Tensions in the Middle East are being felt in a variety of ways on the eve of the Frankfurt Book Fair, which officially opens tomorrow afternoon. First, the ceremony awarding the LiBeratur Prize to Palestinian author Adania Shibli, which would have taken place on Friday at the fair, has been cancelled and will be held at another time and place, Börsenblatt reported. The organizer, Litprom, which is a separate organization from the fair but whose president is fair director Juergen Boos, cited "the war started by Hamas under which millions of people in Israel and Palestine are suffering."

Adania Shibli

Shibli is the author of Minor Detail, translated into English by Elisabeth Jaquette and published in the U.S. by New Directions, the novel was a finalist for the National Book Award and longlisted for the International Booker Prize. The story focuses on the rape and murder of a Palestinian Bedouin woman by Israeli soldiers in 1949. The LiBeratur Prize is given annually to a woman writer from the global south.

For his part, fair director Boos stated, "We deeply condemn the barbaric terror of Hamas against Israel. And we are shocked. Our thoughts are with the victims, their relatives, and all people who are suffering from this war. The terror against Israel contradicts all values of the Frankfurt Book Fair. The fair is always about humanity, at the center of which is peaceful and democratic discourse. However, the attack of the Hamas terrorists against Israel has broken this."

Boos added that the fair will highlight "Jewish and Israeli voices," which will include added discussions and appearances at the fair's stages, and said, "The Frankfurt Book Fair stands with full solidarity on the side of Israel."

In response, the Emirates Publishers Association, which includes the Sharjah Book Authority, has pulled out of the fair, the Bookseller reported. A Sharjah statement said, "Given the recent announcement by the organisers of the Frankfurt Book Fair, we have decided to withdraw our participation this year. SBA champions the role of culture and books to encourage dialogue and understanding between people.

"We believe that this role is more important now than ever. It is unfortunate that the events have folded this way as we firmly believe that an environment that fosters diversity and inclusivity is crucial for the literary community and for the success of any book fair."

The Arab Publishers' Association in Egypt, a nonprofit group that represents some 1,000 regional publishers, has also withdrawn from the fair, according to the National.

At the same time, apparently many Israeli publishers and agents will not be attending the fair this year. Benjamin Trivaks, chairman of the Book Publishers Association of Israel, told the Bookseller: "In light of the war in Israel, as far as I know all the Israeli publishers and agents who had planned to attend Frankfurt will be cancelling."

Levar Burton

Actor, education advocate, and author LeVar Burton will host the National Book Awards on November 15. He replaces Drew Barrymore, whose invitation to host was rescinded last month after The Drew Barrymore Show resumed production while the Hollywood writers strike was still going on.

Burton, who was the honorary chair of Banned Books Week earlier this month and hosted the National Book Awards in 2019, said: "I'm a big believer in the power of the written word, and am proud to stand alongside the National Book Foundation to celebrate exceptional storytelling and the Foundation's mission to make books accessible to everyone, everywhere. It's an honor to return as host of the biggest night for books, especially in a moment when the freedom to read is at risk and literature both needs and deserves our recognition and support."

A lifelong literacy advocate, Burton was the host of the PBS children's series Reading Rainbow; hosts the LeVar Burton Reads podcast; and was executive producer of The Right to Read, a documentary that frames the literary crisis in the U.S. a civil rights issue. He is also the author of Aftermath, The Rhino Who Swallowed a Storm, and A Kids Book About Imagination. Burton is also well-known for his roles as chief engineer Geordi La Forge in the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV and film series and as the young Kunta Kinte in the original TV miniseries of Roots.

Riley Glissendorf

Riley Glissendorf from Stonecrest Book and Toy in Osage Beach, Mo., has been awarded the fifth annual Carla Gray Memorial Scholarship for Emerging Bookseller-Activists, sponsored by the Friends of Carla Gray Committee and the Book Industry Charitable Foundation. The award consists of a year-long scholarship for professional development, which includes travel and hotel to attend Winter Institute 2024; travel and hotel to attend their 2024 regional fall trade show; and a $1,000 stipend to fund a community outreach project.

Glissendorf applied for the grant to start a fund for schoolchildren who want to read LGBTQIA+, POC, and other banned works after controversy over LGBTQIA+ literature in the local school district led to a call for the removal of LGBTQIA+ books and staff members.

Glissendorf said, "I am unbelievably honored to be the chosen recipient of the Carla Gray Memorial Scholarship for Emerging Bookseller-Activists. Bookselling has not only cemented my passion for the arts, literature, writing and activism, it continues to inspire me within my communities, local, state, and that of humanhood. The resources provided by Binc will allow Stonecrest Book and Toy and I to persist in the progression of our rural community by ensuring that children have access to inclusive literature with diverse characters that reflect them."

