National Book Award Shortlists Announced, Amazon to Open Pop-Up Shops, and More

by
Staff
10.15.14

Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories:

Australian novelist Richard Flanagan received the 2014 Man Booker Prize for fiction yesterday. Chairman of the judges A. C. Grayling called Flanagan’s book, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a “magnificent novel of love and war.” Flanagan is the third Australian to win the award. (Publishers Weekly)

In other award news, the finalists for the 2014 National Book Award were announced this morning on NPR’s Morning Edition. Read about each of the finalists in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people’s literature on the Grants & Awards Blog.

Washington D.C’s iconic independent bookstore, Politics and Prose, replaced Barnes & Noble as the official bookseller at the annual Library of Congress National Book Festival last weekend. At the Los Angeles Review of Books, Lauren Hodges explores the store’s thirty-year history.

To mark the centennial of poet John Berryman’s birth, Farrar, Straus and Giroux will reissue three of his books: 77 Dream Songs, Berryman’s Sonnets, and The Dream Songs. In addition to the reissues, the publisher has released a new volume titled The Heart Is Strange: New Selected Poems. (New York Times)

British author John Grindrod, whose book Concretopia tells the “story of the postwar rebuilding of Britain,” lists his top ten favorite books about Britain’s modernist architectural movement. (Guardian)

Amazon has confirmed plans to open two brick-and-mortar pop-up stores in San Francisco and Sacramento, as well as a large outlet in New York City, just in time for the holidays. (GalleyCat)

Carlos Lozada has been named the nonfiction book critic at the Washington Post. In his new role, Lozada—who currently serves as the editor of the newspaper’s “Outlook” section—will write weekly reviews, covering both nonfiction books and long-form nonfiction.