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BALDWIN, STYRON, AND ME longlisted for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

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We’re thrilled to share that this morning, on Thursday, October 23, the longlist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction was announced, and included Baldwin, Styron, and Me by Mélikah Abdelmoumen, translated by Catherine Khordoc. The full longlist can be viewed here.

The shortlist will be announced on November 18, and the two medal winners will be announced on January 27, 2026.

The Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction, established in 2012, recognize the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published in the US in the previous year and serve as a guide to help adults select quality reading material. They are the first single-book awards for adult books given by the American Library Association and reflect the expert judgment and insight of library professionals who work closely with adult readers. The winning authors (one for fiction, one for nonfiction) receive a $5,000 cash award.

Grab a copy of Baldwin, Styron, and Me here!

ABOUT BALDWIN, STYRON, AND ME

Longlisted for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • Finalist for the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award in Translation • Finalist for the 2025 John Glassco Translation Prize

In 1961, James Baldwin spent several months in William Styron’s guest house. The two wrote during the day, then spent evenings confiding in each other and talking about race in America. During one of those conversations, Baldwin is said to have convinced his friend to write, in first person, the story of the 1831 slave rebellion led by Nat Turner. The Confessions of Nat Turner was published to critical acclaim, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1968, and also creating outrage in part of the African American community.

Decades later, the controversy around cultural appropriation, identity, and the rights and responsibilities of the writer still resonates. In Baldwin, Styron, and Me, Mélikah Abdelmoumen considers the writers’ surprising yet vital friendship from her standpoint as a racialized woman torn by the often unidimensional versions of her identity put forth by today’s politics and media. Considering questions of identity, race, equity, and the often contentious public debates about these topics, Abdelmoumen works to create a space where the answers are found by first learning how to listen—even in disagreement.

ABOUT MELIKAH ABDELMOUMEN

Mélikah Abdelmoumen was born in Chicoutimi in 1972. She lived in Lyon, France, from 2005 to 2017. She holds a PhD in literary studies from the Université de Montréal and has published many articles, short stories, novels, and essays, including Les désastrées (2013), Douze ans en France (2018), and Petite-Ville (2024). She worked as an editor with the Groupe Ville-Marie Littérature in Montreal until 2021. She was the editor-in-chief of Lettres québécoises, a Québec literary magazine, from 2021 to 2024. Baldwin, Styron, and Me is her tenth book (and the first to be translated).

ABOUT CATHERINE KHORDOC

Catherine Khordoc is a professor of French and Canadian Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. She is the author of Tours et détours: Le mythe de Babel dans la littérature contemporaine (University of Ottawa Press, 2012). She also considers herself in many ways a frontier-dweller.

2025 Governor General’s Literary Award Finalists: BALDWIN, STYRON, AND ME and MAY OUR JOY ENDURE

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We’re excited to share that this morning on Tuesday, October 21, two Biblioasis books were announced as finalists for the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation: Catherine Khordoc’s translation of Baldwin, Styron, and Me by Mélikah Abdelmoumen and Donald Winkler’s translation of May Our Joy Endure by Kev Lambert!

View the full finalists announcement on the GG Books website here.

The Canada Council for the Arts funds, administers and actively promotes the Governor General’s Literary Awards (GGBooks) which celebrate literature and inspire people to read books by creators from Canada. The award provides finalists and winners with valuable recognition from peers and readers across the country. The monetary award for finalists is $1,000, and $25,000 for each winning book.

The winners of each category will be announced on Thursday, November 6.

About BALDWIN, STYRON, AND ME

Finalist for the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award in Translation • Finalist for the 2025 John Glassco Translation Prize

In 1961, James Baldwin spent several months in William Styron’s guest house. The two wrote during the day, then spent evenings confiding in each other and talking about race in America. During one of those conversations, Baldwin is said to have convinced his friend to write, in first person, the story of the 1831 slave rebellion led by Nat Turner. The Confessions of Nat Turner was published to critical acclaim, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1968, and also creating outrage in part of the African American community.

