Linda Zecher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt CEO Linda K. Zecher has resigned after five years in the position, and the company has launched a search for her replacement, the Wall Street Journal reported. During the search, board member L. Gordon Crovitz will serve as interim CEO.

"The board decided this was a good time to begin a search for the next CEO," said chairman Lawrence K. Fish.

Declining to cite specific reasons for her departure, Zecher told the Journal she was "confident about the direction of the company and the leadership team I put in place. This is the best education company in the country, one focused on finding technological solutions that will result in better learning outcomes for children."

For the third year in a row, Politics & Prose, Washington, D.C., will be the official bookseller at the National Book Festival, which will take place tomorrow. As in the past, some American Booksellers Association staffers will provide promotional and other assistance. In addition, several publishers' reps and Ingram staff will help out in the P&P sales area, along with some 15 Junior League of Washington volunteers.

P&P co-owner Bradley Graham said, "We're excited to be involved again with the festival. Seeing the crowds that turn out each year for the many author talks and book signings is always a thrill, and a reminder of how much people continue to value the chance to celebrate their literary experiences."

The 16th annual National Book Festival, whose main sponsor is the Library of Congress, takes place at the Washington Convention Center. The festival will feature talks by some 120 authors, illustrators and poets on more than a dozen stages, as well as panel discussions on mystery novels, editorial cartooning and adapting books to movies, plus an evening poetry slam. Among authors appearing are Stephen King, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shonda Rhimes, Bob Woodward, Raina Telgemeier, Salman Rushdie, Colson Whitehead, Rep. John Lewis, Kwame Alexander, Adam Gopnik, Gene Luen Yang and Hervé Tullet.

Island Bound Bookstore on Block Island, Rhode Island, which was put up for sale by owner Cindy Lasser in February, will close at the end of January after 21 years in business if no buyer has been found. Noting that the asking price for the business is $82,000, the Providence Journal described the shop as a "charming bookstore on an idyllic island a stone's throw from the surf, the sand, the ocean breezes and the only Post Office within 13 nautical miles of mainland Rhode Island."

"I just want to do something else. I am ready to move on," said Lasser, adding: "We make our rent.... We have made money every single year, even the unmentionable hiccup year of the financial wipeout.... It is a good little moneymaker."

The store has succeeded "in part, because she can order from either one of two book distributors in Pennsylvania at 1 p.m. on a Monday and get a book in by 3 p.m. the next day, and she has loyal year-round and captive island-vacation customers," the Journal wrote.

Lasser also said the bookstore business has had a resurgence in recent years: "It is all coming back to books again. People are buying more books.... I think people realized that they didn't want to spend their day on a computer, then come home and cuddle up with one.... When they really want to sit down and enjoy a good read, they'd rather do it with a book."

Graphic novelist and MacArthur "genius" Gene Luen Yang

The 23 recipients of this year's MacArthur Foundation "genius" grants--$625,000 paid out over five years to people who "show exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future"--include these authors:

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, playwright and author of Appropriate, An Octoroon and Gloria.

Kellie Jones, art historian and curator, whose works include EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art and the forthcoming South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s.

Josh Kun, cultural historian, and author of, among other titles, Audiotopia, To Live and Dine in LA: Menus and the Making of the Modern City and Songs in the Key of Los Angeles.

Maggie Nelson, writer, whose works include nonfiction like The Red Parts and The Art of Cruelty and books both on poetry and of poetry.

Claudia Rankine, poet and author of five poetry collections.

Lauren Redniss, artist and writer, whose books include Century Girl, Radioactive and Thunder and Lightning.

Gene Luen Yang, graphic novelist, whose work includes American-Born Chinese, Boxers and Saints and the ongoing series Secret Coders.

Barnes & Noble held a ribbon-cutting ceremony recently to open its new bookstore at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo. "Lindenwood is like no other, and that is why Barnes & Noble is here," said manager Virginia Murphy. "We are thankful to Lindenwood for this partnership in creating a one-stop shopping experience for students."

