"Being able to connect with the community and put the books that people need into their hands is the best part of my job. And I think the best part of any independent booksellers job.... Booksellers are what make bookstores great and everybody should be supporting their local booksellers. Any place can just have books, but no place can connect you to books like an independent bookstore can."

Gye Nyame Books & More recently opened at fifteenTWELVE Creative Compound, 1512 Portland Ave. in Louisville, Ky. LEO Weekly reported that in the '80s and '90s, owner Lisa Bennett and her former husband ran Kente International, an African imports store on Bardstown Road in the Highlands. Although the store closed in the early 2000s, Bennett "never lost her entrepreneurial spirit. She has been a staple of the annual Reggae and World Fests here in town, and has even been known to invite customers to her home to shop."

Lisa Bennett

After rebranding a few years ago to Gye Nyame, she began looking to open a storefront, which finally happened last month. Although once again a family business, now it is primarily a collective of the women in Bennett's family, including her business partner, Jacy "Prolific Jones" Britt, and her daughter, Amina Thompson. 

Promoting literacy in the Black community of Louisville is "very important to the women of Gye Nyame, and they stock books that are written by a variety of African authors with an emphasis on African history and children's literature," LEO Weekly noted, adding that they "are committed to highlighting work by and for people of the African diaspora, and are excited to be the only Black-owned bookstore in Louisville."

When asked how Louisville can best support Gye Nyame beyond spending money in the store, "they all said to attend the community events they're planning in the space at fifteenTWELVE," LEO Weekly wrote. "They are planning events for all ages, like Black History Trivia Night, story times, poetry readings, and more. The goal is to be able to eventually grow out of the Portland space and move Gye Nyame to the West End and into a building that they can restore."

The B&N crew at work setting up the new store

A new Barnes & Noble is opening next Wednesday in Hillsboro, Ore. The Hillsboro location will have a Barnes & Noble Cafe and will replace a B&N in nearby Tanasbourne that closed last October after nearly 30 years in business. 

Suzy Irvin, who helped open the Tanasbourne store and managed it for years, will manage the new Hillsboro location. Many other booksellers from the old store have also made the transition. She said: '"My team and I could not be more excited to build our bookstore in Tanasbourne. 28 years ago, I opened the original location in this very neighborhood, and I am overcome with emotion that my bookselling career has come full circle."

The inaugural Missouri Book Festival will debut this weekend in downtown Washington, Mo., about 50 miles west of St. Louis, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. While the bulk of the programming is scheduled to take place on Saturday, August 27, the event will have a kick-off talk Friday night featuring Rick Ankiel, former St. Louis Cardinals pitcher and author of The Phenomenon.

On Saturday, a stretch of Lafayette St. near the Washington Public Library will be closed to vehicle traffic, and there will be events running from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Organizers have scheduled children's events, adult author events and events for all ages. Among the author talks, storytimes and signings will be events about the Ozarks, wrestling, a car show and a soapbox derby. There will also be a scavenger hunt throughout the day.

Many of the authors scheduled to appear at the festival were published by Reedy Press, which has headquarters in St. Louis, and owner Josh Stevens was one of the original planners. Neighborhood Reads, an indie bookstore located in downtown Washington that opened in 2017, is also one of the event organizers; a number of events will take place in the store's front and back yards.

"We hope to get a good turnout and get more organizations involved next year," Stevens told the Post-Dispatch.

More details can be found here.

Owner Les McDonald (r.) celebrating.

Bookseller's birthday: Congratulations to the Bookshop Darlinghurst in Sydney, Australia's oldest LGBTQI bookstore, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this month. The Star Observer reported that in recent years, the bookshop "has weathered the impacts of Covid, economic and political uncertainty and inclement weather, and for a while its future was precarious. However, its investment in online selling and the support of the community has helped it to weather the storm."

The Bookshop posted on Instagram: "Thank you to our many loyal customers over the years and decades who have helped us to achieve this remarkable milestone. Do drop in and see us and wish us a happy birthday during the month of August."

The seed for the Bookshop Darlinghurst "was planted in the 1970s while founding owner Les McDonald was on a holiday with his then partner in the United States," the Star Observer wrote. "Seeing LGBTQI books advertised in the gay press, McDonald saw an untapped market in Australia. On his return to Sydney, he started importing LGBTQI books and selling them via mail order. Soon the business was getting too large to operate out of home so they set up a bookshop on Crown Street in Surry Hills and then to their current location on Oxford Street."

