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In case you’ve been living in a hole (or buried under a pile of work like me), maybe you haven’t heard about the 2010 Hans Christian Andersen Award nominees for the U.S. This award is for an author or illustrator’s complete body of works, and the selection process sort of resembles how the Olympics committee chooses the next city [...]

Great list on Listverse: “15 Influential Early Works of Apocalyptic Fiction” (via American Libraries Direct). It’s somewhat similar to the “End of the World Literature List” from AbeBooks, with the distinction that THESE post-apocalyptic works were all written pre-Atomic Age; both lists include earlier works than my “Core Collection: Before and After The Road” (although I was the only [...]

In my interview with fantasy scribe T. A. Barron, he tells how, when he quit his venture capital job to write books, a partner tried to refer him to a therapist. Many striving writers face similar reactions when they make the plunge, and no wonder: it can be a quixotic quest, and all too often [...]

After getting a ton of ink in 2008 (much of it electric ink right here at Likely Stories), Sherry Jones’ controversial Jewel of Medina hasn’t made much news this year. Now, however, in a story with a tabloid-worthy headline (“Muhammad child bride novel author condemns UK ‘censorship’,” by Alison Flood) The Guardian reports that Jones “has [...]

Acclaimed Canadian short story writer Alice Munro (Runaway, 2004) was named the third- ever winner of International Man-Booker today. The award is announced every two years and nets the winner a £60,000 prize. The timing for Munro is great; her latest short story collection, forbodingly named Too Much Happiness, will be released in October.

So I was perusing the list of the 2009 Eisner Awards nominations this morning (I’m most invested in seeing the results for this category: Best Publication for Teens/Tweens Coraline, by Neil Gaiman, adapted by P. Craig Russell (HarperCollins Children’s Books) Crogan’s Vengeance, by Chris Schweizer (Oni) The Good Neighbors, Book 1: Kin, by Holly Black and Ted [...]

The always-worthy Jacket Whys brings to light a potentially ruinous jacket similarity. Just imagine the horrific scenario: Grandma and Grandpa are birthday shopping for young Kayleigh, they stumble into a Borders with a fuzzy mental picture of the book they’re supposed to buy, and they end up bringing home . . . inspiring words of [...]

Corporal Graff here, reporting that I won’t be reporting for duty next week; I’ll be on furlough. (Is that the same thing as shore leave? What if you’re already on shore? Does that mean I can spend the week on the lake? Tell me!) Anywho, while I’m drinking rum out of a coconut (or coffee [...]

We don’t usually report on the Glauser Award, said to be Germany’s “most prestigious crime writing prize,” but this time I can’t resist: Hans Werner Kettenbach has won the award for lifetime achievement. Reviewing Black Ice (2006), Glauser’s first novel to be published in English, Frank Sennett wrote: In what amounts to a virtuoso shaggy-dog story, Kettenbach provides [...]

In a former life, I interviewed movie stars. I can tell you what Russell Crowe smells like, what Neve Campbell drinks, and what Ben Kingsley would really rather be talking about. But here’s the main revelation: hanging out with movie stars, as it turns out, is kind of a drag. Which is why, these days, [...]