Decades later, the controversy around cultural appropriation, identity, and the rights and responsibilities of the writer still resonates. In Baldwin, Styron, and Me, Mélikah Abdelmoumen considers the writers’ surprising yet vital friendship from her standpoint as a racialized woman torn by the often unidimensional versions of her identity put forth by today’s politics and media. Considering questions of identity, race, equity, and the often contentious public debates about these topics, Abdelmoumen works to create a space where the answers are found by first learning how to listen—even in disagreement.

Catherine Khordoc is a professor of French and Canadian Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. She is the author of Tours et détours: Le mythe de Babel dans la littérature contemporaine (University of Ottawa Press, 2012). She also considers herself in many ways a frontier-dweller.

Grab a copy of Baldwin, Styron, and Me here!

About MAY OUR JOY ENDURE

Finalist for the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award in Translation • A Walrus Best Book of Fall 2024 • A Globe 100 Best Book of 2024 • Winner of the 2023 Prix Médicis, Prix Décembre, and Prix Ringuet

Céline Wachowski, internationally renowned architect and accidental digital-culture icon, unveils her plans for the Webuy Complex, her first megaproject in Montreal, her hometown. But instead of the triumph she anticipates in finally bringing her reputation to bear in her own city, the project is excoriated by critics, who accuse her of callously destroying the social fabric of neighborhoods, ushering in a new era of gentrification, and many even deadlier sins. When she is deposed as CEO of her firm, Céline must make sense of the charges against herself and the people in her elite circle. For the first time in danger of losing their footing, what fictions must they tell themselves to justify their privilege and maintain their position in the world that they themselves have built?

Moving fluidly between Céline’s perspective and the perspectives of her critics, and revealing both the ruthlessness of her methods and the brilliance of her aesthetic vision, May Our Joy Endure is a shrewd examination of the microcosm of the ultra-privileged and a dazzling social novel that depicts with razor-sharp acuity the terrible beauty of wealth, influence, and art.

Donald Winkler is a translator of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. He is a three-time winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for French-to-English translation. He lives in Montreal.

Grab a copy of May Our Joy Endure here!

THE HOLLOW BEAST and UNMET shortlisted for the QWF Literary Awards!

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We’re thrilled to share that today, on Wednesday, October 15, two Biblioasis books have been announced as finalists for the 2025 Quebec Writers’ Federation Literary Awards! UNMET by stephanie roberts was shortlisted for the A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry, and Lazer Lederhendler’s translation of The Hollow Beast by Christophe Bernard was shortlisted for the Cole Foundation Prize for Translation.

View the full finalists announcement on the QWF website here.

The winners of QWF Literary Awards’ seven prestigious prizes will be announced at the 2025 QWF Literary Awards Gala on Monday, November 10 at Cabaret Lion d’Or (1676 Ontario St. E.). The ceremony begins at 8:00 pm, preceded by a cocktail reception from 6:30 to 7:30 pm. The event will be hosted by broadcaster, arts journalist, and translator Shelley Pomerance.

Each award comes with a purse of $3,000. The cash prize for the Ian Ferrier Spoken Word Prize will be split equally between one to three winners.

About UNMET

This is what comes of taking dreams / off the horizon. It is the sun / or nothing else, you would scream / if you weren’t caught up in the chorus.

Leaning deliberately on the imagined while scrutinizing reality and hoping for the as-yet-unseen, UNMET explores frustration, justice, and thwarted rescue from a perspective that is Black-Latinx, Canadian, immigrant, and female. Drawing on a wide range of poetics, from Wallace Stevens to Diane Seuss, roberts’s musically-driven narrative surrealism confronts such timely issues as police brutality, respectability politics, intimate partner violence, and ecological crisis, and considers the might-have-been alongside the what-could-be, negotiating with the past without losing hope for the future.

stephanie roberts is the prize-winning author of the poetry collections UNMET and rushes from the river disappointment, which was a finalist for the 2020 A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry. Her work has been critically praised and widely featured in numerous periodicals and anthologies such as Poetry, Arc Poetry, Event Magazine, The New Quarterly, Verse Daily, Crannóg (Ireland), The Stockholm Review of Literature, and elsewhere. Winner of The Sixty-Four: Best Poets of 2018 (Black Mountain Press), she was born in Panama, grew up in NYC, and has lived most of her life in Quebec.