Clover Moore, Sydney's Lord Mayor, said, "The Bookshop served as a hub of information and support through the AIDS crisis and has remained a constant since, despite the advent of e-books and the devastating impact of the pandemic--longevity that is testament to the community's regard for Les MacDonald and his place. My sincere congratulations on this milestone achievement and best wishes for many years to come."

Independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich shared what the Bookshop has meant to him and to LGBTQI communities, noting that "as a young gay man growing up in Sydney, the Bookshop was important to me.... It has been a safe space and community hub that to this day fills a void where everyone from young queer people to parents of gay kids and our allies can find materials that reflect their lives, to learn from and share. I always get gifts for new parents from the Bookshop to make sure their kids have stories that reflect diversity and inclusion."

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Zoe Gram and Ian Gill's wedding.

Booksellers' wedding: Canadian indie Upstart and Crow, Vancouver, B.C., posted on Instagram: "Who are the folks behind Upstart & Crow... and why are we closed this week of a busy summer? To answer, we share this photo of our co-founders Zoe and Ian, who tied the knot this week--in fact, on the very same day that Upstart & Crow opened two years ago. We'll look forward to welcoming you back with aglow as of August 30. We're so grateful to everyone who has become part of our community and extended community through Upstart & Crow--and to all those who share ideas and possibilities with us through books and stories."

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Booksellers' vacation: Luddites Books & Wine in Antwerp, Belgium noted: "If you were ever wondering what holidays look like for book store owners, this is it. After devouring our personal must read lists, we are back in our beloved store as of today. And we are ready to supply you with all the books, wine and chitchat you may have missed these last two weeks. See you soon!" 

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Bookseller's window art: "The full reveal!" Booka Bookshop in Oswestry, England, noted in sharing a photo of its new front window art: "If you were in town today you may have seen this fabulous window being created by @ourtinywindows to celebrate the publication of Essex Dogs, the forthcoming novel from historian @d_a_n_jones. Big thanks to Ash and Holly and publisher @headofzeus--we're thrilled with it! Come and take a look and see it for yourself! Looking forward to our event with Dan Jones for Essex Dogs." --Robert Gray

Cecile Pineda, the author of the novels Face and The Love Queen of the Amazon, died earlier this month at the age of 89, the New York Times reported.

Pineda's writing career began in her early 50s with the publication of Face, a novel about a man who attempts to surgically rebuild his own face after becoming disfigured in an accident. Published by Viking in 1985, it was unusual for the era in that it was a "novel by a Latina author published by a major house," the Times wrote. It was an impressive debut, nominated for the American Book Award for a first novel and a finalist for the National Book Award for a first work of fiction.

Her next books were also novels, including Frieze (1986), a parable about an eighth-century Hindu stone carver, and The Love Queen of the Amazon (1992), about a young woman expelled from a convent's boarding school. In 2001, she published Fishlight: A Dream of Childhood, which she described as a "faux memoir."

Toward the end of her career Pineda increasingly turned to nonfiction. In response to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, she wrote Devil's Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by Step, and in 2015 she published Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World.

With Three Tides, published in 2016, she examined the craft of writing, and her final book was 2020's Entry Without Inspection: A Writer's Life in El Norte. The latter explored immigration and detention policies as well as her own family's history (Pineda was of Mexican and Swiss descent).

Before becoming a writer, Pineda had a career in theater. She studied it at Barnard College as an undergraduate and later earned a master's degree in theater arts from San Francisco State University. From 1969 to 1981, she ran her own experimental theater company called the Theater of Man.

A 1977 newspaper article about a Brazilian man disfigured in an accident inspired her to start writing. She clipped the article and placed it in her files, certain that "such a remarkable story will appeal to some novelist who will discern meanings in it so powerful that the story will act as a catalyst for a memorable work of fiction," she wrote in a later edition of Face. The story lingered in her mind, and as the years went on without anyone writing about it, she decided to do it herself.

New York City's Bryant Park Reading Room presented a panel called Dog-Day Suspense, featuring (l.-r.) Casey Sherman (Helltown: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer on Cape Cod), Kathleen Marple Kalb (A Fatal Overture), Cate Holahan (The Darkness of Others) and Niko Wolf (Birthday Girl). The event was hosted by actress and podcaster Ilana Levine.

"Reading makes me happy!" Bay Books Coronado, Coronado, Calif., posted on Facebook along with photographic evidence to explain why. 

