The 2024 American Library Association Annual Conference & Exhibition is underway in San Diego, Calif. Featured speakers included former Daily Show host Trevor Noah, talking about his forthcoming illustrated fable, Into the Uncut Grass (illustrated by Sabina Hahn; One World, October); Academy Award-nominated actress, producer, and author Taraji P. Henson discussing her recently released children's title, You Can Be a Good Friend (No Matter What!) from Zonderkidz; and Max Greenfield sharing insights on Good Night Thoughts (Putnam Books for Young Readers, September). Here are sights and scenes from ALA:

Authors K.E. Lewis (Devonte's Shoes, Candlewick, 2025) and Winsome Hudson-Bingham (Life Is Beautiful, Beach Lane Books, October) at the opening party hosted by Holiday House, Candlewick, Peachtree, and Pixel + Ink.

At a Friday evening cocktail party, author and librarian John Schu (Ruthie Rose's Big Idea, Candlewick, March 4, 2025) joked with district library coordinators Becky Calzada (Leander, Tex.) and Tom Bober (St. Louis, Mo.).

Holiday House authors Rhonda Roumani (Insha'Allah, No, Maybe So) and Khadijah Vanbrakle (Fatima Tate Takes the Cake) at the Friday night opening party.

Librarians, authors, and publishing professionals enjoyed cocktails and tacos on Friday night at Astra Books for Young Readers' opening night party: (l.-r) Carolyn P. Yoder (editorial director, Calkins Creek), author and librarian Betsy Bird (Evanston, Ill.), Eric Carpenter (Atlanta, Ga.), Sandra Farag (Kalamazoo, Mich.), and Kate Atienza (Plain City, Ohio).

Carole Boston Weatherford signed her board book Me and the Family Tree (Sourcebooks Jabberwocky) for youth services librarian Helaire Hamilton Mitchell (Redondo Beach, Calif.).

Max Greenfield, whose next book is Good Night Thoughts, illustrated by James Serafino (Putnam Books for Young Readers, September), spoke with Kit Ballenger, youth services librarian, consultant with Help Your Shelf, and Shelf Awareness reviewer. (photo: Sophie Rosenberg)

Author Kekla Magoon posed with Professor Jonda C. McNair and her May 2024 title, The Secret Library (Candlewick), at the Coretta Scott King Award breakfast on Sunday morning.

Plumfield Books, Ada, Mich., launched a sister store, Orchard House Books and Cafe, last Saturday, June 29, at 1042 Michigan St. NE in Grand Rapids. Owner Amy Squires told MLive that the new location had started construction in April, adding: "Everything just fell into place. We're moving very fast--building inspections are already tomorrow. We're scrapping this soft-opening thing and just going for it." 

She launched Plumfield Books in 2022, offering a wide range of book genres, free wine tastings, author visits, and book clubs. Orchard House will have a similar feel, but with more classics, poetry, and local business collaborations.

"We've lived in Heritage Hill for 10 years and loved the youthfulness of it and always loved the corner where Martha's Vineyard is. It just felt like a thriving location. It felt right," Squires said. "Our regulars and connections are all so excited. I want to be there as a community space like I am for Ada."

Earlier this month Squires told Crain's Grand Rapids Business she had been considering a second location in the city for a while and saw a need for a bookshop in the Midtown neighborhood: "With the hospitals (growing) and young professionals that are living there right now, it's just a prime location."

The store includes a coffee bar and 900-square-foot covered porch with seating. The building has been updated with new paint, drywall, and a new electrical system. Orchard House plans to use a greenhouse area attached to the building as a year-round indoor/outdoor covered seating area for cafe patrons looking to relax with a book, Crain's Grand Rapids Business noted. Local artist and muralist Paige Rochefort created a wrap-around mural for the bookstore's exterior.

Citing the surge in new bookstores across the U.S., she observed that being in a bookstore is "more than just picking out a book. You almost start a mini book club with every person that comes in the store. They come in for one book and end up leaving 45 minutes later after a long conversation."

Pamlico Books, Washington, N.C., is for sale. All inventory, fixtures, and assets associated with the business are included; the building is leased and is not for sale.

Owner Tom Ryan and his wife, Deb, have to relocate for family reasons, they said, and they hope for new owners to be in place by the end of the year. If not, they will have to close the store.