Grab a copy of UNMET here!

About THE HOLLOW BEAST

Winner of the 2025 French-American Translation Prize in Fiction • Finalist for the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award in Translation • A Globe and Mail Most Anticipated Spring Title

1911. A hockey game in Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula. With the score tied two-two in overtime, local tough guy Billy Joe Pictou fires the puck directly into Monti Bouge’s mouth. When Pictou’s momentum carries them both across the goal line in a spray of shattered teeth, Victor Bradley, erstwhile referee and local mailman, rules that the goal counts—and Monti’s ensuing revenge for this injustice sprawls across three generations, one hundred years, and dozens of dastardly deeds. Fuelled by a bottomless supply of Yukon, the high-proof hooch that may or may not cause the hallucinatory sightings of a technicolor beast that haunts not just Monti but his descendants, it’s up to Monti’s grandson François—and his floundering doctoral dissertation—to make sense of the vendetta that’s shaped the destiny of their town and everyone in it. Brilliantly translated into slapstick English by Lazer Lederhendler, The Hollow Beast introduces Christophe Bernard as a master of epic comedy.

Lazer Lederhendler is a veteran literary translator specializing in Québécois fiction and non-fiction. He has also translated 20th-century Yiddish literature. His work has earned distinctions in Canada, the UK, and the USA, most recently the French-American Foundation’s 2025 Translation Prize for The Hollow Beast. Among the authors he has translated are Gaétan Soucy, Nicolas Dickner, Edem Awumey, Perrine Leblanc, Catherine Leroux, Alain Farah, Itzik Manger and Melekh Ravitch. He lives in Montreal with the artist Pierrette Bouchard.

Grab a copy of The Hollow Beast here!

CROSSES IN THE SKY shortlisted for the J.W. Dafoe Book Prize!

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We’re thrilled to share that on September 25, 2025, the shortlist for the 2025 J.W. Dafoe Book Prize was announced, and included Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia by Mark Bourrie! View the full shortlist and announcement on their website here.

The winner of the J.W. Dafoe Book Prize, valued at $12,000, will be announced on October 14.

The J.W. Dafoe Prize memorializes Canadian editor John Wesley Dafoe, and is one of the richest book awards for exceptional non-fiction about Canada, Canadians, and the nation in international affairs.

A huge congratulations to Mark from all of us at Biblioasis.

Grab a copy of the book here!

ABOUT CROSSES IN THE SKY

From the bestselling author of Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre Esprit-Radisson

This is the story of the collision of two worlds. In the early 1600s, the Jesuits—the Catholic Church’s most ferocious warriors for Christ—tried to create their own nation on the Great Lakes and turn the Huron (Wendat) Confederacy into a model Jesuit state. At the centre of their campaign was missionary Jean de Brébeuf, a mystic who sought to die a martyr’s death. He lived among a proud people who valued kindness and rights for all, especially women. In the end, Huronia was destroyed. Brébeuf became a Catholic saint, and the Jesuit’s “martyrdom” became one of the founding myths of Canada.

In this first secular biography of Brébeuf, historian Mark Bourrie, bestselling author of Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson, recounts the missionary’s fascinating life and tells the tragic story of the remarkable people he lived among. Drawing on the letters and documents of the time—including Brébeuf’s accounts of his bizarre spirituality—and modern studies of the Jesuits, Bourrie shows how Huron leaders tried to navigate this new world and the people struggled to cope as their nation came apart. Riveting, clearly told, and deeply researched, Crosses in the Sky is an essential addition to—and expansion of—Canadian history.

ABOUT MARK BOURRIE

Mark Bourrie is an Ottawa-based author, lawyer, and journalist. He holds a master’s in journalism from Carleton University and a PhD in history from the University of Ottawa. In 2017, he was awarded a Juris Doctor degree and was called to the bar in 2018. He has won numerous awards for his journalism, including a National Magazine Award, and received the RBC Charles Taylor Prize in 2020 for his book Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson. His most recent books include Big Men Fear Me: The Fast Life and Quick Death of Canada’s Most Powerful Media Mogul, the national bestseller Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia, and Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre.

