News - Books

The May 6 issue of The New Yorker (on newsstands on April 29) will feature the fifth special Book Sense insert, "Bound to Please: Great Gift Ideas From Your Independent Booksellers." This 14-page special feature will showcase a number of independent booksellers, in both text and pictures, and will share their enthusiastic picks for gift-giving from recent Book Sense 76 selections.

In a notable achievement, independent presses carved out five of the 10 slots for books nominated by independent booksellers for the Book Sense Poetry 76 Top Ten list, released late February in advance of April's National Poetry Month. The presses include Seven Stories, Holy Cow! Press, BOA Editions, Copper Canyon, and Graywolf.

The title of Elisabeth Hyde's new work of fiction from Macadam/Cage, Crazy as Chocolate, was taken from poet Anne Sexton's line, "Even crazy, I'm as nice as a chocolate bar." Izzy (née Isabel) narrates this tale of her family, alternating past and present.

Justin Cronin has been awarded the 2002 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for his story collection, Mary and O’Neil (Dial). The award is presented annually to a first work of fiction, and includes a prize of $7,500.

Rugged Land Publisher Shawn Coyne wants people to pay attention to books the way they pay attention to music videos. That’s why Rugged Land, a book publishing and film company, created a 40-second commercial trailer for one of its debut novels, Henry’s List of Wrongs, by John Scott Shepherd. The promo is due for release on the Rugged Land Web site on April 16 to coincide with the book’s publication date.

The nominees were recently announced for the 2002 International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook Awards, the winners of which will be announced on April 20. There are 33 nominees in 11 categories. Nominees in the General Category are:

Ann Patchett has won the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for Bel Canto, which was a Top Ten Book Sense 76 selection last year. The prize awards the writer $15,000, making it the largest juried award for fiction in the U.S.

Make no mistake, notwithstanding its witty title, A Child’s Book of True Crime by Chloe Hooper (Scribner) is definitely not a tale for little ones. This Book Sense 76 March/April selection is a story that mingles animal characters from children’s books with true crime elements -- a gruesome murder, an unexplained disappearance -- and perpetual human dramas -- the search for truth and the loss of innocence.

When Cicely Buckley of Oyster River Press set out to publish the entire Walking to Windward chapbook series in one fell swoop, it was a major undertaking. But she couldn't resist adding 11 titles to the original group, ending up with an extraordinary enterprise -- 21 poetry chapbooks encased in four box-set volumes each containing four to five individual titles. "I don't know of any other series like this," she told BTW, about publishing more than 600 pages of poetry in six months for a December 31 publication date.

Well, the big news here is that this spring and summer sees a wonderful bounty of great new books coming out, in cloth and paper … which is great for biz but daunting nonetheless. So, we’re going to produce a separate Summer Paperback 76, covering late May-July, as there is so much good stuff coming in paper, too. The paperbacks would’ve swamped the May/June 76, keeping dozens of worthy new hardcovers off.