspaper publisher, his endowment to the Columbia University established the Pulitzer Prizes in 1917, he founded the Columbia School of Journalism which opened in 1912.

Jacob William Davis - a Latvian tailor who is credited with inventing modern jeans and who worked with Levi Strauss to patent and mass-produce them, died.

Irving Berlin - drafted at age 30 to write morale-boosting songs for military revues (including “God Bless America”). Many Berlin songs remained popular for decades, including “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” “Cheek to Cheek,” “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better),” “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” and two celebrating Christian holidays: “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade.”

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel - received his doctorate in Berlin. He was arrested by the Nazis in 1938, moved to the U.S. in 1940, and became an influential figure in the 1960s, marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama, and speaking out against the Vietnam War.

Elie Wiesel - Romanian-American writer and professor, holocaust survivor, nobel laureate, political activist. Authored 57 books including Night, a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps

Bob Dylan - an icon of folk, rock and protest music, won the Nobel Prize in literature for his complex and poetic lyrics.

J. Robert Oppenheimer - ran the Manhattan Project, considered the "father of the atomic Bomb," presented with the Enrico Fermi Award by President Lyndon Johnson.

Betty Friedan - co-founded the National Organization of Women and became its first president, wrote The Feminine Mystique (1963) and helped spark the second wave of feminism.

Gloria Steinem - one of the most prominent feminists of all time, launched Ms. Magazine and co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus with Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan and Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of Medgar Evers.

Sergey Brin - an American businessman best known for co-founding Google with Larry Page, president of Alphabet Inc.

Judith Heumann - a founder of the disability rights movement, led a 26-day sit-in at a federal building in San Francisco. The protest spurred implementation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, a precursor to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Larry Kramer - co-founded Gay Men’s Health Crisis in response to the AIDS epidemic but was soon ousted over his confrontational activism. He went on to help launch a more strident group, ACT UP, and wrote a critically acclaimed play, The Normal Heart, about the early AIDS years in New York City.

Steven Spielberg - released his critically acclaimed epic film Schindler’s List, based on the true story of a German industrialist who saved Jews during the Holocaust. The movie won seven Oscars and led Spielberg to launch the Shoah Foundation at the University of Southern California, which filmed interviews with 52,000 survivors of the Holocaust and genocides in Nanjing and Rwanda.

Calvin Klein - made designer jeans and the infamous ad starring Brooke Shields revolutionized the fashion industry, sold his company to Phillips-Van Heusen (now PVH) for $430 million. Klein was the first designer to win three consecutive Coty Awards for womenswear.

Daveed Diggs - an American actor, rapper, and singer-songwriter. he originated the dual roles of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in the musical Hamilton, for which he won a 2016 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical. Along with the main cast of Hamilton, he was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album in the same year.

And so much more. (a pretty decent list is available here)

Not only that, but the following are all Jewish inventions...

The Teddy Bear - made by Morris and Rose Michtom in honor of Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt.

The Ballpoint Pen - *the first commercially sucessfull ballpoint pen was made by Lazlo Biro, a Hungarian-Jew, and his brother.

Mobile Phones - made by Martin Cooper, nicknamed the "father of the cellphone", and was born in Chicago to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants.

The Barbie - made by Ruth Marianna Handler, born to Polish-Jewish immigrants.

Power Rangers - made by Haim Saban, a Jewish-Egyptian

Video Games - made by Ralph Baer, a German-Jew

Peeps - made by Sam Born, a Russian-Jewish immigrants who came to the United States in 1909.

Cards Against Humanity - created by a group of Jewish boys from the same high school

Many Superheroes including Superman, Ironman, spider-man, batman, and more!

and more! (an illustrated list available here.)

Conclusion: If you're Jewish, be proud. You come from a long line of successful people. No matter what happened to them, Jews persevered, and they strived for sucess. Be proud of your culture, your history, these are your people. You're Jewish.

(feel free to reblog and add more, or just comment and i'll add it!)

Last Updated: June 25, 1:35 AM EST

[sebscore]

THE GRID'S DELIGHT | SERIES MASTERLIST

summary: the shenanigans of female gen z driver and the formula one grid.

author’s note: I started this series, because I'd like to imagine what it would be like to be part of the group of drivers and how it would be like to interact with them on a regular basis. It's all fun and games, and I don't know these people in real life. everything is fiction! the stories aren't written in chronological order, but I try to put them in the right order below! 