Binc executive director Pam French said, "Bookstores are the heart of a thriving community, and supporting emerging booksellers and encouraging their engagement in their community is critical to the future of bookselling and the larger book industry. Thank you to all the applicants in what was the scholarship's largest and most competitive pool, and congratulations, Riley, we look forward to learning more about your outreach project and seeing its impact."

The scholarship is intended to help a bookseller with fewer than five years of experience connect with other booksellers, publishers, and authors, and establish the long-term relationships needed to keep the book industry thriving. The community outreach component is focused on finding new readers and ensuring access to books that improve readers' lives while integrating bookstores even more fully into their communities.

Louise Glück (photo: Sigrid Estrada)

American poet Louise Glück, "whose searing, deeply personal work, often filtered through themes of classical mythology, religion and the natural world, won her practically every honor available," including the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature, died October 13, the New York Times reported. She was 80. Glück "was widely considered to be among the country's greatest living poets, long before she won the Nobel."

The Nobel committee praised her "unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal." She served as the U.S. poet laureate from 2003 to 2004. In 2016, President Barack Obama presented her with the National Humanities Medal.

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Glück's publisher, paid tribute to the poet in a Facebook post, quoting Jonathan Galassi, FSG's chairman and executive editor: "Louise Glück's poetry gives voice to our untrusting but unstillable need for knowledge and connection in an often unreliable world. Her work is immortal."

FSG also shared these lines from Glück's poem "Faithful and Virtuous Night":

I think here I will leave you. It has come to seem
there is no perfect ending.
Indeed, there are infinite endings.

Glück began publishing in the 1960s but her reputation grew in the 1980s and early 1990s with several works, including Triumph of Achilles (1985), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; Ararat (1990); and The Wild Iris (1992), which won the Pulitzer Prize.

Her early work, especially her debut, Firstborn (1968), "is deeply indebted to the so-called confessional poets who dominated the scene in the 1950s and '60s," the Times wrote, noting that her poetry was "both deeply personal--Ararat, for example, drew on the pain she experienced over the death of her father--and broadly accessible, both to critics, who praised her clarity and precise lyricism, and to the broader reading public.... But even as Ms. Glück continued to weave her verse with an autobiographical thread, there is nothing solipsistic in her later, more mature work, even as she explored intimate themes of trauma and heartbreak."

When an extended bout of writer's block followed publication of her first collection, Glück began her teaching career, first at Goddard College in Vermont and later at Williams College, Yale and, beginning this year, Stanford.

She went on to publish 14 books of poetry, including Poems: 1962-2012 (2012), a complete compendium of her published poetry at the time. "Today it is considered required reading by any aspiring poet--and, arguably, anyone serious about modern American literature," the Times noted.

Glück won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2014, for Faithful and Virtuous Night. Earlier volumes--The Wild Iris, Vita Nova (1999), and Averno (2006)--were finalists for the NBA, while The Seven Ages (2001) was a finalist for the Pulitzer. She received the Bollingen Prize from Yale in 2001. She also wrote two collections of essays and, in 2022, Marigold and Rose: A Fiction.  

"Louise Glück was one of my two favorite teachers at the Iowa Writers Workshop," poet Rita Dove recalled in a Facebook post, adding that two decades later, "upon the conclusion of my Poet Laureateship, I suggested her to the Library of Congress as my successor, but at the time she shied away from such a public position. Fortunately, by 1999 she had reconsidered, agreeing to serve with W.S. Merwin and me as 'Special Consultants to the Library of Congress' for the LOC's bicentennial year, and a few years after that was willing to take on the U.S. poet laureate post for a term. 'What are we without this?' RIP, Louise. The literary landscape will never be the same."

From Glück's poem "A Summer Garden":

Infinite, infinite--that
was her perception of time.

She sat on a bench, somewhat hidden by oak trees.
Far away, fear approached and departed;
from the train station came the sound it made.

The sky was pink and orange, older because the day was over.

There was no wind. The summer day
cast oak-shaped shadows on the green grass.

 

Steve Rubin

Steve Rubin, longtime publisher at Bantam, Doubleday, and Holt, died on Friday, October 13. He was 81.

During his career, Rubin had some notable blockbuster successes, including The Firm by John Grisham and The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown--both of which essentially launched those authors' careers--and more recently, Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff. Other Rubin bestsellers included the Killing series by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard, Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom, and Decision Points by George W. Bush. His memoir, Words and Music: Confessions of an Optimist, was published by Applause in January.