Posted on Facebook yesterday by Blue Willow Books, Houston, Tex.: "A few things that are always guaranteed at our staff meetings:

• Lots of talking over each other because we're just SO excited about bookselling.
• Food. Usually something sweet.
• Cathy and Ayah yelling about Harry Styles.
• Sharing books we love."

Amanda Dissinger has joined Bloomsbury USA as senior publicity manager in the adult trade division. She was formerly publicity manager at Algonquin.

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Katie Stutz has been promoted to senior marketing associate for the Bloom Books and Sourcebooks Casablanca imprints.

Today:
Fresh Air: Colson Whitehead, author of Harlem Shuffle (Anchor, $17, 9780525567271).

Ewan McGregor (Star Wars franchise, Halston, Trainspotting) will play Count Alexander Rostov in the upcoming series A Gentleman in Moscow, an adaptation of Amor Towles's 2016 novel. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the project "is set to commence production later this year and will debut in the U.S. on Showtime and on Paramount+ internationally." The show is produced by eOne in association with VIS, the international studio unit of Paramount Global.

"It's an amazing, wonderful story, and I am very excited to get to play such a fabulous role," said McGregor, who is also executive producer.

A Gentleman in Moscow is written by showrunner and executive producer Ben Vanstone (All Creatures Great and Small, The Last Kingdom). It is the first production to come through eOne's first-look deal with Tom Harper's company Popcorn Storm Pictures. 

Harper, who will also executive produce with Xavier Marchand (Nautilus, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris) and Towles, said: "The book is a rare and delicious treat, and I fell in love with it the moment I picked it up six years ago. We are thrilled that Amor entrusted this brilliant team with bringing the [Hotel] Metropol to life and couldn't be more delighted that Ewan will be playing the Count."

The winners of the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Awards, honoring the best books written by Indiana authors and awarded every two years, have been announced:

Debut: Somebody's Daughter: A Memoir by Ashley C. Ford
Fiction: The Town of Whispering Dolls by Susan Neville
Nonfiction: Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote by Craig Fehrman
Genre: Hollow Heart by Paul Allor
Poetry: Be Holding by Ross Gay
YA: You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson
Middle Grade: All He Knew by Helen Frost
Children's: Grace and Box by Kim Howard

Each winner receives $5,000, a hand-crafted award and the opportunity to make a $500 donation to an Indiana library of their choice.

In addition, James H. Madison was given the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award. Indiana Humanities president and CEO Keira Amstutz said that Madison "has made telling Indiana's story his life's work, and we all are enriched by his devotion to deep and original research, vivid storytelling and candid revelations. We are delighted to acknowledge the work of someone who is not only a respected historian but also a passionate believer in the power of the humanities to inform and improve Hoosiers' lives."

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The Writers' Trust of Canada announced the finalists for the 2022 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers, which is presented "to an emerging Canadian writer who identifies as (but is not limited to) lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or Two-Spirit for an outstanding debut book in any genre," CBC reported. The winner receives C$10,000 (about US$7,725), while the remaining finalists get C$1,000 (about US$770) each. This year's finalists are: 

Acha Bacha by Bilal Baig
Butter Honey Pig Bread by francesca ekwuyasi
Whitemud Walking by Matthew James Weigel

For the first time, this year's winner will be announced at the annual Writers' Trust Awards on November 2. "Incorporating the Dayne Ogilvie Prize into Writers' Trust's array of fall awards is an important and necessary step in elevating the writing of Canadian LGBTQ2S+ emerging writers," said Charlie Foran, executive director of Writers' Trust. "Canada is home to a thriving and vibrant LGBTQ2S+ literary community that continues to be influential within the country's arts scene, and it's time we recognize those stories on the same stage as our other awards."

photo: Roque Nonini

Sidik Fofana earned his MFA from New York University and is a public school teacher in Brooklyn. He was named a fellow at the Center for Fiction in 2018. His work has appeared in the Sewanee Review and Granta. His debut short story collection, Stories from the Tenants Downstairs (Scribner, August 16, 2022), consists of eight narratives about residents of a fictional building in Harlem.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Eight tenants from a Harlem high-rise tell you stories about their problems while the almighty landlord hovers over them.

On your nightstand now:

I sleep on a futon in the basement, or the couch in the living room, and only every now and then in an actual bed. But on the "nightstand" would be Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. I watch a little bit of the BBC series, then read some of the book. I don't know what it is, but I love reading about crazy white people.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Hands down Matilda by Roald Dahl. Although I did read Runaway Ralph by Beverly Cleary 100 times. Oh and can't forget Charlotte's Web. Shout out to E.B. White whose darkest joke was writing a book that made kids cry.