Requests are always welcome in my inbox! Opinions, thoughts and feedback are also greatly appreciated.

— ABOUT THE OC

HEADCANONS || MORE HEADCANONS

:: Things about being the only female driver on the ‘22 grid.

DRIVER X TGD HEADCANONS

:: The dynamics between driver!reader and the formula 1 drivers. in the link you can find the masterlist.

EXTRAS

:: this includes thoughts, opinions, etc about the series. it doesn’t include requests.

— 2018

WELCOME TO THE STRANGE WORLD 

:: Y/N makes her F1 debut at the 2018 Australian Grand Prix. 

THE PRIZE THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

:: Y/N accepts the 'Rookie of the Year' award and receives a suprise from a special someone on stage.

— 2020 

TWITCH WAR

:: lando insults Y/N’s gaming skills and the events that followed.

PLEASE RISE FOR THE NATIONAL ANTHEM

:: An error in the sound system causes for the wrong song to play instead of Y/N’s national anthem.

— 2021 

THE MORE YOU KNOW

:: Y/N teaches Sebastian and Fernando what ‘bop’ means.

NO ONE LIKES A MAD WOMAN

:: Y/N receives a complaint from the FIA during the driver's briefing and no one is happy about it.

BREAK UP WITH YOUR BOYFRIEND, I'M BORED 

:: Y/N flirts with a stranger not knowing she's the girlfriend of another F1 driver on the grid. 

THIS IS ALL I NEVER WANTED

:: Y/N goes through a rough patch and the drivers notice.

LET IT SPIRAL

:: Y/N gets into a crash and Seb & George come to the rescue.

SLOW DOWN, RED FLAG

:: The commentators are shocked by Y/N’s red flag habit.

BE YOUR WINGMAN

:: Y/N tries to get through an interview with Jenson, Daniel and Sebastian. 

GIDDY GOODBYES

:: Y/N and Kimi bid each other goodbye at the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

— 2022

A MAN’S WORLD

:: Y/N is asked about Christian Horner’s sexist comments.

THE ORIGIN OF RUSSY BUSSY

:: the title is pretty self-explanatory.

WHAT HAPPENS IN MONACO, STAYS IN MONACO

:: Y/N goes on a blind date and returns with a hickey the next day.

THE HELMET BET

:: Y/N and Zhou decide who the second best dressed driver on the grid is through a bet that involves holding the other drivers hostage at the driver's briefing.

GOSSIP GRID

:: Charles and Pierre don't trust Y/N when it comes to rumors around Oscar Piastri's move to McLaren.

RUMOUR HAS IT

:: Y/N and her fellow younger drivers react to certain rumours that have been going around about her love life, and it might include two colleagues of hers.

MONZA MANICURE

:: Daniel makes it up to Y/N for breaking her nail during a race.

LITTLE MISS BLACK DRESS

:: f1 drivers and their reactions to Y/N looking gorgeous in a dress.

KEEPING UP WITH THE GRID

:: What happens when Y/N takes over Martin's grid walk? 

THE LAST SUPPER

:: The drivers celebrate the life and career of Sebastian Vettel at Abu Dhabi and Y/N has a great story to tell.

— 2023 

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 

:: Daniel, Lewis and Sebastian show their appreciation for Y/N on International Women's Day. 

GLASS HALF FULL KINDA GAL

:: Y/N goes on Instagram live to try out Daniel’s new wine, and the drivers react to it in the comments.

MONTE-CARLO MADNESS

:: Y/N meets her old mentor after months and experiences a chaotic qualifying in Monaco.

PUT IT INTO SPEED DRIVE

:: Y/N and the Twitch Quartet go on a small adventure in the streets of Monaco.

SNITCHES GET STITCHES

:: A collection of moments at the 2023 Austria Grand Prix.

LATE NIGHT TALKING

:: Pierre asks the question: “Out of all the drivers, who would you date?”

— 2024

EXCUSE ME

:: Y/N finds out about Lewis’ Ferrari move before the official announcement.

ARE WE STILL FRIENDS

:: Lando ends Y/N’s race, and they have different perspectives on how it transpired.

[macrolit]

NYT's Notable Books of 2023

Each year, we pore over thousands of new books, seeking out the best novels, memoirs, biographies, poetry collections, stories and more. Here are the standouts, selected by the staff of The New York Times Book Review.

