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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.

BREAKING AND ENTERING longlisted for the REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS US & CANADA PRIZE!

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Biblioasis is thrilled to share that the longlist for the second annual Republic of Consciousness Prize (US and Canada) worth $35,000 was announced, and it includes Breaking and Entering by Don Gillmor (Aug 15, 2023)! The prize celebrates the commitment of small presses to exceptional literary merit.

Biblioasis publisher Dan Wells says,

“We’re so pleased that Don Gillmor’s Breaking and Entering has made the Republic of Consciousness Prize longlist. As independent booksellers and publishers both, we know how stiff the competition is. I’ve admired this prize since its inception in the UK several years ago, especially the way it highlights both often overlooked books published by smaller independent presses and those very same independent presses themselves. If people paid more attention to who published their favorite books, they’d be disappointed less often: this list is a way to discover things you might otherwise have missed, including Don’s novel, a savage and bleakly funny revelation of the rot and rage resting under the veneer of polite company.”

Chosen from dozens of submissions, the longlist for the Republic of Consciousness US & Canada Prize includes a range of novels and short story collections, including those written in English or another language. Jury Chair Lori Feathers said:

“In this, our second year honoring small publishers in the United States and Canada, we are excited to once again celebrate the accomplishments of independent presses. These longlisted titles highlight the indispensable role of small publishers in bringing books to print that expand the idea of great literature, privileging exceptional writing over commercial sales. Their work demonstrates courage and a commitment to ensuring that fiction of the highest quality and imagination finds its readers.”

A Zoom party celebrating the longlist, with publishers, authors and translators, will take place on Tuesday, February 27 at 6PM CT. The shortlist of five books will be announced on Tuesday, March 5 and the winner announced on Tuesday, March 19. More information about the Republic of Consciousness Prize, founded in 2022, can be found here.

Get your copy of Breaking and Entering here!

ABOUT BREAKING AND ENTERING

An Oprah Daily Best Book of 2023 • One of the Globe and Mail’s Most Anticipated Titles of 2023 • Listed in CBC Books Fiction to Read in Fall 2023 • A 49th Shelf Fall Book To Put On Your List • One of the Globe 100’s Best Books of 2023

During the hottest summer on record, Bea’s dangerous new hobby puts everyone’s sense of security to the test.

Forty-nine and sweating through the hottest summer on record, Beatrice Billings is rudderless: her marriage is stale, her son communicates solely through cryptic text messages, her mother has dementia, and she conducts endless arguments with her older sister in her head. Toronto feels like an inadequately air-conditioned museum of its former self, and the same could be said of her life. She dreams of the past, her days as a newlywed, a new mom, a new homeowner gutting the kitchen—now the only novel experience that looms is the threat of divorce.

Credit: Ryan Szulc

Everything changes when she googles “escape” and discovers the world of amateur lock-picking. Breaking into houses is thrilling: she’s subtle and discreet, never greedy, but as her curiosity about other people’s lives becomes a dangerous compulsion and the entire city feels a few degrees from boiling over, she realizes she must turn her guilty analysis on herself. A searingly insightful rendering of midlife among the anxieties of the early twenty-first century, Breaking and Entering is an exacting look at the fragility of all the things we take on faith.

ABOUT DON GILLMOR

Don Gillmor is the author of To the River, which won the Governor General’s Award for nonfiction. He is the author of three novels, Long Change, Mount Pleasant, and Kanata, a two-volume history of Canada, Canada: A People’s History, and nine books for children, two of which were nominated for the Governor General’s Award. He was a senior editor at The Walrus, and his journalism has appeared in Rolling Stone, GQ, The Walrus, Saturday Night, Toronto Life, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. He has won twelve National Magazine Awards and numerous other honours. He lives in Toronto.