The AP commented: "Book publishing is hard to imagine without the raspy-voiced Rubin, a powerful and colorful presence for decades with his tortoiseshell glasses, stylish suits and wide range of friends and colleagues, from Jacqueline Kennedy to Beverly Sills. He hosted memorable parties at his spacious West Side apartment and was a prime source of gossip and alternately profane and loving assessments of friends, colleagues and the greater world."

And PRH, where he worked for several decades, wrote that Rubin "published some of the most widely read and commercially successful books in modern publishing history, championed prize-winning fiction and nonfiction authors, guided the careers of numerous publishing talents--and was the source and subject of countless anecdotes about the life he led and loved."

Rubin began his career as a freelance journalist, covering culture in general and his loves of classical music and opera. In 1984, he joined Bantam Books. After six years in senior editorial positions, he moved to Doubleday, where he was president and publisher for 15 years, a tenure that was interrupted for three years for a stint in London as chairman of sister company Transworld UK and head of Bantam Doubleday Dell International.

In 2009, Rubin moved to Holt, where he was president and publisher until retiring in 2018. Most recently he was a publishing consultant for S&S.

John Grisham said, "Steve Rubin was a great publisher. He loved books, especially those on the bestseller lists, and he knew how to get them there. He was a writer's dream--loyal, generous, and never shy with his opinions. He was seldom wrong, but never in doubt."

Dan Brown commented: "Steve's infectious enthusiasm for my work was every author's dream. A world class oenophile, Steve used to send me cases of lavish Italian wines--a secret plot, he joked, to saddle me with a refined palate so I could never afford to stop writing. I am eternally grateful for his belief, his encouragement, and, above all, his friendship."

Bill Thomas, executive v-p, publisher & editor-in-chief, Doubleday, said, "I had the privilege and pleasure of working with Steve for 13 years. It struck me that it made perfect sense he began his career a journalist covering opera, an art form he loved. He approached publishing like an impresario, bringing together all the players on-stage and off, cajoling, encouraging, and nudging to make sure that when the curtain rose the stars--the authors he published--shone brightly in the spotlight. Steve approached his job with brio and style, and a sense of joy. He had fun, and working for him was fun. And like a great opera singer, he was oversized, brash, and dramatic, sartorially resplendent, and given to big gestures. He was, in a word, 'grand.' "

Jane Friedman, former CEO of HarperCollins, told the AP that Rubin "would enter a room and immediately fill it. He had very strong likes and dislikes and he NEVER changed his mind."

PRH added, "We are fortunate to work at a company with colleagues whose contributions to our success are as distinctive as their personas. Steve Rubin is such a shining, everlasting example."

Contributions in his memory can be made to the Stephen and Cynthia Rubin Institute for Music Criticism at the San Francisco Conservatory.

Children's picture book author/illustrator Vincent X. Kirsch (From Archie to Zach, Abrams) had a staged reading of his comical play, Whim, at the Moving Arts Theatre in Los Angeles, about the adventures of the first hot-air balloon passengers in 1783 France. Supporting their friend in his creative endeavor are (l.-r.) picture book author April Halprin Wayland (More Than Enough: A Passover Story, Dial), middle grade author Amy Goldman Koss (The Girls, Puffin), and Maureen Palacios, owner of Once Upon a Time Bookstore in Montrose, Calif.

Congratulations to Pauper's Books & More, Clayton, N.C., which celebrated its 15th anniversary this past weekend with a sale that included 15% off everything in the store and a 25¢ sale outside.

On Facebook, owner Casey Kelly wrote in part, "For the past 15 years it's been all the customers who've kept Pauper's going. The ones who come in once a week, once a month, once a year. It’s been all my employees who've kept Pauper's going. It's been the friends and family members who've helped me build bookshelves and set up events. It's been kind words. It's been hard work. It's been my wife and kids. It's been my mom... Thanks everyone."

Pauper's sells new and used books, CDs, DVDs, comics, and more.

At Grand Central:

Megan Perritt-Jacobson has joined as director of publicity, non-fiction. She continues to oversee publicity for Twelve.

Andy Dodds is now director of publicity, fiction.

Estefania Acquaviva has joined as associate publicist.

Alexis Gilbert has been promoted to director of advertising and promotions.

American Girl by Wendy Walker (Blackstone Publishing).

Today:
CBS Mornings: Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial (Grove Press, $28, 9780802160508).

Also on CBS Mornings: Ziwe, author of Black Friend: Essays (Abrams, $26, 9781419756344).

Today Show: Jada Pinkett Smith, author of Worthy (Dey Street, $32, 9780063320680). She will also appear on Live with Kelly and Mark and the Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Fresh Air: Lawrence Wright, author of Mr. Texas: A Novel (Knopf, $29, 9780593537374).

The View: Kerry Washington, author of Thicker than Water: A Memoir (Little, Brown Spark, $30, 9780316497398).