CROSSES IN THE SKY longlisted for the J.W. Dafoe Book Prize

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We’re excited to share that on September 2, 2025, the longlist for the 2025 J.W. Dafoe Book Prize was announced, and included Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia by Mark Bourrie! View the full longlist and announcement on their website here.

The shortlist will be announced on September 25, and the winner of the J.W. Dafoe Book Prize, valued at $12,000, will be named on October 14.

The J.W. Dafoe Prize memorializes Canadian editor John Wesley Dafoe, and is one of the richest book awards for exceptional non-fiction about Canada, Canadians, and the nation in international affairs.

Congratulations to Mark from all of us at Biblioasis.

Grab a copy of the book here!

ABOUT CROSSES IN THE SKY

From the bestselling author of Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre Esprit-Radisson

This is the story of the collision of two worlds. In the early 1600s, the Jesuits—the Catholic Church’s most ferocious warriors for Christ—tried to create their own nation on the Great Lakes and turn the Huron (Wendat) Confederacy into a model Jesuit state. At the centre of their campaign was missionary Jean de Brébeuf, a mystic who sought to die a martyr’s death. He lived among a proud people who valued kindness and rights for all, especially women. In the end, Huronia was destroyed. Brébeuf became a Catholic saint, and the Jesuit’s “martyrdom” became one of the founding myths of Canada.

In this first secular biography of Brébeuf, historian Mark Bourrie, bestselling author of Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson, recounts the missionary’s fascinating life and tells the tragic story of the remarkable people he lived among. Drawing on the letters and documents of the time—including Brébeuf’s accounts of his bizarre spirituality—and modern studies of the Jesuits, Bourrie shows how Huron leaders tried to navigate this new world and the people struggled to cope as their nation came apart. Riveting, clearly told, and deeply researched, Crosses in the Sky is an essential addition to—and expansion of—Canadian history.

ABOUT MARK BOURRIE

Mark Bourrie is an Ottawa-based author, lawyer, and journalist. He holds a master’s in journalism from Carleton University and a PhD in history from the University of Ottawa. In 2017, he was awarded a Juris Doctor degree and was called to the bar in 2018. He has won numerous awards for his journalism, including a National Magazine Award, and received the RBC Charles Taylor Prize in 2020 for his book Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson. His most recent books include Big Men Fear Me: The Fast Life and Quick Death of Canada’s Most Powerful Media Mogul, the national bestseller Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia, and Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre.

THE HOLLOW BEAST wins the French-American Translation Prize!

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We’re thrilled to share that on June 5, 2025, the French-American Foundation announced that Lazer Lederhendler, translator of The Hollow Beast by Christophe Bernard, is the winner of the 2025 French-American Translation Prize in Fiction! View the official announcement here. You can also read an interview with Lazer from the Foundation here.

Since 1986, the French-American Foundation has awarded the Translation Prize for the best translation from French to English in both fiction and nonfiction, guiding these important works of French literature to the American market. The prize is awarded to translators to recognize and celebrate their work.

Publisher Dan Wells says of the win:

“Lazer Lederhendler has long been one of the best translators of Quebecois literature in the world. His translations of Nicholas Dickner, Alain Farah, Catherine Leroux, Pascale Quiviger, and others rank among the best published in this country, and we’ve long marvelled at his range and dexterity. With his translation of Christophe Bernard’s Le Bête Creuse, Lazer set himself one of the largest challenges of his career, a quixotically gargantuan beast bred on joual, wordplay, and slapstick. But Lazer has delivered a brilliant rendition of the Quebecois original, and we’re so very grateful that the French American Foundation judges have honoured Lazer’s work as this year’s fiction winner.”

This will be the second Biblioasis title to win the award within the last three years.

Lazer, along with Nonfiction winner John Lambert, will be awarded at an Awards Ceremony on June 25 in New York City. The event is free with RSVP, and seating is limited and first-come, first-served. The Translation Prize, funded by the generous support of the Florence Gould Foundation, is one of the flagship programs of the French American Foundation.

Grab a copy of The Hollow Beast here!