The Eleftheroudakis bookstore in Athens, Greece, will close September 30 "after 21 years in the central location and 100 years in business," according to the Greek Reporter, which noted that the Eleftheroudakis family "started in the book business in 1868 and opened its first store at Syntagma Square in 1918. The famous 24-volume Eleftheroudakis encyclopedia found its place in countless homes and schools." The chain's central Athens store, occupying eight floors, was the last outlet still operating following the closure of some two dozen branches in recent years.

Author Vivek Shanbhag had a pre-pub dinner with the folks from Prairie Lights, Iowa City, Iowa, to share his upcoming novel, Ghachar Ghochar (Penguin; February 2017), the first book ever to be translated from the South India language Kannada to English. Pictured: (l.-r.) Penguin sales rep Stefan Moorehead; author Vivek Shanbhag; and, from Prairie Lights, Kathleen Johnson, Keli Ebensberger and Jan Weissmiller.

"Wherever Changing Hands is, becomes the center of Tempe. It was true when they were on Mill and it's true today about the corner of Guadalupe and McClintock," longtime customer Barbara Colby told the East Valley Tribune, which reported that even though the indie bookstore has "outgrown numerous expansions, become rated among the top indie bookstores in the country and hosted hundreds of celebrity and famous author events, it's stayed true to its humble beginnings. Especially the real lives and unique readers who come looking for answers."

Assistant manager Joel Magruder said the feeling is mutual: "I love our customers because they're actively seeking a better life, looking to know more. My proudest moments here involve drawing a crowd of people to engage about a potentially sensitive issue."

Co-owner Gayle Shanks added: "Books are the building blocks that we are talking about. They hold the ideas of our culture. People are figuring out how their worlds work while reading percolates inside their brains. As a bookseller all these many years, I just know that books change lives.... I tell our new employees, 'You can buy books anywhere. But you can't buy the experience of Changing Hands anywhere but here.' For me, that makes all the difference."

"When you are strolling DTLA's Arts District you can't help but notice the Michael Maltzan-designed, quarter of a mile-long, mixed-use behemoth along Santa Fe between 1st and 4th--One Santa Fe," Los Angeles Magazine wrote, noting in particular "the shopping and eating part of 'mixed-use' dubbed The Yards, which continues to grow underneath the 438 apartments."

Among the businesses highlighted was Hennessey + Ingalls Art & Architecture Bookstore: "Six months ago this primo bookstore closed up its Santa Monica store and moved it here. Smart move considering the number of people in it on a weekend and the architecture school--SCI-Arc--literally across the street. Banksy prints ($200 a pop) cover the back wall, there is every kind of art and architecture magazine in the racks along Santa Fe, and anything you want that is out-of-print is in the back room."

Posted recently on Facebook by the Last Word Bookstore, Fort Worth, Tex.:

"We are adding another book club here at TLW, one that will focus on books about books (and bookstores). There is a wide range of options, both fiction and non-fiction, and there's no better place to start than Helene Hanff's classic 84, Charing Cross Road. We will meet on the first Sunday of each month (84, Charing Cross Road is short enough that you can easily finish by then). Send me a message, comment, or email if you are interested."

After the Dam by Amy Hassinger (Red Hen Press).

Today:
Fresh Air: Mary Karr, author of The Art of Memoir (Harper Perennial, $15.99, 9780062223074).

Sunday:
OWN's Super Soul Sunday: Cookie Johnson, co-author of Believing in Magic: My Story of Love, Overcoming Adversity, and Keeping the Faith (Howard, $26, 9781501125157).

USA Network has given a pilot order to The Sinner, based on Petra Hammesfahr's novel, Deadline reported. Jessica Biel (The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea) will star and executive produce. Created and written by Derek Simonds (The Astronauts Wives Club), the project is being produced by Universal Cable Prods. Antonio Campos (Simon Killer) will direct the pilot. Biel is executive producing with her producing partner Michelle Purple through their company Iron Ocean Films, alongside Simonds and Campos.