Tomorrow:
CBS Mornings: John Grisham, author of The Exchange: After The Firm (Doubleday, $29.95, 9780385548953). He will also appear on the View.

Also on CBS Mornings: Nicole Avant, author of Think You'll Be Happy: Moving Through Grief with Grit, Grace, and Gratitude (HarperOne, $28.99, 9780063304413).

Today Show: Lindsey Jacobellis, author of Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall (Harper, $30, 9780063294479).

Good Morning America: Eric Ripert, author of Seafood Simple: A Cookbook (Random House, $35, 9780593449523).

Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Rachel Maddow, author of Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism (Crown, $32, 9780593444511).

Sony released a first look photo of Sydney Sweeney (White Lotus, Euphoria) and Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick, Hit Man) embarking on a fake romance in Will Gluck's upcoming rom-com, Anyone But You. Entertainment Weekly reported that the film, loosely based on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, "follows Bea (Sweeney) and Ben (Powell), two former college classmates forced to coexist at their mutual friend's destination wedding in Australia. With the presence of their respective exes at the ceremony, the pair pretend to be a couple."

Written by Gluck and Ilana Wolpert, the project also stars Alexandra Shipp, GaTa, Hadley Robinson, Michelle Hurd, Dermot Mulroney, Darren Barnet, and Rachel Griffiths. Sweeney executive-produced Anyone But You, which hits theaters December 22.

A shortlist has been released for the 2023 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize, honoring nonfiction books that "use captivating narratives to open up science to a wider audience, and celebrates the collective joy of science writing." The winner, to be named November 22, receives £25,000 (about $30,350), with £2,500 (about $3,035) awarded to each of the five shortlisted authors. This year's finalists are:

Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (in a Big Way) by Roma Agrawal 
Jellyfish Age Backwards: Nature's Secrets to Longevity by Nicklas Brendborg, translated by Elizabeth de Noma 
Taking Flight: The Evolutionary Story of Life on the Wing by Lev Parikian 
Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus by David Quammen 
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong 
The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins and the Fight for Women in Science by Kate Zernike 

Alexis Soloski's Here in the Dark is a thrillingly dark psychological drama, set in the least visible part of the spectacle of theater. Vivian Parry, 32-year-old theater critic for an important New York City magazine, carefully rations her vodka and sedatives to keep clear of the grasp of the "therapists I'm occasionally required to see." She holes up in her Manhattan studio apartment, writing and editing in between shows. Readers quickly understand that Vivian is avoiding an unnamed trauma. In the audience--anonymous, with pen and notebook poised--is the only time she is remotely okay: "When I'm in the dark, at that safe remove from daily life, I feel it all--rage, joy, surprise. Until the houselights come on and break it all apart again, I am alive. I know myself again."

It's an act: "I am, of necessity, an imitation of myself--a sharp smile, an acid joke, an abyss where a woman should be. For a decade and more I have allowed myself only this lone role, a minor one: Vivian Parry, actor's scourge and girl-about-town. I don't play it particularly well." Seeking a crucial promotion, she reluctantly agrees to an interview with David Adler, an eager graduate student and a man she belatedly suspects may be acting a part, too. "I consider myself a superlative judge of theater and life and the crucial differences between," she thinks. "But David Adler has shaken that certainty like a cheap souvenir snow globe." Following their odd and fateful meeting, Vivian finds herself inexorably caught up in intrigues involving a missing person, a dead body discovered in a park, an abandoned fiancé, Russian gangsters, Internet gambling, and more. The line between performance art and "real" life begins to blur still further. Vivian is heavily reliant on drink and pills; it would be easy to mistake her increasing sense of danger for paranoia, but readers can't deny the threats slipped under her door.

Soloski, in Vivian's clever, moody, sardonic voice, envelopes readers in details richly laden with subtext. Seasonal decorations include "cardboard Santas leering from store windows, snowflakes hung like suicides from every lamppost." A large man has "a chest that would intimidate most barrels." Of Justine, Vivian's forceful best (and perhaps only) friend: "There are sentimental tragedies shorter than Justine's texts." Vivian's fragile reality fractures in sleek, stylish prose. Here in the Dark is a carefully wrought, slow-burning psychological thriller: as numb as Vivian keeps herself, the terror surges to a crescendo, her wits and understanding of what is real pitched against an unknown foe.

This riveting first novel offers building momentum and looming horror with an entrancing and troubled protagonist and the most sophisticated of settings. Here in the Dark is frightening, delicious, engrossing, and unforgettable. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Shelf Talker: Against the backdrop of New York City's theater scene, a young woman grapples with the line between life and art in this memorable debut, lush with darkly elegant detail.