News in March 2023

News in March 2023

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SKIN by Lakiesha Carr
31th March, 2023

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SKIN by Lakiesha Carr was highlighted in The New Yorker's "Briefly Noted," where it was lauded as a "powerful debut." Pantheon published the novel on February 28, 2023.

TAKE WHAT YOU NEED by Idra Novey
31th March, 2023

TAKE WHAT YOU NEED received a starred review from Shelf Awareness, who wrote, "A novel in the hands of Idra Novey is one sure to startle and subvert readers’ expectations…TAKE WHAT YOU NEED grapples with large-scale xenophobic tensions, as well as the more finely detailed ones among family. Novey has again crafted a bold and uncompromising novel from a clear-eyed point of view.” Viking published the book on March 14, 2023.

24th March, 2023

The new edition of THE BEST OF EVERYTHING by Rona Jaffe continues to receive great buzz following its publication. The New Yorker staff writer Rachel Syme, who wrote the introduction of the new edition, appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered on March 16 to speak about the book’s cultural impact 65 years after its initial publication. Laurie Hertzel from Star Tribune echoes the sentiment about THE BEST OF EVERYTHING’s timelessness, praising it as a “lively, delightful, and heartbreaking novel,” adding: “THE BEST OF EVERYTHING seized the mood of the moment and told the truth, and women by the millions devoured it. Sixty-five years later, I did, too.” Penguin Classics published the new edition of THE BEST OF EVERYTHING on March 14, 2023.

24th March, 2023

Lit Hub published an excerpt of Joseph Earl Thomas’ SINK, and included the book in their roundup of "Five Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week." Poets & Writers featured a conversation between Thomas and Elias Rodriques that took place at the Free Library of Philadelphia. The New York Times featured SINK as an Editors’ Choice pick, alongside generous praise: “The lush prose of this memoir perfectly suits the author’s tender, teeming boyhood imagination, in which video-game and manga characters offered more guidance than volatile adults did. Most remarkable is Thomas’s matter-of-fact depiction of the daily depredations he faced without losing his spirit or his abundant creative gifts.” Lastly, WNYC highlighted the memoir on "All of It with Alison Stewart." Grand Central Publishing published the book on February 21, 2023.

24th March, 2023

Bomb Magazine published a great conversation between TAKE WHAT YOU NEED author Idra Novey and Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi. The Pittsburgh Gazette also published an interview with Novey, as well as a review of TAKE WHAT YOU NEED: “Sixty-four year old Jean, protagonist of Johnstown-native Idra Novey’s recent novel, TAKE WHAT YOU NEED, is willing to die in pursuit of transcendence. This will no doubt keep reader’s attention as Ms. Novey’s third novel […] cares deeply about balancing survival and self-actualization… Idra Novey’s TAKE WHAT YOU NEED is sure to lend readers perspective on living life to the fullest and accepting one’s life as valid, summed best in the book’s Louise Bourgeois epigram: ‘Every day you have to abandon your past or accept it, and then if you cannot accept it, you become a sculptor.’” Viking published the novel on March 14, 2023.

24th March, 2023

Southern Living included De'Shawn Charles Winslow on their great list of “Contemporary Southern Writers to Read Right Now,” highlighting both IN WEST MILLS and DECENT PEOPLE. SIBA’s Southern Bookseller Review ran a short “Spotlight” feature on DECENT PEOPLE, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn included a review of the book on its “Morning Bites” round-up. The Rumpus also published a great Q&A with Winslow, where Winslow teased his next project: “All I’ll say for now is that I’m stepping away from the fictional town of West Mills for my next project. I’m going to use a real North Carolina town, and it’ll be set in the ‘80s. No murders this time, but there will be deaths.” Bloomsbury published DECENT PEOPLE on January 17, 2023.

17th March, 2023

Danielle Steel’s latest novel, WORTHY OPPONENTS, debuted on The New York Times Bestsellers list for the week of March 26, 2023, appearing at #2 on Print Hardcover Fiction and #6 on Combined Print & E-Book Fiction. Delacorte Press published the novel on March 7, 2023.

17th March, 2023

THE LONDON SÉANCE SOCIETY by Sarah Penner made its debut on The New York Times Bestsellers list for the week of March 26, 2023, appearing at #7 on Print Hardcover Fiction. Park Row published the novel on March 7, 2023.

17th March, 2023

TAKE WHAT YOU NEED by Idra Novey received fantastic publication-week reviews from The Boston Globe (“As in the classic, unscrubbed fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, Idra Novey’s TAKE WHAT YOU NEED does not skirt gritty subjects. Concerned with characters who fall outside easily defined categories, it tackles big questions — like what qualifies as art — as well as the aching human need to be seen…With these raw materials, Novey has fashioned an insightful work of art about art”), The New York Times (“[An] impressive new novel…TAKE WHAT YOU NEED never feels like a parable. It’s a story about complicated relationships unresolved by death, about ambivalent grief. It’s very much a book for grown-ups in that there are no neat solutions to messy relationships”), The Los Angeles Times (“[An] elegiac and unsettling new novel…The best fiction can explore such dilemmas more meaningfully than a thousand think pieces. Rather than present this choice as an empty intellectual exercise about ‘tolerance,’ Novey takes readers to the limbic level, that instinctual site of emotions and stress hormones”), The Washington Post (“[S]triking…Novey’s prose [is] brisk and direct”), and The Jewish Book Council (“[A] moving, meditative novel…[A] complicated and loving portrait that readers will remember long after they’ve turned the last page”). Novey was profiled in Belt Mag, The Rumpus, and Littsburgh, and featured on the "So Many Damn Books" podcast. The novel was also included in must-read round-ups from The New York Times, The Millions, and Lit Hub. Viking published the novel on March 14, 2023.

17th March, 2023

The sixty-fifth anniversary Penguin Classics Black Spine edition of THE BEST OF EVERYTHING by Rona Jaffe is the first book on Lit Hub’s “16 New Books to Check Out this Week” list. It was also featured in The Atlantic’s “One Story to Read Today” daily newsletter, where Apoorva Tadepalli writes: “Young women everywhere could relate to the experience of juggling all the things they were expected to achieve in order to finally make it and be happy. The book gave voice to their specific desires, even as it tapped into the hardships of moving to a new city, starting a life alone, and grasping, by turns, for connection and independence.” Kirkus Reviews Fiction Editor Laurie Muchnick also commented on the book’s timelessness, noting that she was “blown away by Jaffe’s sharp, fizzy writing; her pointed analysis of women’s roles and restrictions; and her matter-of-fact depiction of sexual harassment in the workplace decades before the Clarence Thomas hearings or #MeToo.” The New Yorker staff writer Rachel Syme, who wrote the introduction to the reissue (which can be found on The New Yorker website), and author Maris Kreizman will be holding a free discussion on the book on March 17 at 6pm at Rizzoli. Penguin Classics published the book on March 14, 2023.

17th March, 2023

Lakiesha Carr spoke to Shondaland about her debut novel, AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SKIN. Pantheon published the book on February 28, 2023.

10th March, 2023

Laura Warrell’s debut novel SWEET, SOFT, PLENTY RHYTHM was named one of the five finalists for the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The winner will be announced in April, and all finalists will be honored on May 11 at the 43rd Anniversary PEN/Faulkner Award Celebration at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington DC. Pantheon published the book on September 27, 2022.