Vahni Capildeo won the £15,000 (about $19,590) Forward Prize for the Best Poetry Collection for Measure of Expatriation. Chair of the jury Malika Booker said the book "is a work that amazes. We found a vertiginous excitement in the way in which the book grasps its subject: the sense of never quite being at home. This is poetry that transforms. When people in the future seek to know what it's like to live between places, traditions, habits and cultures, they will read this. Here is the language for what expatriation feels like."

The £5,000 (about $6,530) Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection was awarded to Tiphanie Yanique for Wife. And the winner of the £1,000 ($1,305) prize for Best Single Poem was Sasha Dugdale for "Joy."

---

Taste Canada has unveiled finalists for the Food Writing Awards, "recognizing cookbook authors in six English-language and six French-language categories," Quillblog reported, adding that this year a secondary silver award in each category (with the exception of the Food Blog category) was added‚ as well as a new prize for titles focused on health and special diets. The complete list of finalists can be seen here.

Una is an artist, author and academic whose comics have covered such topics as mothers and daughters, political activism, violence against women and girls and madness/sanity. She lives in Yorkshire, in the north of England, where she sometimes works in a shed in her garden and sometimes in a university. Becoming/Unbecoming (September 13, 2016, Arsenal Pulp) is her first novel-length comic.

On your nightstand now:

Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution by Adrienne Rich. I'm interested in literary and artistic articulations of mothers because for my practice-based Ph.D. I'm drawing the life stories of women the same age as my own mother, and thinking about what it is that our mothers have left us. Adrienne Rich is a wonderful writer; it's definitely one of the more interesting books I've read for the purpose of study.

Favorite book when you were a child:

I can't chose just one. Books were my friends. I used to line them all up alphabetically, then in order of preference, then colour, then size. However, some childhood books that made an impression on me were Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass (Lewis Carroll), Pigs Have Wings (P.G. Wodehouse), the Chronicles of Narnia series (C.S. Lewis), Decline and Fall (Evelyn Waugh), The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett), The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien) and everything by Roald Dahl. I'm not sure I completely understood the Wodehouse and Waugh, but I loved the stories anyway. P.G. Wodehouse is hilarious, even for an 11-year-old.

Your top five authors:

Toni Morrison, Jean Rhys, Chris Ware, Arundhati Roy, W.G. Sebald, in no particular order. All these authors share a quality of epic beauty in their writing. The first Toni Morrison book I read was Beloved. It's fair to say it shook me up. I love how Jean Rhys writes, so smoothly, and there's more about her work below. Chris Ware's understated sequential drawing conceals a beating heart of magnificent storytelling. Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things is her debut and only novel. Reading it made me see the possibilities of small things and to think about being a writer, though it took almost two decades for me to start. W.G. Sebald's mixture of evocative images and melancholy stories was a revelation to me when I finally discovered him--long after everyone else did.

Book you've faked reading:

I pretended to have read Ulysses by James Joyce when I shared a house with a lot of Irish people. I didn't want to seem like the ignorant English person who had ignored the greatest Irish writer, so I agreed enthusiastically with their various opinions on it. Looking back, I think that maybe they were pretending to have read it, too.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. Great book, great idea, lovely writing, women of colour at the centre of the story, and a proper prequel that transforms the famous book it precedes (Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre) in such a way that the original can never be read the same way again. I wish I'd thought of it first. I can't say any more than that without giving the plot away.

Book you've bought for the cover:

I can honestly say I have never bought a book because of its cover--of course you can't judge a book by its cover! However, I have bought books at random because I liked the title. Bad Blood by Lorna Sage is one of those and it turned out to be a brilliant memoir.

Book you hid from your parents:

Mad magazine. I didn't understand much of it anyway, but I could tell it was too adult for me. I think I used to buy them when we went on holiday and I had access to shops in motorway services. I had quite a large collection. I used to love the folding back page that made a new image. I wish I'd kept them; they'd be worth a fortune now.