Pamlico Books was established in June 2021 and has been "a thriving, profitable business since inception." It includes a 1,400-square-foot front room with new books, toys, and games, as well as a back room for used books. Pamlico Books won the city's award for historic renovations, and Tom was named Entrepreneur of the Year.

For more information, contact the store via e-mail.

Kinky Friedman (photo: Stephen C. Webster)

Kinky Friedman, a singer, songwriter, humorist, and sometime politician who "developed an ardent following among alt-country music fans... and whose biting cultural commentary earned him comparisons with Will Rogers and Mark Twain," died June 27, the New York Times reported. He was 79.

In the 1980s, Friedman began writing detective novels, "using the same casual irreverence that he brought to the stage in books like Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned (2001) and God Bless John Wayne (1995)," the Times noted. He also wrote a column for Texas Monthly in the 2000s, "letting his freak flag fly with articles about politics, music and life in rural Texas."

Observing "a surprising earnestness behind his weirdness," the Times wrote that Friedman founded a ranch for rescue animals. He and his sister, Marcie, ran Echo Hill Camp, which they inherited from their parents and which they offered, free of charge, to children of parents killed while serving in the U.S. military.

"The Kinkster was a persona," writer and friend Larry Sloman said. "Richard was one of the most sensitive, warmhearted people in the world."

Friedman wrote 18 books, including novels and essays. "Most of his fiction, starting with the 1986 novel Greenwich Killing Time, offered an even more gonzo version of his own life, built around a private detective from Texas, also named Kinky Friedman, who solved oddball crimes around New York," the Times noted. Other titles include Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola and The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover. His books were popular, both in the U.S. and in Europe, eventually selling more than six million copies.

Posted on Facebook by Gramercy Books, Bexley, Ohio: "Picture yourself here.... Imagine this: You get to work early on a cloudy Sunday morning. You pop next door to the coffee shop and get a latte before taking a seat and opening your book. The lights are still off, your music is playing low. Life is good."

Interabang Books, Dallas, Tex., shared a seasonally apt quote from Jeannette Walls on the shop's sidewalk chalkboard: "One benefit of summer was that each day we had more light to read by."

Kristina Fazzalaro has been promoted to associate director of publicity at Viking Penguin. She joined the company in 2019 as a senior publicist.

Anything Is Good by Fred Waitzkin (Open Road Media).

Today:
Good Morning America: Nicole Lapin, author of Rich Bitch: A Simple 12-Step Plan for Getting Your Financial Life Together... Finally (Morrow Paperbacks, $18.99, 9780062998866).

Drew Barrymore Show repeat: Hilary Duff, author of My Little Sweet Boy (Random House Books for Young Readers, $19.99, 9780593300756).

Tamron Hall repeat: Ruby Warrington, author of Women Without Kids: The Revolutionary Rise of an Unsung Sisterhood (Sounds True, $19.99, 9781649633088).

Fresh Air: Emily Nussbaum, author of Cue the Sun: The Invention of Reality TV (Random House, $30, 9780525508991).

Late Night with Seth Meyers repeat:  Chris Colfer, author of Roswell Johnson Saves the World! (Little, Brown, $18.99, 9780316515047).

Tomorrow:
CBS Mornings: J.M. Hirsch, author of Freezer Door Cocktails: 75 Cocktails That Are Ready When You Are (Voracious, $27, 9780316568982).

The View repeat: Tiffany Haddish, author of I Curse You with Joy (Diversion Books, $28.99, 9781635769531).

Tamron Hall repeat: Ronda Rousey, author of Our Fight: A Memoir (Grand Central, $29, 9781538757376).

A trailer and first look photos have been released for Rivals, based on Jilly Cooper's 1988 novel and starring David Tennant, Aidan Turner, Katherine Parkinson, and Danny Dyer, Deadline reported. The cast also includes Alex Hassell, Catriona Chandler, Oliver Chris, Rufus Jones, Lisa McGrillis, Luke Pasqualino, Claire Rushbrook, and Victoria Smurfit. The series is scheduled to debut on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ in other countries later this year.

