Some nice things have happened lately.
Some nice things have happened lately. I’m just home from a completely relaxing, completely unplugged, vacation during which I read books for pleasure (!) and had time to take stock on projects I’ve been working on. Back in May, The Moth celebrated the year with their annual Moth Ball which was their most successful fundraiser to date. The event was especially nice because it featured two writers I did publicity for when I worked in-house, who have also become my good friends. Nathan Englander, a prince among men, presented Zadie Smith with the Moth Award. In his remarks, he talked about how years ago I came tearing down the hall at Random House to give him a galley of a novel, saying “You have to read this.” The novel was White Teeth and it was so great to hear Nathan talk about not only how blown away he was by Zadie’s debut novel (as were we all), but how she became one of his best friends. Zadie accepted The Moth Award with one of the most jaw-droppingly brilliant and, honestly, love-filled speeches I’ve heard. She talked about the role of storytelling in her life and coming back to appreciate stories since she’s been reading to her young children: “For the first time since childhood I am back in the realm of stories and storybooks — three stories read out loud to a four year old, every night, on pain of death — and this practice has reawakened in me something I thought I’d misplaced a long time ago, on book tour, perhaps, or in the back row of a university lecture hall. This feeling of narrative possibility and wonder — this idea that every person is a world. How could I have forgotten that?”
She also gave a shout out to me, which I freely admit, made my heart swell. You can read her remarks here.
Also in May, just before BEA (the book industry’s annual trade show) got under way, some stunningly good publishing industry news (that I’d been sitting on for months!) was announced: the creation of The Kirkus Prize. I’m thrilled to be doing publicity for Kirkus on this project. Ron Charles at The Washington Post covered the story: here. Kirkus, the nation’s leading prepublication journal of book reviews, has created three new literary awards of $50,000 each. The Kirkus Prize, for fiction, non-fiction and young readers’ literature, will be one of the largest annual cash awards for writers in the world. All books that receive a starred review in Kirkus are automatically nominated for the prize. We’ll announce a short list of 6 finalists in each category on September 30th. And the three winners will be announced on October 23rd. Watch this space!
And in continuing good news, I’m currently working with the scorchingly talented Meghan Daum who has a new collection of essays coming from FSG on Nov. 18: The Unspeakable. Meghan has a weekly column in the LA Times and is the author of three previous books – one of which, My Misspent Youth, has achieved near cult status. This new collection is summed up perfectly by Geoff Dyer who says, “The Unspeakable is a fantastic collection of essays: funny, clever and moving (often at the same time), never more universal than in its most personal moments (in other words, throughout), and written with enviable subtlety, precision and spring.”
And by Leslie Jamison, “The Unspeakable speaks with wit and warmth and artful candor, the fruits of an exuberant and consistently surprising intelligence. These are essays that dig under the surface of what we might expect to feel in order to discover what we actually feel instead. I was utterly captivated by Daum’s sensitive fidelity to the complexity of lived experience.”
I can’t wait for this collection to be unleashed upon the world in November. (If you’re media and want a review copy, let me know.) All of the essays here are new and The New Yorker will excerpt one of them in September — Preorder it from one of the links here.
