Bloomsbury UK has announced plans to hire 100 new employees ‘‘across all areas of the company’’ to lighten the workload for existing staff. A survey of UK publishing recently reported ‘‘industry-wide burnout.’’ A spokesperson told The Bookseller, ‘‘These positions are targeted where our business is growing, where we want to increase support for our authors and grow the global presence of our most important brands, and where we know there ...Read More
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The Locus Science Fiction Foundation announced the winners in each category of the 2022 Locus Awards on June 25, 2022, during the virtual Locus Awards Weekend. Connie Willis MCed the awards ceremony. Additional weekend events included readings and panels with leading authors.
SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL
All the Seas of the World, Guy Gavriel Kay (Berkley 978-0-59344-104-6, $28.00, 528pp, hc) May 2022.
Based on absolutely no evidence other than a handful of conversations, I suspect that Guy Gavriel Kay’s large and loyal readership extends along a fairly definable spectrum. At one end are the pure fantasy readers, who value his torqued version of actual historical settings as a kind of worldbuilding all its own, even ...Read More
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John Crowley, Flint and Mirror (Tor 4/22) Our most excellent literary fantastist expands his 2018 novella of the same name in this historical fantasy about the Elizabethan conflict between the English and Irish, focused on an Irish lord who finds himself with torn loyalties after receiving two magical tokens: an obsidian mirror from Queen Elizabeth and a chip of flint from the ancient peoples of Ireland.
Melissa ...Read More
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Results of the 2021 Analog Analytical Laboratory (AnLab) Awards have been announced.
Best Novella
Best Novelette
Fevered Star, Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga 978-1-53443-773-9, $27.99, 400pp, hc) April 2022.
Fevered Star picks up almost immediately after the end of Black Sun, the first book in Rebecca Roanhorse’s Between the Earth and Sky series. The city of Tova is in turmoil, the sun is locked in a perpetual eclipse, and the clans across the Meridian are hastily forming alliances in preparation for all-out war. Old scores are ...Read More
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The 2022 YA Book Prize shortlist features a number of titles of genre interest, including:
The £2,000 YA Book Prize is awarded to a YA title written by an author living in the UK or Ireland. The panel of judges ...Read More
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Poguemahone, Patrick McCabe (Unbound 978-1-80018-111-3, £20.00, 624pp, hc) April 2022. (Biblioasis 978-1-77196-473-9, $21.95, 600pp, tp) May 2022.
Weighing in at more than 600 pages and written entirely in free verse, I can understand that some readers will be a little intimidated by Patrick McCabe’s 13th novel, Poguemahone. I’m here to tell you that despite the comparisons to Ulysses and Ducks, Newburyport, despite the Gaelic salted through the ...Read More
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The Asociación Española de Fantasía, Ciencia Ficción y Terror (AEFCFT) has announced the finalists for the 2022 Ignotus Awards (the Spanish equivalent of the Hugo Awards).
Novela extranjera (Foreign Novel)
Aspects, John M. Ford (Tor 978-1-250-26903-4 $26.99, 496 pp, hc) April 2022.
Sixteen years after his untimely death, we finally have John M. Ford’s last novel, Aspects, or at least a substantial portion of it. The whole would have been even more substantial, since a half dozen completed sonnet-epigraphs suggest a six-part structure that could have run to more than 1000 pages, so perhaps a two-decker or even ...Read More
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Allocco, Benjamin: Mr. Ugly
(Black Rose Writing 781684339655, $21.95, 325pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, June 16, 2022)
Horror novel. The psychic Gertie, a detective, and a teen fight a malicious entity that possesses people, forcing them to kill in sadistic ways.
Bayron, Kalynn: This Wicked Fate
(Bloomsbury USA 978-1-5476-0920-8, $18.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, June 21, 2022)
Young-adult fantasy novel, sequel to This Poison Heart.
Like This ...Read More
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Sally Williamson has been promoted to editorial director at the Bantam imprint of UK publisher Transworld and will report to publisher Frankie Gray. Editorial director Francesca Best is returning from parental leave and will also report to Gray. Alice Rodgers is taking on the role of commissioning editor, transitioning from covering for parental leave, and will report to Williamson. Transworld Publishers is now known as Transworld, and Bantam Press is ...Read More
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Malorie Blackman won the 2022 PEN Pinter Prize, announced June 21, 2022 by English PEN.
The prize is awarded annually to a writer of outstanding literary merit resident in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland or the Commonwealth who, in the words of Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize in Literature speech, casts an “unflinching, unswerving” gaze upon the world and shows a “fierce intellectual determination… to define the real truth ...Read More
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Hexagon 3/22 Fireside 3/22 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 3/10/22, 3/24/22
Hexagon Magazine opens its 2022 releases with its eighth issue, featuring five original stories. While the publication does publish stories in English and French (a trend I’ve been happy to note here and in publications like Omenana as well), all the works in this issue are English originals. All the works are also what I’d classify as fantasy, with some interesting ...Read More
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The International Association of Media Tie-in Writers (IAMTW) announced the nominees for the 2022 Scribe Awards, honoring excellence in licensed tie-in writing. Nominees of genre interest follow.
Original Novel — Speculative
PulpFest has announced the nominees for the 2022 Munsey Award, given “to an individual or institution that has bettered the pulp community.” Nominees are selected by the general pulp community, with the winner selected by a vote of past Lamont, Munsey, and Rusty Awards winners. The nominees are:
The 2021 Ladies of Horror Readers’ Choice results have been announced. The top ten winners are:
The 2022 Walter Scott Prize went to News of the Dead by James Robertson (Hamish Hamilton). The prize “celebrates outstanding historical novels published in the UK, Ireland and the Commonwealth.” Titles and authors of genre interest on the shortlist also included The Magician by Colm Tóibín (Viking).