AFTER SAPPHO by Selby Wynn Schwartz

Inspired by Sappho’s work, Schwartz’s debut novel offers an alternate history of creativity at the turn of the 20th century, one that centers queer women artists, writers and intellectuals who refused to accept society’s boundaries.

ALL THE SINNERS BLEED by S.A. Cosby

In his earlier thrillers, Cosby worked the outlaw side of the crime genre. In his new one — about a Black sheriff in a rural Southern town, searching for a serial killer who tortures Black children — he’s written a crackling good police procedural.

THE BEE STING by Paul Murray

In Murray’s boisterous tragicomic novel, a once wealthy Irish family struggles with both the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash and their own inner demons.

BIOGRAPHY OF X by Catherine Lacey

Lacey rewrites 20th-century U.S. history through the audacious fictional life story of X, a polarizing female performance artist who made her way from the South to New York City’s downtown art scene.

BIRNAM WOOD by Eleanor Catton

In this action-packed novel from a Booker Prize winner, a collective of activist gardeners crosses paths with a billionaire doomsday prepper on land they each want for different purposes.

BLACKOUTS by Justin Torres

This lyrical, genre-defying novel — winner of the 2023 National Book Award — explores what it means to be erased and how to persist after being wiped away.

BRIGHT YOUNG WOMEN by Jessica Knoll

In her third and most assured novel, Knoll shifts readers’ attention away from a notorious serial killer, Ted Bundy, and onto the lives — and deaths — of the women he killed. Perhaps for the first time in fiction, Knoll pooh-poohs Bundy's much ballyhooed intelligence, celebrating the promise and perspicacity of his victims instead.

CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

This satire — in which prison inmates duel on TV for a chance at freedom — makes readers complicit with the bloodthirsty fans sitting ringside. The fight scenes are so well written they demonstrate how easy it might be to accept a world this sick.

THE COVENANT OF WATER by Abraham Verghese

Verghese’s first novel since “Cutting for Stone” follows generations of a family across 77 years in southwestern India as they contend with political strife and other troubles — capped by a shocking discovery made by the matriarch’s granddaughter, a doctor.

CROOK MANIFESTO by Colson Whitehead

Returning to the world of his novel “Harlem Shuffle,” Whitehead again uses a crime story to illuminate a singular neighborhood at a tipping point — here, Harlem in the 1970s.

THE DELUGE by Stephen Markley

Markley’s second novel confronts the scale and gravity of climate change, tracking a cadre of scientists and activists from the gathering storm of the Obama years to the super-typhoons of future decades. Immersive and ambitious, the book shows the range of its author’s gifts: polyphonic narration, silken sentences and elaborate world-building.

EASTBOUND by Maylis de Kerangal

In de Kerangal’s brief, lyrical novel, translated by Jessica Moore, a young Russian soldier on a trans-Siberian train decides to desert and turns to a civilian passenger, a Frenchwoman, for help.

EMILY WILDE’S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FAERIES by Heather Fawcett

The world-building in this tale of a woman documenting a new kind of faerie is exquisite, and the characters are just as textured and richly drawn. This is the kind of folkloric fantasy that remembers the old, blood-ribboned source material about sacrifices and stolen children, but adds a modern gloss.

ENTER GHOST by Isabella Hammad

In Hammad’s second novel, a British Palestinian actor returns to her hometown in Israel to recover from a breakup and spend time with her family. Instead, she’s talked into joining a staging of “Hamlet” in the West Bank, where she has a political awakening.

FORBIDDEN NOTEBOOK by Alba de Céspedes

A best-selling novelist and prominent anti-Fascist in her native Italy, de Céspedes has lately fallen into unjust obscurity. Translated by Ann Goldstein, this elegant novel from the 1950s tells the story of a married mother, Valeria, whose life is transformed when she begins keeping a secret diary.

THE FRAUD by Zadie Smith

Based on a celebrated 19th-century trial in which the defendant was accused of impersonating a nobleman, Smith’s novel offers a vast panoply of London and the English countryside, and successfully locates the social controversies of an era in a handful of characters.

FROM FROM by Monica Youn

In her fourth book of verse, a svelte, intrepid foray into American racism, Youn turns a knowing eye on society’s love-hate relationship with what it sees as the “other.”

A GUEST IN THE HOUSE by Emily Carroll

After a lonely young woman marries a mild-mannered widower and moves into his home, she begins to wonder how his first wife actually died. This graphic novel alternates between black-and-white and overwhelming colors as it explores the mundane and the horrific.

THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE by James McBride

McBride’s latest, an intimate, big-hearted tale of community, opens with a human skeleton found in a well in the 1970s, and then flashes back to the past, to the ’20s and ’30s, to explore the town’s Black, Jewish and immigrant history.

HELLO BEAUTIFUL by Ann Napolitano

In her radiant fourth novel, Napolitano puts a fresh spin on the classic tale of four sisters and the man who joins their family. Take “Little Women,” move it to modern-day Chicago, add more intrigue, lots of basketball and a different kind of boy next door and you’ve got the bones of this thoroughly original story.

A HISTORY OF BURNING by Janika Oza

This remarkable debut novel tells the story of an extended Indo-Ugandan family that is displaced, settled and displaced again.

HOLLY by Stephen King

The scrappy private detective Holly Gibney (who appeared in “The Outsider” and several other novels) returns, this time taking on a missing-persons case that — in typical King fashion — unfolds into a tale of Dickensian proportions.

A HOUSE FOR ALICE by Diana Evans

This polyphonic novel traces one family’s reckoning after the patriarch dies in a fire, as his widow, a Nigerian immigrant, considers returning to her home country and the entire family re-examines the circumstances of their lives.

THE ILIAD by Homer

Emily Wilson’s propulsive new translation of the “Iliad” is buoyant and expressive; she wants this version to be read aloud, and it would certainly be fun to perform.

INK BLOOD SISTER SCRIBE by Emma Törzs

The sisters in Törzs's delightful debut have been raised to protect a collection of magic books that allow their keepers to do incredible things. Their story accelerates like a fugue, ably conducted to a tender conclusion.

KAIROS by Jenny Erpenbeck

This tale of a torrid, yearslong relationship between a young woman and a much older married man — translated from the German by Michael Hofmann — is both profound and moving.

KANTIKA by Elizabeth Graver

Inspired by the life of Graver’s maternal grandmother, this exquisitely imagined family saga spans cultures and continents as it traces the migrations of a Sephardic Jewish girl from turn-of-the-20th-century Constantinople to Barcelona, Havana and, finally, Queens, N.Y.

LAND OF MILK AND HONEY by C Pam Zhang

Zhang’s lush, keenly intelligent novel follows a chef who’s hired to cook for an “elite research community” in the Italian Alps, in a not-so-distant future where industrial-agricultural experiments in America’s heartland have blanketed the globe in a crop-smothering smog.

LONE WOMEN by Victor LaValle

The year is 1915, and the narrator of LaValle’s horror-tinged western has arrived in Montana to cultivate an unforgiving homestead. She’s looking for a fresh start as a single Black woman in a sparsely populated state, but the locked trunk she has in stow holds a terrifying secret.

MONICA by Daniel Clowes

In Clowes’s luminous new work, the titular character, abandoned by her mother as a child, endures a life of calamities before resolving to learn about her origins and track down her parents.

THE MOST SECRET MEMORY OF MEN by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

Based on a true story and translated by Lara Vergnaud, Sarr’s novel — about a Senegalese writer brought low by a plagiarism scandal — asks sharp questions about the state of African literature in the West.

THE NEW NATURALS by Gabriel Bump

In Bump’s engrossing new novel, a young Black couple, mourning the loss of their newborn daughter and disillusioned with the world, start a utopian society — but tensions both internal and external soon threaten their dreams.

NORTH WOODS by Daniel Mason

Mason’s novel looks at the occupants of a single house in Massachusetts over several centuries, from colonial times to present day. An apple farmer, an abolitionist, a wealthy manufacturer: The book follows these lives and many others, with detours into natural history and crime reportage.

NOT EVEN THE DEAD by Juan Gómez Bárcena

An ex-conquistador in Spanish-ruled, 16th-century Mexico is asked to hunt down an Indigenous prophet in this novel by a leading writer in Spain, splendidly translated by Katie Whittemore. The epic search stretches across much of the continent and, as the author bends time and history, lasts centuries.

THE NURSERY by Szilvia Molnar

“I used to be a translator and now I am a milk bar.” So begins Molnar’s brilliant novel about a new mother falling apart within the four walls of her apartment.