Rivals is produced by Dominic Treadwell-Collins's (A Very English Scandal) Happy Prince, with Treadwell-Collins also exec producing and writing with Laura Wade. Lead director is Elliot Hegarty (Ted Lasso), who also serves as executive producer on Episodes 1 to 3. Eliza Mellor (Poldark) is series producer. The series writers room also includes Sophie Goodhart (The Baby, Sex Education), Marek Horn, Mimi Hare and Clare Naylor (The Accidental Husband), Dare Aiyegbayo (The Dumping Ground, EastEnders), Kefi Chadwick (Looted, Avoidance), Tray Agyeman, and Sorcha Kurien Walsh (The Pink Pill).

The 2024 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction was awarded to Hisham Matar for his novel My Friends (published in the U.S. by Random House). Judge Simon Okotie called My Friends "a novel exploring the fallout of the 1984 shootings at the Libyan embassy in London, and its effect on three friends. The quietness of the prose belies the event's traumatic drama and its profound personal and political repercussions. The style is old fashioned--genteel almost--and authentic to the point of reading like the most exquisite memoir. A warm and extraordinarily clear-sighted novel that is, in part, about the power of the literary word to effect real-world change."

The Orwell Prize for Political Writing went to Matthew Longo for The Picnic: An Escape to Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain (published in the U.S. by W.W. Norton). Judge Christina Lamb wrote: "In the summer of 1989, a group of Hungarian activists did something unthinkable: they entered the forbidden militarised zone of the Iron Curtain--and held a picnic. They were joined by East German holidaymakers in Ladas rolling up for goulash, beer and brass-bands. I did not know this story and I loved the way it surprised me and captured the time, the idealism, and the role of ordinary citizens in the unravelling of the Iron Curtain--as well as its echoes for today. Wonderfully told through extensive interviews with everyone from the human rights activist who came up with the madcap idea, the stubborn young woman who made it happen, to Stasi agents and border guards."

Both winners receive £3,000 (about $3,800).

---

Winners have been announced for the 10th annual Firecracker Awards, given by the Community of Literary Magazines & Presses (CLMP) to the best independently published books of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry and the best literary magazines in the categories of debut and general excellence. Each winner in the book categories receives $2,000, with $1,000 going to the press and $1,000 to the author.

Book winners were:

Fiction: You Were Watching from the Sand by Juliana Lamy (Red Hen Press). Judges called the book "a commanding debut that mingles the magical with the mundane. These vibrant, masterfully wrought stories weave the otherworldly into the psychological and interpersonal, grounding Lamy's characters not only in their unique voices, corporealities, and sense of place, but also in the complex racial and class dynamics that determine their lives. The language in this collection crackles with a propulsive energy, and there's not a weak story to be found. Lamy's impressive range is on full display; this is likely just the beginning of what looks to be a thrilling literary career."

Creative Nonfiction: The Quickening: Antarctica, Motherhood, and Cultivating Hope in a Warming World by Elizabeth Rush (Milkweed Editions). "The Quickening is an excellent chronicle of the deteriorating Antarctic glaciers at a critical crossroads with the author's own reckoning with the ethics of bringing new life into a rapidly changing world. An incredible journey and an essential antidote to the settler masculinist-explorer narrative, The Quickening offers readers a chance to collectively refuse turning Antarctica into a passive symbol of the coming apocalypse. This is an inspiring document of an expedition powered by a deep understanding of the consequences that lie ahead and invites us, her readers, to turn and embrace hope."

Poetry: The Limitless Heart by Cheryl Boyce-Taylor (Haymarket Books). "The sublime and evocative work of Boyce-Taylor is beautifully presented in this collection of new and previously published work. With expansive and intimate vision, Boyce-Taylor grapples with longing, grief, displacement, and motherhood among many other timely and engaging themes. Whether she is reminiscing about the sensuous surroundings of her homeland or mourning the loss of her beloved son, the poems are always lyrical, vivid, each piece imbued with powerful affirmation and profound abundance. This collection is an astonishing achievement and beautiful gathering of a life's work."

The Lord Nose Award, given for "a lifetime of superlative work in literary publishing," went to Jim Perlman, founding editor and publisher of Holy Cow! Press.

---

The shortlist has been selected for the 2024 TLS Ackerley Prize, which is given to a memoir or autobiography by a British author. The winner will be announced at a ceremony on July 25.