ABOUT THE HOLLOW BEAST

Winner of the 2025 French-American Translation Prize • Finalist for the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award in Translation • A Globe and Mail Most Anticipated Spring Title

Don Quixote meets Who Framed Roger Rabbit in this slapstick epic about destiny, family demons, and revenge. 

1911. A hockey game in Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula. With the score tied two-two in overtime, local tough guy Billy Joe Pictou fires the puck directly into Monti Bouge’s mouth. When Pictou’s momentum carries them both across the goal line in a spray of shattered teeth, Victor Bradley, erstwhile referee and local mailman, rules that the goal counts—and Monti’s ensuing revenge for this injustice sprawls across three generations, one hundred years, and dozens of dastardly deeds. Fuelled by a bottomless supply of Yukon, the high-proof hooch that may or may not cause the hallucinatory sightings of a technicolor beast that haunts not just Monti but his descendants, it’s up to Monti’s grandson François—and his floundering doctoral dissertation—to make sense of the vendetta that’s shaped the destiny of their town and everyone in it. Brilliantly translated into slapstick English by Lazer Lederhendler, The Hollow Beast introduces Christophe Bernard as a master of epic comedy.

Photo Credit: Monique Dykstra

ABOUT LAZER LEDERHENDLER

Lazer Lederhendler is a veteran literary translator based in Montreal and specializing in contemporary Québécois fiction and nonfiction. He is a three-time winner of both the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Cole Foundation Translation Prize of the Quebec Writers Federation. His rendering of Nicolas Dickner’s novel Nikolski (Random House Canada) won the 2010 Canada Reads competition. His translations have twice been finalists for the Scotiabank-Giller Prize.

THE HOLLOW BEAST a finalist for the French-American Translation Prize!

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We’re thrilled to share that on April 10, the French-American Foundation announced the finalists for the 2025 French-American Translation Prize, which included The Hollow Beast by Christophe Bernard, translated by Lazer Lederhendler!

Since 1986, the French-American Foundation has awarded the Translation Prize for the best translation from French to English in both fiction and nonfiction, guiding these important works of French literature to the American market. The prize is awarded to translators to recognize and celebrate their work.

Winners of the 38th Annual Translation Prize will be announced in May 2025 and celebrated at an Awards Ceremony in June in New York City. The Translation Prize, funded by the generous support of the Florence Gould Foundation, is one of the flagship programs of the French American Foundation.

Grab a copy of The Hollow Beast here!

ABOUT THE HOLLOW BEAST

Finalist for the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award in Translation • Finalist for the 2025 French-American Translation Prize • A Globe and Mail Most Anticipated Spring Title

Don Quixote meets Who Framed Roger Rabbit in this slapstick epic about destiny, family demons, and revenge. 

1911. A hockey game in Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula. With the score tied two-two in overtime, local tough guy Billy Joe Pictou fires the puck directly into Monti Bouge’s mouth. When Pictou’s momentum carries them both across the goal line in a spray of shattered teeth, Victor Bradley, erstwhile referee and local mailman, rules that the goal counts—and Monti’s ensuing revenge for this injustice sprawls across three generations, one hundred years, and dozens of dastardly deeds. Fuelled by a bottomless supply of Yukon, the high-proof hooch that may or may not cause the hallucinatory sightings of a technicolor beast that haunts not just Monti but his descendants, it’s up to Monti’s grandson François—and his floundering doctoral dissertation—to make sense of the vendetta that’s shaped the destiny of their town and everyone in it. Brilliantly translated into slapstick English by Lazer Lederhendler, The Hollow Beast introduces Christophe Bernard as a master

Photo Credit: Monique Dykstra

of epic comedy.

ABOUT LAZER LEDERHENDLER

Lazer Lederhendler is a full-time literary translator specializing in Québécois fiction and non-fiction. His translations have earned awards and distinctions in Canada, the UK, and the US. He has translated the works of noted authors, including Gaétan Soucy, Nicolas Dickner, Edem Awumey, Perrine Leblanc, and Catherine Leroux. He lives in Montreal with the visual artist Pierrette Bouchard.

THE PAGES OF THE SEA shortlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize in Fiction!