OUR SHARE OF NIGHT by Mariana Enriquez

This dazzling, epic narrative, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell, is a bewitching brew of mystery and myth, peopled by mediums who can summon “the Darkness” for a secret society of wealthy occultists seeking to preserve consciousness after death.

PINEAPPLE STREET by Jenny Jackson

Jackson’s smart, dishy debut novel embeds readers in an upper-crust Brooklyn Heights family — its real estate, its secrets, its just-like-you-and-me problems. Does money buy happiness? “Pineapple Street” asks a better question: Does it buy honesty?

THE REFORMATORY by Tananarive Due

Due’s latest — about a Black boy, Robert, who is wrongfully sentenced to a fictionalized version of Florida’s infamous and brutal Dozier School — is both an incisive examination of the lingering traumas of racism and a gripping, ghost-filled horror novel. “The novel’s extended, layered denouement is so heart-smashingly good, it made me late for work,” Randy Boyagoda wrote in his review. “I couldn’t stop reading.”

THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS by Vajra Chandrasekera

Trained to kill by his mother and able to see demons, the protagonist of Chandrasekera’s stunning and lyrical novel flees his destiny as an assassin and winds up in a politically volatile metropolis.

SAME BED DIFFERENT DREAMS by Ed Park

Double agents, sinister corporations, slasher films, U.F.O.s — Park’s long-awaited second novel is packed to the gills with creative elements that enliven his acerbic, comedic and lyrical odyssey into Korean history and American paranoia.

TAKE WHAT YOU NEED by Idra Novey

This elegant novel resonates with implication beyond the taut contours of its central story line. In Novey’s deft hands, the complex relationship between a young woman and her former stepmother hints at the manifold divisions within America itself.

THIS OTHER EDEN by Paul Harding

In his latest novel, inspired by the true story of a devastating 1912 eviction in Maine that displaced an entire mixed-race fishing community, Harding turns that history into a lyrical tale about the fictional Apple Island on the cusp of destruction.

TOM LAKE by Ann Patchett

Locked down on the family’s northern Michigan cherry orchard, three sisters and their mother, a former actress whose long-ago summer fling went on to become a movie star, reflect on love and regret in Patchett’s quiet and reassuring Chekhovian novel.

THE UNSETTLED by Ayana Mathis

This novel follows three generations across time and place: a young mother trying to create a home for herself and her son in 1980s Philadelphia, and her mother, who is trying to save their Alabama hometown from white supremacists seeking to displace her from her land.

VICTORY CITY by Salman Rushdie

Rushdie’s new novel recounts the long life of Pampa Kampana, who creates an empire from magic seeds in 14th-century India. Her world is one of peace, where men and women are equal and all faiths welcome, but the story Rushdie tells is of a state that forever fails to live up to its ideals.

WE COULD BE SO GOOD by Cat Sebastian

This queer midcentury romance — about reporters who meet at work, become friends, move in together and fall in love — lingers on small, everyday acts like bringing home flowers with the groceries, things that loom large because they’re how we connect with others.

WESTERN LANE by Chetna Maroo

In this polished and disciplined debut novel, an 11-year-old Jain girl in London who has just lost her mother turns her attention to the game of squash — which in Maroo’s graceful telling becomes a way into the girl’s grief.

WITNESS by Jamel Brinkley

Set in Brooklyn, and featuring animal rescue workers, florists, volunteers, ghosts and UPS workers, Brinkley’s new collection meditates on what it means to see and be seen.

Y/N by Esther Yi

In this weird and wondrous novel, a bored young woman in thrall to a boy band buys a one-way ticket to Seoul.

YELLOWFACE by R.F. Kuang

Kuang’s first foray outside of the fantasy genre is a breezy and propulsive tale about a white woman who achieves tremendous literary success by stealing a manuscript from a recently deceased Asian friend and passing it off as her own.

[authoralexharvey]

I Would Enter Haides [Haides' Version]- A Historical Fiction Short Story

It is the beginning of Pyanepsion when Agape first feels the threads of fate shift within her.

As of today, I have published a short story about two women and their developing relationship during an ancient Greek festival. If any of this sounds interesting to you, you can read 8 pages of lesbian pining, autumnal daredevils, and ancient Greek Culture. And the best part is it's only a dollar!

NOTE: I have two planned releases for this short. Haides' version is this version, the shorter version wrote for NYC Midnight focusing on Agape and Aspasia. I have a longer Demeter's Version planned to be released in my currently untitled collection of mythological short stories I'm working on.