Your top five authors

Living: Edward P. Jones, Junot Díaz, Lorrie Moore, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jeffrey Eugenides. Bonus: Zadie Smith.

Dead: José Saramago, John Steinbeck, Frank McCourt, Langston Hughes and Toni Morrison.

Emcees: Tupac, Nas, Andre 3000, Lauryn Hill and Mos Def, Phonte or Kendrick depending on how I feel that day. 

Book you've faked reading:

Don't get me in trouble! Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I remember brilliant parts like the riff on that one man's obsession with episodes of M*A*S*H, but I'm just not that cerebral.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Post-Traumatic by Chantal V. Johnson. My sister book, born the same year as my own. I've heard her read from it several times, and each time has been a transcendent experience.

Book that you bought for the cover:

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning by Jonathan Mahler. Didn't know at the time that it was the cover that reeled me in, but it is gray and frenetic just like New York is.

Book you hid from your parents:

I never hid a book from a parent, but my mom hid a book from me. Well, she didn't actually hide it since I found it in plain view on top of her dresser. She just never mentioned that she had bought it for herself. It was a biography of Nelson Mandela meant for young readers.

Book that changed your life:

Native Son by Richard Wright hit me like a ton of bricks. I was supposed to read it for a class and didn't get to it until two nights before it was due. It was one of the first times I remember reading something for school that didn't feel like homework.

Favorite line from a book:

"& the boys outside walgreens selling candy/ for a possibly fictional basketball team are my presidents," from the poem "my president," from the book Homie by Danez Smith. In that poem, they do this ode to friendship, shouting out memorable people in their life and electing them to high office. I tell you, these poets know what they're doing.

Five books that you'll never part with:

As I scan my golden shelf... A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, and Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall, among others. Most of the books I own are in my classroom for all to browse, except those books. Those stay in my living room under heavy surveillance.

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

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Or maybe there's a book out there that understands my middle age as much as that book understood my teendom.

Book you can't wait to come out:

Play World by Adam Ross. Always been a fan of his storytelling and dark humor.

In the Mouth of the Wolf: A Murder, a Cover-Up, and the True Cost of Silencing the Press is American journalist Katherine Corcoran's first book, focusing on the murder of Mexican journalist Regina Martínez in 2012, its aftermath and implications for the free press in Mexico and beyond. Corcoran details the years she spent investigating Martínez's death, without the satisfaction of a final conclusion; the case remains unsolved, along with many other cases of slain journalists.

"To the foreigner, Mexico charms, cajoles, and seduces. There are so many Mexicos: so many climates, cultures, foods, and languages; contiguous, concentric, stacked; native and colonial; current and past; invisible yet present." With this same attention to multiplicity, Corcoran relates the complicated nature of a single murder case and all that it represents. Already familiar with Mexican culture, politics and journalism, Corcoran, as Associated Press bureau chief in Mexico City, had also received threats to her staff by the time that Martínez was brutally killed in the bathroom of her own home in Xalapa, Veracruz. Killings of journalists had been on the rise, but this case was different, not least because Martínez was nationally known: "Everyone, including me, knew she was beyond reproach. I had tried to hire her once." Martínez was known for covering potentially dangerous subjects, frequently including the connection between government corruption and organized crime. No one in her tight-knit circle of journalist friends could say what she'd been working on when she was killed, and the official line quickly became that she had been the victim of a crime of passion--something none of her friends believed, but a difficult theory to disprove.

Into a mess of stories and theories, and still under threat of surveillance and violence years later, steps Corcoran, with archival research and hundreds of interviews with a dizzying cast of characters (helpfully listed in the front of the book) from the media, politics, organized crime, and Martínez's family and friends. She brings a journalist's careful accounting of where truth meets speculation, where the author has chosen between versions of the same story, where corroboration has been impossible. In the Mouth of the Wolf offers the results of this research, numerous unconfirmed theories and the personal story of a journalist chasing an elusive truth. By its finish, Corcoran has become alarmed by the state of the free press in the United States as well as in Mexico, and concludes that Martínez's unsolved murder--and so many like it--have chilling effects not only on the freedom of the press but on society itself, all over the world. This compelling, carefully researched investigation is a sobering clarion call. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Shelf Talker: The unsolved murder of a Mexican journalist has implications for the free press and free society everywhere in this in-depth investigation.