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We’re thrilled to share that this week, The Pages of the Sea by Anne Hawk was announced as making the fiction category shortlist for the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature! The announcement was made on Sunday, March 16, and can be read in full here.

The judges stated,

“[The Pages of the Sea] brings new energy and form to a familiar Caribbean childhood, that of the pain and desolation of the child left behind when a parent migrates . . . The prose has an immediacy that matches the girl’s intensity, as well as her confusion about what secrets the adults around her appear to be hiding.”

The winners in the three genre categories will be announced on 6 April, and the overall winner will be announced on 3 May at the 2025 Bocas Lit Fest.

The OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature is an annual award for literary books by Caribbean writers, first presented in 2011. Books are judged in three categories: poetry; fiction—both novels and collections of short stories; and literary nonfiction. A panel of three judges for each genre category determine category shortlists and winners, before the three category winners are then judged by a panel of four judges—consisting of the chairs of the category panels and the prize chair—who determine the overall winner. The author of the book judged the overall winner will receive an award of US$10,000. The other category winners will receive US$3,000.

Get your copy of The Pages of the Sea here!

ABOUT THE PAGES OF THE SEA

Shortlisted for the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize in Fiction • A Globe 100 Best Book of 2024 • A Guardian Best Fiction Book of 2024 • A CBC Best Fiction Book of the Year

On a Caribbean island in the mid-1960s, a young girl copes with the heavy cost of migration.

When her mother emigrates to England to find work, Wheeler and her older sisters are left to live with their aunts and cousins. She spends most days with her cousin Donelle, knocking about their island community. They know they must address their elders properly and change their shoes after church. And during the long, quiet weeks of Lent, when the absent sound of the radio seems to follow them down the road, they look forward to kite season. But Donelle is just a child, too, and though her sisters look after her with varying levels of patience, Wheeler couldn’t feel more alone. Everyone tells her that soon her mother will send for her, but how much longer will it be? And as she does her best to navigate the tensions between her aunts, why does it feel like there’s no one looking out for her at all?

Credit: Panagiotis Ziakas

A story of sisterhood, secrets, and the sacrifices of love, The Pages of the Sea is a tenderly lyrical portrait of innocence and an intensely moving evocation of what it’s like to be a child left behind.

ABOUT ANNE HAWK

Anne Hawk grew up in the Caribbean, the UK and Canada. She has worked as a journalist, a paralegal and was for many years a secondary school teacher. She is married and lives in London. The Pages of the Sea is her first novel.

YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize (US/Can)!

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Biblioasis is excited to share that Your Absence Is Darkness by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, translated by Philip Roughton, was longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness US and Canada Prize! The longlist announcement was made on January 15, 2025, and can be viewed here.

Originally restricted to books published in the UK, the Prize’s remit was expanded in 2022 by Lori Feathers, who launched a separate award for the US and Canada. About this year’s longlist, she says:

“In its third year, the Prize continues to grow in the number of submissions received from extraordinary small presses in the United States and Canada. As our longlist demonstrates, the work of independent publishing is vibrant and diverse. We are proud to include books in translation, works of innovative storytelling, and publishers new to our longlist. It’s a great time to celebrate the work of these publishers, authors, and translators.”

A total of $35,000 USD will be distributed to the presses and the authors. Each press with a longlisted book will receive $2,000. Five shortlisted books will be rewarded an additional $3,000 each, split equally between publisher and author, or publisher, author, and translator where applicable.

A virtual party celebrating the longlist, with publishers, authors, and translators, will take place on Wednesday, February 19 at 6pm CT. Members of the public are encouraged to join for free on Zoom. The shortlist of five books will be announced on Thursday, February 27 and the winner announced on Wednesday, March 12.

Grab your copy of Your Absence Is Darkness here!