Summary

As the harvest season descends on Eleusis once again, newly-engaged Agape finds a forbidden romance blossoming between her and daring Aspasia in this time of death and rebirth. Originally wrote for NYC Midnight 2023.

Quotes

Aphrodite’s hand is heavy on Agape’s brow. Despite herself, she flushes. - Page 2

She should refuse. She should shove this woman away along with the feelings she elicits. Yet, when she moves to do so, Agape finds herself pulling Aspasias closer instead. How daring, she thinks as their mouths join. How unusual. And yet, they fit together just so. - Page 3

Marriage. At once, she tries to picture herself lying beneath him, tries to imagine his sickly grunts as he ruts inside her the way all war-hardened men do their prizes, and shudders at the thought. Nothing could disgust her more. Still, she looks back to him with lowered eyes. "A pleasure to meet you." - Page 5

Now, with Aspasia straddling her, a strange warmth takes hold in her chest. I would enter Haides to prove myself to you, she thinks. - Page 7

Buy it here!

[suzannahnatters]

Flash Fic: The Girl in the Tower

Imagine this: you are a girl, locked in a tower.

Does it matter why? Let’s say your parents made a bargain with a witch—a golden-haired daughter for a bunch of parsley. So now you are the girl in the tower. Your only company (apart from the witch, but her visits are worse than nothing) is a book.

The book is full of stories, all the same. Once upon a time, a girl was cursed by a witch to live alone, until a prince rescued her with a true love’s kiss. They lived happily ever after.

You don’t know what alone means, because you’ve never been anything else. Still, the book insists that true love is the best thing that could possibly happen to a girl.

You put your faith in the book. You make songs about love.

Sometimes, even in the heart of the forest, someone hears your song. You have a marvellous voice, as golden as your hair. The book assures you that handsome princes cannot resist the golden singing of golden girls.

Except that they do.

Some block their ears and hurry away (they think you are a wood-siren, luring them to their doom). Others stop only to tell you your hair is a vanity and so are your songs.

One wishes to behold your face, but the climb is too daunting.

Years pass. You begin to understand what alone means. Alone means that you could gnaw your own flesh if it meant that someone, anyone, would climb your tower.

At last, one day, someone does. He hears your singing, and he doesn’t block his ears. He climbs your golden hair, and says it is glorious.

He says your songs are beautiful. He says he must go, because his true love awaits him at home.

This is a possibility for which the book never prepared you, but it makes perfect sense. Only true love could give a man courage in the face of song, strength to climb a tower, heart to comfort a lonely girl.

You gnaw on your own flesh and you feel tenderly grateful to his true love, whom you have never seen.

He returns. (You never quite believed he would, because why would he, when he has a true love at home?) Alone doesn’t need to be your name, he says. How many years was it since you felt hope? Perhaps, beyond this tower, your own love is waiting for you.

Or perhaps you’ll slip, and the witch will find you out. She’ll blind the prince, cut off your hair and abandon you both in a howling wilderness.

You’ll be free, but you won’t go looking for a love of your own, not yet. You’ll look for him, because he may not be your love, but he's the nearest thing you have. You’ll never rest till you’ve healed his hurts and sent him home.

Imagine this: that after all there are more ways than one to love, and all of them are true.

-----

I wrote this flash fic for the Pilgrim Artists' Festival, a small Christian festival of art, music, and words which runs every year in Tasmania's Huon Valley. The theme for the 2023 festival was "Beauty in the Everyday." One of the most underrated, beautiful things in the world, in my opinion, is platonic friendship between men and women. Like many of us I grew up in a world that believed men and women can't be friends - they can only be sexual partners. As a thirty-something chronically single woman, my friendships with men, even married men, are meaningful and lifegiving to me on a level that I'm not even going to try to be normal about.

The Pilgrim Artists' Festival opens every year for submissions of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, art, and music from Christian, Nicene-Creed-affirming artists, including children and adults, anywhere in the world. There is a different prompt each year and a 500 word limit on literary entries. There are also dozens of prizes available - check them out and submit here.

Other Pilgrim Artists' Festival flash fic: The Gardens of Hades Strange the Living Final Transmission

[blacksapphicguide]

The Color Purple (movie)

2023 movie Drama, historical fiction, musical.