To make matters worse, yesterday he had stayed up reading a book--knowing all along that he should get some sleep--and he was paying for it now, his eyes hurting a little as he looked at the computer screen. 

--Lady Joker, Volume One by Kaoru Takamura, translated by Marie Iida and Allison Markin Powell (Soho Crime)

I know the feeling; might even call it a job description, though I'm not complaining. The words quoted above come from a book that is gradually enveloping my current reading life in the best possible way. It's the first half of an epic (about 1,200 pages) Japanese work described by author Yoko Ogawa as "a novel that portrays with devastating immensity how those on the dark fringes of society can be consumed by the darkness of their own hearts." That it does. Lady Joker, Volume Two will be released this fall.

Women in Translation Month seems like the perfect time to embark on such an adventure, and a recent e-mail conversation I had with translator Powell provided just the inspiration I needed. I've enjoyed her work for years, including translations of Hiromi Kawakami's The Nakano Thrift Shop and Fuminori Nakamura's The Gun.

Allison Markin Powell

The book world is celebrating WiTM in many ways. One of mine was to interview Powell after reading her recent post on Soho's blog: "Translating Women Is Essential: Allison Markin Powell on Translating Kaoru Takamura's Groundbreaking Japanese Crime Epic."

A literary translator, editor and publishing consultant, Powell has received grants from English PEN and the NEA, and the 2020 PEN America Translation Prize for The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami. She was co-organizer and co-host of the Translating the Future conference, served as co-chair of the PEN America Translation Committee and currently represents the committee on PEN's board of trustees. She is also a founding member of translator collectives Çedilla & Co. and Strong Women, Soft Power; and teaches literary translation at Hunter College (CUNY).

Women in Translation display at Powell's Books, Portland, Ore.

We first met in 2014 when BookExpo's Global Forum showcased "Books in Translation." In a conversation with program coordinator Ruediger Wischenbart, Powell had said that translating is "an immersion into another culture and a reading of signifiers. I do try to gear toward a general reader.... I work within trade publishing. I'm looking for work an American audience might want to read." We had a brief conversation after the session, and in 2017 she spoke with me on behalf of Çedilla & Co. for a column. Our intermittently ongoing discussion picked up again this week when I asked if she might reflect a bit upon WiTM through the lens of her experiences. 

"There's been a tremendous amount of change since we were last in touch in 2017, a lot of activism to raise the profile of the translator, some of which seems to have actually had some impact," Powell observed. "There's been increased awareness about DEI in literary translation, similar to that within the larger publishing industry. But maybe the best way to respond is to talk about the work a group of translators has been doing to rewrite the Manifesto on Translation that was drafted in 1969 by PEN's Translation Committee. We started working on this in 2018, when planning began for the 2020 Translating the Future Conference and are just putting the absolute finishing touches on it now.  

"As part of our call for action, 'we call for the entire literary community to move forward with a critical approach that recognizes translation as the engaged, collaborative, and creative writing practice that it is.' We invite all stakeholders to recognize our responsibilities to each other: translators, authors, publishers, institutions, book section editors & reviewers, teachers and readers--and booksellers too, of course. We'll be making it public very soon and hope to engage with the community at large about the various issues raised in the document."

Recalling past WiTM highlights, Powell said: "We've had some lovely events at WORD bookstore in Greenpoint, Brooklyn; also at McNally Jackson's Prince Street location. The PEN Translation Committee has been hosting virtual WiT events for the past three years, and another great series that has supported WiT is the Transnational Literary Series at Brookline Booksmith [Brookline, Mass.]."

Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, N.Y.

What are some of her WiTM reading recommendations? "Off the top of my head, two Japanese titles that immediately come to mind (not super recent but definitely underappreciated favorites) are Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima, translated by Geraldine Harcourt; and The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura, translated by Lucy North. Oh, also The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart by Chesil, translated by Takami Nieda. Non-Japanese, two books that I will be buying this week are Witches by Brenda Lozano, translated by Heather Cleary; and The Dogs of Summer by Andrea Abreu, translated by Julia Sanches (both Çedilla members). Now that I've gotten started, I could name so many!"

After undertaking the massive Lady Joker translation, Powell said she is currently "working on a much smaller project," a retranslation of a classic novella with a different co-translator. "Otherwise I'm working on various prospective translation projects while being very focused on promoting volume two of Lady Joker, which pubs on October 18."

Uh, oh... that's less than two months away. I've got some serious late-night reading to do to be ready, which also means that, once again, WiTM will break through its August borders, as it should.