Book that changed your life:

Andrea Dworkin's Heartbreak. You'd have to read it to see why.

Favorite line from a book:

"It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach's Mass in B minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach." The opening sentence of The Crow Road by Iain Banks. The grandmother explodes in the crematorium furnace, because of her pacemaker. One of those situations that's funny in a book but horrific if it happened in real life.

Five books you'll never part with:

Marion Fayolle's In Pieces, despite the fact it's worth hundreds of dollars now because it's out of print. It's a beautifully drawn and coloured, wordless, surreal graphic novel.

My French copy of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, despite the fact I can't read French.

My ancient To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. One of the first serious books I can remember reading, quite young, maybe a bit bigger than Scout.

Any of my copies of Maus by Art Spiegelman, and I have several to spare. It was reading Maus that opened my eyes to the possibilities of a book like Becoming/Unbecoming. Anything was possible in comics, it seemed.

Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, bought for me by my mother, in which Woolf claims we think back through our mothers and consider what our mothers might have left us.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I read this on holiday when it first came out and couldn't put it down. Now that I know what happens, it's still a brilliant book, but I'd love to reclaim the wonder of the unfolding story. Tigers, eh? Who'd share a boat with one?

Poet, essayist, translator, critic, playwright and professor Anne Carson seems to know everything. She boasts a shelf heavy with awards (Guggenheim, Lannan, PEN, Griffin, T.S. Eliot, Pushcart, MacArthur), and her novel in verse Autobiography in Red (1998) is both a popular and literary classic. Nox (2010), an illustrated meditation upon the death of her brother, was printed on fine accordion-page paper and packaged in a exquisite collector clamshell box. In Float, Carson offers new poetry and prose presented in 23 separately bound chapters, serendipitously arranged in an attractive acetate case. It is another marriage of penetrating intellect, inspiring language and the art of the book. No wonder her public appearances attract a rock concert's kind of adoring crowd--like the 2013 New York University performance from Antigonick (her "loose translation" of Sophocles' Antigone), where 700 people tried to cram into a 300-seat theater.

Float is a stunning example of what the fuss is about. "Powerless Structures Fig. II (Sanne)," for example, is a short poem on the death of a loved one--where the narrator corrects himself: "yes we have a dog no I have a dog" and concludes "three steps up no steps down/ she dies/ in April 2010 of alcohol and indescribable longing." "Eras of Yves Klein" contains six pages of personal biographical entries about this French artist, each line beginning with "The Era of..."--including "The Era of Covering Up Rosicrucian Beliefs with the Vocabulary of Phenomenology so as Not to Be Ridiculed by Paris Intelligentsia." Another, "Maintenance," is an amusing take on upkeep--in one line asking "Is order an issue of maintenance as in in what order as in the order given in the diagram the order they came out of the box etc."

In chapter after chapter Carson surprises and practices what she called, at her NYU event, "the struggle to drag a thought over from the mush of the unconscious into some kind of grammar, syntax, human sense." She ruminates on the process of translation in "Variations on the Right to Remain Silent," citing Joan of Arc, Francis Bacon and Friedrich Hölderlin. Float also eclectically contains a sonnet sequence on the nature of the pronoun, a short prose explication of Hegel, a rumination on Gertrude Stein on Picasso, even an essay on the economics found in Homer, Moravia and Godard. It is a relief and pleasure to turn to the more lyrical poem "Wildly Constant" where the narrator reflects, "I always walk in the morning./ I don't know why anymore./ Life is short," and continues with what could be a summary description of Float: "What would it be like/ to live in a library/ of melted books?/ With sentences streaming over the floor/ and all the punctuation/ settled to the bottom as residue." A visit to the library inside Carson's head is always worth standing in line. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Shelf Talker: In beautiful packaging and with a subtle balance of erudition, humor, criticism and lyricism, Anne Carson's Float is a jaw-dropping achievement.