Plot points:

Multiple forms of abuse shown (://TW)

Rape and incest (://TW)

Societal norms

Generational cycles

Depicts misogynistic values and how they perpetuate

Depicts racist values and how they perpetuate

Traumatic experiences and how characters are affected by them

Depiction of the inhumane treatment of women and African Americans within the 20th century

Perseverance

Resilience despite oppression

Characters border racist and misogynistic stereotypes

Feminism

Female friendship and connection

African American music and its evolution

Touches on racism, sexism, sex and their intersectionality

Touches on marriage, marital abuse and parenting

Set in the Deep South of America (Georgia state)

Based on the musical adaptation

Novel adaptation "Alice Walker's The Color Purple"

Novel is a Pulitzer Prize winner

Middle-aged black lesbian couple

Black lesbian couple (primary).

Black sapphic characters:

Celie Fantasia Barrino Shug Avery Taraji P. Henson

Connections:

Celie x Shug (black lesbian couple)

Sex & Nudity - Severe

Intense sex scenes

Adultery

Nude photos of female characters

Conversations about sex

Couple has pleasurable and intimate sex, no nudity shown

Disturbing sexual assault and rape scenes

Violence & Gore - Severe

Multiple forms of abuse: verbal, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse

Incestuous statutory rape (father-daughter: instance of rape not shown)

Bar brawl involving punching of characters and breaking of furniture

Character becomes disabled post being beaten by a white mob

Character nearly slits another's throat

Profanity - Moderate

Use of the words hell, shit, piss off, damn, heifer, etc.

White character calls a black character a 'black slut'

Use of the n-word

Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking - Mild

Social drinking

Drinking at home

Use of cigarettes and cigars

Frightening & Intense Scenes - Severe

Birth given to a child resulting from incestuous statutory rape

Two sisters are painfully separated by an abusive man

Disturbing and intense sexual assault scenes

Death of a character

Scene of armed soldiers invading an African village

[beanbowlbaggins]

I made a few slides to point out some of my favorite things about Susanna Clarke's Piranesi. After finishing the book I was just still thinking about it.

Instagram Post

(Note: I realized after posting the slides that I used the 2023 Womens Prize for Fiction logo instead if 2021)

[alexsfictionaddiction]

The Women’s Prize For Fiction 2023 Longlist Is Here!

I’m pretty sure that anyone who was reading my blog around this time last year will know that I follow the Women’s Prize for Fiction very closely. In fact, it’s the only book prize that I ever want to make the effort to read as much of the longlist as I can. So, this time of year is like bookish Christmas to me and I have been SO excited over the last couple of weeks during the build-up to this announcement. 

For those of you who don’t follow it, the Women’s Prize for Fiction is an annual book prize given to a book written in English by a woman over the last year. The eligibility criteria is as follows:

It must be a full-length novel (no short story collections or novellas).

It must have been originally written in English (no translations).

It must have been published in the UK between 1st April of the year before the prize and 31st March of the year of the prize (so, this year’s eligibility period was between 1st April 2022 and 31st March 2023).

So, here is this year’s longlist!

I’m A Fan by Sheena Patel. Published by Rough Trade Books on 9th June 2022. Pod by Laline Paull. Published by Corsair on 7th April 2022. The Dog of the North by Elizabeth McKenzie. Published by 4th Estate on 7th March 2023. Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks. Published by Vintage on 2nd March 2023. Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova. Published by Atlantic Books on 7th July 2022. Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo. Published by Vintage on 7th April 2022. The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff. Published by Allen & Unwin on 2nd March 2023. The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell. Published by Tinder Press on 30th August 2022. Homesick by Jennifer Croft. Published by Charco Press on 23rd August 2022. Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh. Published by Penguin on 2nd March 2023. Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris. Published by Duckworth on 5th May 2022. Trespasses by Louise Kennedy. Published by Bloomsbury on 14th April 2022. Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow. Published by John Murray on 7th April 2022. Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes. Published by Mantle on 15th September 2022. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. Published by Faber and Faber on 18th October 2022.

I’ve watched a lot of prediction videos and I was pretty sure I had a good idea of what books we’d see on this list. Having just watched the official announcement of the 16 books on the longlist, I am FLABBERGASTED at how wrong everyone was! 

Demon Copperhead is the only one I’ve already read and it definitely deserves to be there. Cursed Bread, Fire Rush and The Bandit Queens are on my TBR for this month anyway. I have copies of Trespasses, Stone Blind, The Marriage Portrait, Memphis, Glory, Pod and I’m A Fan, so will be getting to them as soon as I can. There are quite a few books on here that I’ve never even heard of, so that’s very exciting!