ABOUT YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS

Longlisted for the 2024 Republic of Consciousness US and Canada Prize • A World Literature Today Notable Translation of 2024 • A Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2024

A man comes to awareness in a cold church in the Icelandic countryside, not knowing who he is, why he’s there or how he arrived, with a stranger staring mockingly from a few pews back. Startled by the man’s cryptic questions, he leaves—and plunges into a history spanning centuries, a past pressed into his genes that sinks him closer to some knowledge of himself. A city girl is drawn to the fjords by the memory of a blue-eyed gaze, and a generation earlier, a farmer’s wife writes an essay about earthworms that changes the course of lives. A pastor who writes letters to dead poets falls in love with a faraway stranger, and a rock musician, plagued by cosmic loneliness, discovers that his past has been a lie. Faced with the violence of fate and the effects of choices, made and avoided, that cascade between them, each discovers the cost of following the magnetic needle of the heart.

Incandescent and elemental, hope-filled and humane, Your Absence Is Darkness is a comedy about mortality, music, and the strange salve of time, and a spellbinding saga of death, desire, and the perfect agony of star-crossed love.

Photo Credit: Einar Falur Ingólfsson

ABOUT JON KALMAN STEFANSSON

Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s novels have been nominated three times for the Nordic Council Prize for Literature, and his novel Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night received the Icelandic Prize for Literature in 2005. In 2011 he was awarded the prestigious P. O. Enquist Award. He is perhaps best known for his trilogy: Heaven and Hell, The Sorrow of Angels (longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize) and The Heart of Man (winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize). A subsequent novel, Fish Have No Feet, was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2017.

ABOUT PHILIP ROUGHTON

Philip Roughton is a scholar of Old Norse and medieval literature and an award-winning translator of Icelandic literature, having translated works by numerous writers including Halldór Laxness. He was the winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize for his translation of Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s The Heart of Man, and shortlisted for the same prize for About the Size of the Universe.

DREAMING HOME wins the 2024 Fred Kerner Book Award!

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We’re excited to share that Dreaming Home by Lucian Childs has won the Canadian Authors’ Association’s 2024 Fred Kerner Book Award! View the official announcement here.

On Dreaming Home, one judge commented,

“From the opening sentence we know we’re in the hands of a master craftsman. This novel opens up through multiple, connected points of view into a landscape that’s deeply problematic: from the damaged father, through the gay son who refuses to accept the deal he’s been dealt, to the sister who propelled them into this abyss. Trauma impacts them all in unexpected and illuminating ways. Challenging and poignant, but ultimately joyful.”

Another judge praised,

“A poignant and sensitively written story of the profound repercussions of a forced outage of a young boy by his sibling and the decades-long fallout that ensues for him, his family members, and his lovers. Told from multiple perspectives, the narrative is compelling and heartbreaking, with a gentle hint of humour.”

The Fred Kerner Book Award is awarded annually to a Canadian Authors Association member who has the best overall book published in the previous calendar year, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

Grab a copy of Dreaming Home here!

ABOUT DREAMING HOME

Winner of the 2024 Fred Kerner Book Award • Shortlisted for the 2024 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize • A Globe and Mail Best Spring Book • One of Lambda Literary Review‘s Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books of June 2023 • A Southern Review Book to Celebrate in June 2023 • A 49th Shelf Best Book of 2023

When a sister’s casual act of betrayal awakens their father’s demons—ones spawned by his time in Vietnamese POW camps—the effects of the ensuing violence against her brother ripple out over the course of forty years, from Lubbock, to San Francisco, to Fort Lauderdale. Swept up in this arc, the members of this family and their loved ones tell their tales. A queer coming-of-age, and coming-to-terms, and a poignant exploration of all the ways we search for home, Dreaming Home is the unforgettable story of the fragmenting of an American family.

Credit: Marc Lostracco

ABOUT LUCIAN CHILDS

Lucian Childs is a fiction writer living in Toronto, Ontario. His debut novel-in-stories, Dreaming Home (Biblioasis 2023), was the winner of the Fred Kerner Book Award and was shortlisted for the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in literary fiction. He was a Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, a recipient of the Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Project Award and a finalist for the Faulkner-Wisdom Short Story Award. He is a contributing editor of Lambda Literary Award finalist, Building Fires in the Snow: A Collection of Alaska LGBTQ Short Fiction and Poetry. His stories and book reviews have appeared in the literary journals Grain, Plenitude, The Ex-Puritan and Prairie Fire, among others. For more about his work, please visit www.lucianchilds.com.

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