The shortlist:
Mother Country by Monique Charlesworth
Private Worlds by Jeremy Seabrook
The Stirrings by Catherine Taylor

From the start, Lynn Stegner's The Half-Life of Guilt delivers an ominous feeling. Soon enough, what it's building to is revealed, and it is, in fact, awful, but the awful thing is not the point. In the months and years that follow, the twins Nina and Clair process those few minutes that changed everything.

Like the accumulation of that family history, the present-day narrative tilts and rolls like a slow-moving ship, taking readers into some unknown, inexorable future. Clair, now a botanist, and Mason, a photographer, deal with the intricacies of their ongoing relationship on their way to a remote area in Baja California, Mexico. There, a saltworks expansion is likely to reduce or possibly eliminate the California gray whales that have just recently returned from the edge of extinction. Though the destruction being wrought by unscrupulous actors is real, the heart of this story is not environmentalist polemic. Instead, it's about love--familial and romantic love--and about making yourself vulnerable to another. It's about forgiveness and hope and, of course, guilt. Though there is a whale on the cover (a gorgeous illustration by Felicia Cedillos), there are almost 200 pages of memory and travel before they reach their destination and finally see the whales.

Which is not to say that the pacing is off; while weighty, the plot is never tedious. And Stegner's simply stunning writing is full of sentences that sing off the page, and improbable yet perfectly apt descriptions: "The air ticks with heat, and the heat becomes time, and the time is everywhere and nowhere, a sudden menacing surfeit of the incomprehensible." This is a thoroughly literary novel, but the revelations keep raising the pulse of the story.

In that first moment with the whales, "Clair manages to forget herself... forget fear and other feelings that have names; forget history... the shadowed pain in a sister's eyes, forget thirst and the first taste of water." Despite the many memories pressing in, Clair's moment of forgetting marks a shift that will inform every moment to follow, including her relationship with Nina, who figures in all of Clair's past and hides inside every hope she might have for the future: "It began with Nina and it continues with Nina, a fine-print clause in their unspoken contract." Stegner knows the powerful bond between sisters, and The Half-Life of Guilt is a powerful story, beautifully told. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian

Shelf Talker: The Half-Life of Guilt follows Clair as she wrestles with the past and the family tragedy that haunts her while finding her way in her present romantic relationship.

Today is the publication date for Trouble in Censorville: The Far Right's Assault on Public Education--and the Teachers Who are Fighting Back, edited by Nadine M. Kalin and Rebekah Modrak, with a foreword by Jonathan Friedman, the Sy Syms Managing Director of U.S. Free Expression Programs, PEN America. It's the first publication from Disobedience Press, an imprint of Michigan Publishing.

An oral history, Trouble in Censorship collects the stories of 14 public school teachers and librarians who have been attacked by the current wave of book banners and recount how their personal and professional lives have been threatened and upended. "Their stories of frontline resistance... provide a battle plan for confronting censorship, rallying support, and mobilizing a grassroots defense of public schools."

One contributor is Martha Hickson, a librarian at North Hunterdon High School in Annandale, N.J., and 2023 New Jersey Librarian of the Year, who tells what it was like to be accused of "supplying pornography and grooming children." Here is her story:

The most recent episode--and please God let it be my last, but something tells me it won't be--began on September 28, 2021. I was eating my lunch and reading The New York Times Book Review when my principal entered my office, which he very rarely did. So, I knew this couldn't be good. He told me that he had heard a rumor that there was going to be a complaint about a book at that evening's school board meeting. (Afterward, I wondered if there really was a rumor or if someone had complained directly to him.) I said, "Oh, really? What book?" and he said, "Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe." I immediately pulled up the overwhelmingly positive reviews of the book and printed them out for him. I also gave him our selection criteria, our challenge policy, and the form community members are supposed to use to challenge a book.

Finally, I reminded him that having a fit at a board meeting is not the way to challenge a book--which he knew because he was involved in the 2019 situation--and I sent him on his merry way.

Ironically, this happened during the American Library Association's "Banned Books Week," the week in September when, since 1982, libraries, schools, museums, and bookstores around the country celebrate the right to read by acknowledging the fact that, over the years, certain titles have been repeatedly challenged. So, I had a display up for "Banned Books Week," as I have every year for the last 17 years.