While I am quite sad not to see some of the popular predictions on here (Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Nightcrawling, A Spell For Good Things, Birnam Wood, Really Good Actually, The Rabbit Hutch), I am really intrigued to see how I get on with these books.

The shortlist of six books will be announced on 26th April, so I’ll be aiming to get as much of the longlist read before then as possible. The winner will be announced on 14th June, so you’ve got plenty of time to read them all before then, if that sounds like fun!

So, what do you think of the longlist? How many have you read? How many do you plan on reading? Are you as surprised as I am?! Now, go and read all the books, my lovely readers!

-Love, Alex x

[brian-in-finance]

Instagram

Tickets

Remember… tickets are still available for this evening’s online book club at 7 p.m. (UK time).

2.5 hours from time of posting, 4:30 p.m.

[lilianeruyters]

The Women’s Prize: my favourite

Sometimes it is easy to determine which novel you want to win the Women’s Prize. It is the one that stood out, that spoke to me straight away. This year I do not have such a clear preference. There are two novels I would not like to win, for various reasons. As far as I am concerned they lack the quality needed to win the prestigious prize. The other fours all have their own plusses. I…

[gollancz]

The 2023 Arthur C. Clarke Award Shortlist has been announced - and Gollancz has two titles!!!

THE RED SCHOLAR'S WAKE by Aliette de Bodard

Shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association award for Best Novel, WINNER of the BSFA award for Best Cover, this sweeping sapphic space opera can now add another award nod to the list. It's a stunning romance between a sentient pirate spaceship and the woman she marries in order to find out who killed her first wife. TorDotCom compared the dynamics to that of classic gothic novels, Tasha Suri said it was "so romantic I may simply perish". Inspired by Vietnamese culture, and the famous Chinese pirate Ching Shih, it's the sort of book that will make you go feral with delight.

PLUTOSHINE by Lucy Kissick

Winner of the inaugural Working Class Writers' Prize, PLUTOSHINE was written while Lucy Kissick completed her PhD, looking at the composition of Martian lakes by recreating them in a lab and extrapolating how they interacted with the atmosphere. This novel takes her knowledge of planetary atmospherics and geology and blends them with a thrilling story about terraforming, colonisation, and the impacts on everyone involved.

We're so so delighted to be the publishers of two of the three women shortlisted for the 2023 prize, and that they represent the diverse voices that Gollancz is striving to champion!

[brigdh]

End of the year book ask! 15, 20 and 24? And Happy New Year! <3

15. Did you read any books that were nominated for or won awards this year (Booker, Women’s Prize, National Book Award, Pulitzer, Hugo, etc.)? What did you think of them?

Several, apparently! Though most of these I didn't realize were prize-winners when I read them.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (won the Pulitzer for Fiction): FANTASTIC, amazing, loved it. A retelling of David Copperfield in modern Appalachia.

Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (Hugo nominee): also excellent! I probably should have reread the first two books in the series before reading this one, but it was still wonderful.

Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay (won the Bram Stoker Award): also LOVED it. Do not judge it by the movie.

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R. F. Kuang (won the Nebula): to break my streak, I hated this one. I felt like it was a 101-level take on imperialism without interesting enough characters to redeem the historical shallowness.

20. What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations?

Ha, I haven't actually gotten around to reading any of my top 2023 releases yet! That said, I cannot wait for Translation State by Ann Leckie (the next book in the Imperial Radch series), Witch King by Martha Wells (fantasy by the author of Muderbot), Lone Women by Victor LaValle (horror in the Wild West by an AMAZING horror author, one of my favorites), and The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty (middle-aged lady pirates by the author of the Daevabad trilogy).

24. Did you DNF anything? Why?

I have a compulsion to finish anything I start, so I never really admit to DNFing a book; even if I put it down and haven't read anything of it for months, I keep *meaning* to get back to it and finish it eventually, so I don't count it as DNF'ed.

That said, it took me a year to finish The Pirates Lafitte: The Treacherous World of the Corsairs of the Gulf by William C Davis, because it was so boring and also weirdly racist. I also have been taking ages to get back to Better the Blood by Michael Bennett, which is a murder mystery set in New Zealand, but it's so cliche and hackneyed.

Thank you for the questions, and happy new year to you too! <3

book meme