The author of the winning title receives £25,000. For more information about the prize, and the full list, see the official site.
While
Violet Castro was born July 14, 1979 and grew up in San Antonio TX. She moved to Philadelphia PA to attend Drexel University, where she earned a BS in political science and history. Fifteen years ago, she moved to the UK, and resides there with her family, though she returns to the US often to visit family.
Castro self-published debut vampire novel Maria the Wanted and the Legacy of the ...Read More
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Prison of Sleep, Tim Pratt (Angry Robot 978-0-85766-942-1, $14.99, 400pp, tp) April 2022. Cover by Kieryn Tyler.
Prison of Sleep is the concluding volume of Tim Pratt’s multiverse duology. At this remove, I can’t remember much about the first volume, Doors of Sleep (2021), except for four things: the first-person narrator, Zax, whirled unwillingly from world to world when he slept, pursued by a nemesis; the fact that he’s ...Read More
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Siren Queen, Nghi Vo (Tor 978-1-25078-883-2, $26.99, 288pp, hc) May 2022.
From Nathanael West to Tim Powers, the vision of Hollywood as a kind of hallucinogenic inferno of ambition, lust, corruption, and betrayal has nearly become a literary convention, both in fiction and nonfiction. While most novels about Hollywood history succumb to the temptation to name-check real-life movie personalities, even if only as walk-ons, Nghi Vo’s Siren Queen reverts ...Read More
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A Comb of Wishes, Lisa Stringfellow (Quill Tree Books 978-0-06-304345-9, $16.99, hc, 272pp) February 2022.
In some ways, Lisa Stringfellow’s A Comb of Wishes, which was heavily influenced by her father’s West Indian immigrant culture, is a classic ‘‘be careful what you wish for’’ fantasy. With a young protagonist, Kela, who is reeling from her mother’s accidental death only a few months earlier, the novel offers a poignant ...Read More
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Penguin Random House has announced a new imprint, Random House Worlds, ‘‘dedicated entirely to licensed book publishing.’’ The imprint will be home to media-related books from ‘‘Star Wars, Minecraft, Stranger Things, Garfield, Magic: The Gathering, Lore Olympus, Critical Role, and others.’’ Vice-president and Del Rey deputy publisher Keith Clayton will serve as publishing director. All licensed brands published by Del Rey and other imprints ‘‘under the Random House division will ...Read More
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Amazon.com has announced “The Amazon Editors’ Best Books of 2022 So Far,” with an overall Top 20 and numerous category lists.
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel (Knopf) and The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi (Tor) both made the Top 20.
Sea of Tranquility is their “pick for the best science fiction and fantasy book of the year so far.” The rest of the SF/Fantasy list is: ...Read More
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GigaNotoSaurus 3/22 Cast of Wonders 2-3/22 Escape Pod 3/22
The March story from GigaNotoSaurus is a wonderful take on space opera in “The Law of Take” by Isabel Cañas. Vis has risen from a childhood of poverty all the way to empress, all on the idea that she needs to take what she wants. Money, power, influence – and yet when it comes to love, taking what ...Read More
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The Robert E. Howard (REH) Foundation has announced the winners of the 2022 Robert E. Howard Awards.
The Atlantean – Outstanding Achievement, Book (non-anthology/collection)
The Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association (CSFFA) announced three inductees to the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame for 2022: Julie E. Czerneda, Ed Greenwood, and Hayden Trenholm. The inductees were selected from a group of twelve nominees.
Hall of Fame inductees are usually honored during the Aurora Awards ceremony, which is scheduled as an online event for August 13, 2022 at 7:00 p.m. EDT, hosted by ...Read More
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Tell Me an Ending, Jo Harkin (Scribner 978-1-98216-432-4, $27.99, 448pp, hc) March 2022
Somewhere, I imagine Jo Harkin has a bookshelf groaning under the weight of Norton anthologies – at least 2 volumes. I believe this not just because her bio says she studied literature at uni, but because her debut novel, Tell Me an Ending, delicately honors classic narrative structures that are rare in contemporary science fiction.
In ...Read More
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October, October by Katya Balen, illustrated by Angela Harding (Bloomsbury) has won the 2022 Carnegie Medal for best children’s book. Balen’s previous work includes Maggie and the Moonbird (Bloomsbury). The shortlist featured a number of authors and works of genre interest.
The awards are presented by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP). The winners were announced in a ceremony at the British Library in London, UK. Balen ...Read More
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The The Book of Form & Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki (Viking) has won the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction. The prize celebrates “excellence, originality and accessibility in writing by women throughout the world.”
The winner receives £30,000 and a bronze “Bessie” trophy. The 2022 judges were Lorraine Candy, Dorothy Koomson, Anita Sethi, Mary Ann Sieghart (chair), and Pandora Sykes.
For more information, including the complete shortlist, see their official website.
James Patterson has posted an apology for comments he recently made in a Times interview:
I apologize for saying white male writers having trouble finding work is a form of racism. I absolutely do not believe that racism is practiced against white writers. Please know that I strongly support a diversity of voices being heard — in literature, in Hollywood, everywhere.
The Times article, titled “James Patterson: white male writers ...Read More
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