I went home that night, said to my husband, "Something weird happened at work today," and we fired up the board meeting, live, on YouTube.

When the public comments started, I immediately knew I was gonna have a problem. A woman gets up and complains about two books: Gender Queer, which we'd had on the shelf since 2019 (it had zero circulations), and Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison, which I had checked out the day before. And which student did I check it out to? This woman's son.

The woman then started on a tirade about the books. She described both books as pornographic and obscene, claimed that they were being used to groom children, and she created the impression that I had foisted these books upon her child, which couldn't be further from the truth. Lawn Boy is a charming and lovely book about overcoming adversity. There's a scene in which the main character talks about a time when he was in the fourth grade and he and another fourth-grade boy experimented with each other sexually. I hate to tell people, but boys of every age touch each other's penises. It happens. I should point out that the book isn't about boys playing with their penises. As I recall, the woman read that passage out loud, taking one paragraph, at the most one page, totally out of context (as book banners always do) and making it appear that the whole book is nothing but 250 pages of fourth-grade boys touching each other's penises.

I refuse to believe she had read the book in the 24 hours since I checked it out to her kid. Regardless, she complained about the book, and then she complained about me. How dare I check this book out to her 16-year-old, et cetera, et cetera. Then, she referred to me as a "pornographer, pedophile, and groomer of children." She also referred to the board in the same language, after which several other community members got up to speak.

There was kind of a tag-team strategy: comments building upon comments, building upon comments. The man who came after her started complaining about particular books in our Banned Books Week display. The fact that this man had never even entered the library revealed that he'd enlisted his children in this effort. He was calling out books like Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan, Beyond Magenta by Susan Kuklin, and Being Jazz by Jazz Jennings. All of these books have to do with LGBTQ+ themes.

He was also incensed that I had a "Banned Book Week" contest, where I asked the kids to use the library catalog to figure out which of the top 10 banned books of that year we owned in our library (which was my way of getting them to practice using the library catalog). I had a prize drawing; the winner got a $10 Dunkin' Donuts gift card. He went ballistic, demanding to know, "Where does the money for the $10 gift card come from?" Things continued in that vein.

One of the phrases that he used during his comments was, "brought to you by North's very own librarian, Martha Hickson," thereby continuing the demonization of the library and the librarian. His concern was, "Why are they forcing these sexualized materials on our kids?"

A few speakers later, a woman who would eventually be elected to our Board of Education stood at the podium. She didn't have much of an argument other than to just vent and say, "What is this? It's not appropriate. It's not appropriate. It's inappropriate." She rambled, "Education is education. Basics. When I grew up, I didn't have any of these issues brought to my attention... I have a job to raise my children the way I feel fit. My children would not speak about religion, politics, social issues, in front of family or friends... We don't discuss those things. We're not hiding it from our children. It's not hiding. It's respecting."

At home, my heart is ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom, damn near leaping out of my chest. I started experiencing all sorts of crazy panic-attack symptoms. Fortunately, I'm a member of a teacher's union. So, the very night this happened, as the meeting was going on, I was contacting the president of my union saying, "I'm gonna need help."

The union was my life support (along with my family, of course, and the broader library community). I reached out to all of my librarian peeps immediately, and they were incredibly supportive. I have a wonderful, wonderful library clerk I work with every day, Pat Stark. I couldn't have made it without Pat; she held me up.

I came into school the next day, expecting that the man who had stood in my office and said, "Oh, I heard a rumor," would be trotting right down to see me and talk about what happened the night before. No sign of him. Because I was a meeker, milder person back then, I thought, "Oh, well, the principal is a busy man. The library's not at the top of his priority list." Now, I'm like, "What was I thinking?" I should have demanded a meeting with the principal and an immediate investigation of the false charges made against me.

The day after that, the assistant superintendent showed up in the library and, in front of my coworkers and students, said, "You sure stirred up trouble. How did you pay for that Dunkin' Donuts gift card?" I told him, "I paid for it out of a $500 honorarium I received when I won the New Jersey Association of School Librarians' Intellectual Freedom Award." He muttered, "Okay," and left. That's the last time I ever spoke to that man. He hasn't spoken to me since that day.