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Man Gone Down Wins IMPAC Prize

As announced yesterday, Michael Thomas has won this year’s International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his novel Man Gone Down (Grove). Here’s the description from the Grove website: A beautifully written, insightful, and devastating first novel, Man Gone Down is about a young black father of three in ...

And One Last Piece of Awful News

At least this post isn’t about a bookstore/publisher closing—instead it’s about the absolute grossness of corporations: On Sunday, a Bookseller story by Victoria Gallagher reported that “sources” were saying “Penguin is believed to have signed an exclusive deal with W H Smith” bookstores to be ...

The Latest Publishing Casualty

I’m just chock full of good news today: Arcade Publishing, the independent literary house founded by the late publishing legend Richard Seaver, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. A petition for relief was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York on June 4 by Jeannette ...

The Good News, The Horrible News

This is already old news, but last week Jessica Stockton Bagnulo announced she had signed the lease and Greenlight Bookstore now has an official address: 86 Fulton Street in Fort Greene. If all goes according to plan, the store will officially open in September. It’s great to see this finally happen . . . For as long ...

Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Symposium

The Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Symposium (participants pictured above) took place earlier this week, and was one of the most interesting symposiums I’ve ever attended. The Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize—which goes to the best translation from German published in the past year—was awarded ...

Bookstore of the Month: The Booksmith (San Francisco)

We’re a couple days behind, but this month’s featured bookstore is The Booksmith in San Francisco’s historic Haight Ashbury neighborhood. The store opened in 1976 by Gary Frank, who recently sold the store to Christin Evans and Praveen Madan. The Booksmith has a long history of hosting great events, and ...

Gunter Grass and the New Translation of The Tin Drum

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been gorging myself on Gunter Grass novels in preparation for the panel I’m moderating tomorrow with Krishna Winston (Crabwalk), Breon Mitchell (The Tin Drum), and Michael Henry Heim (My Century, Peeling the Onion)—arguably three of the best German-English translators working ...