Kate Challis RAKA 2021 Commendation

Fri 19 Nov 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Taboo cover - click to view full size“The Kate Challis Ruth Adeney Koori Award, or RAKA, which means ‘five’ in the Pintupi language is awarded to an Indigenous artist in one of five categories annually, including: creative prose, poetry, script writing, drama and visual arts” and this year’s winner is Tara June Winch’s novel The Yield, a novel I read and highly recommend. Although I think all the awards it has piled up — including the Miles Franklin Award, sort of like the Australian Booker Prize — might be strong enough rec. Of the award, Ms. Winch says:

I’m a Wiradjuri woman, who grew up on Dtharawal country. I want to acknowledge the Country on which you read these words, and acknowledge my fellow writers whose beloved work was published in the last five years. I also want to recognise those writers commended, my mentors, colleagues and friends — Tony Birch, Melissa Lucashenko and Kim Scott. I feel as if I’m only still at the beginning of my career as an interrogator and questioner of the past, present and future of ourselves and our nation, so it is a distinction that I will endeavour to work to, and pay respect to, in my ensuing works and years.

Kim Scott’s novel Taboo is one of three commended novels. We published Taboo in North America and I was lucky enough to attend the Library of Congress National Book Festival and spend some time with Kim, one of the highlights of pre-pandemic time. Here’s a short video of him reading from Taboo during the panel.

The full commendation for the three novels can be found here and here’s an excerpt from the note on Taboo:

‘Takes the reader along a spiritual path deep into the land and its stories, with characters as earthy, as real, as stumbling, as flawed and enlightened, and as courageous as any characters you would want to find in an epic tale.’


Tonight in Easthampton

Fri 6 Sep 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Come join us at 7 p.m. at White Square Books, 86 Cottage Street, where Kim Scott will be reading from his award-winning novel Taboo. Kim lives in Perth, Western Australia, and this is an opportunity not to be missed. The reading was featured in the Boston Globe:

Australian novelist Kim Scott was the first writer of Indigenous Australian ancestry to win the prestigious Miles Franklin Award for his second novel “Benang,” a prize he won again for his fourth book, “That Deadman Dance.” Widely lauded in Australia, Scott’s work hasn’t yet penetrated the market in the US, but this week, the boundary-pushing Western Mass-based Small Beer Press is publishing the North American edition of his latest award-winning novel “Taboo.” In this potent, ghostly book, Scott, part of the Noongar people of Western Australia, tells what happens when a group of Noongar return to the site of a massacre which followed the killing of a white man for kidnapping a black woman. The book wrestles with the haunt of history, and poetry lives on each page. “Now his own house was haunted, and he was glad.” In the taboo farmland, the group reckon with language and connection, and what reconciling with the past means for the present. They face the way the history and its sins live on, and how rebirth demands destruction. “Death is only one part of a story that is forever beginning,” Scott writes. On a brief US tour, Scott will read and discuss “Taboo” on Friday at 7 p.m. at White Square Books in Easthampton.

And here’s a short clip of Kim reading at the Library of Congress Book Festival in Washington, DC, last Saturday:


All Change at the Top

Tue 3 Sep 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

This is the top of our website yesterday:

And this is how it looks today:

Yes, we have 2 new books out today: the North American edition of Kim Scott’s award-winning novel Taboo and the huuuuge paperback edition of Sarah Rees Brennan’s In Other Lands — the latter comes with an extra short story, “Wings in the Morning,” originally published in Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales (also just out in paperback).

Taboo was a lovely surprise, it came to us in January and later came the news that Kim might be attending the Library of Congress Book Fest in DC in August — which he did, this past weekend, that was fun. The novel is immersive, different, and ticks a lot of the boxes that make us and our readers happy. As Kim does events in the next week in Charlottesville, VA, Easthampton, MA, and Brooklyn, NY, I can’t wait to see how North America reacts to it.

In Other Lands went through three printings in hardcover and has already earned out its audio advance. The paperback slipped out early since Sarah’s latest novel, Season of the Witch: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina #1, came out in July — there’s a second in December — and we wanted to make it easy for readers to find the huge new paperback. So far the paperback is flying off the shelf and more stores are adding it each week. Readers sure like novels so it’s fun to have these two both out today, both so differently brilliant.


A Trippy Genre-Hop Featuring a Trace of Fairy Tale, a Touch of Gothic, & More

Fri 23 Aug 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Taboo cover - click to view full sizeNot this Saturday, but the next one, Kim Scott, the first Indigenous writer to receive the Miles Franklin Award will be traveling to the USA for a series of events in support of his fourth novel, Taboo. It has been a very quick run up for us on this book: it was submitted on January 25th of this year, which makes the publication date of September 3 the equivalent of a sprint in publishing terms. Thank you! to everyone at Consortium and all our sales reps who have brought the book to booksellers’ attention, to the trade reviewers at Kirkus and Publishers Weekly and to all the indie bookstores and others who are stocking it.

Taboo is Scott’s 4th novel. In his afterword, as quoted by Kim Forrester of Reading Matters, Scott calls it a “trippy, stumbling sort of genre-hop that I think features a trace of Fairy Tale, a touch of Gothic, a sufficiency of the ubiquitous Social Realism and perhaps a touch of Creation Story” which rings true to me.

Although Scott has twice won the Miles Franklin award in his home country and Taboo received four literary awards (totalling AU$80,000) in Australia, his voice is one of those mostly missing from literary discourse in North America so I am deeply gladdened that the Australian Embassy is bringing him to the USA.

If you’re in DC on August 31 for the Library of Congress Book Festival, I hope I see you at the 10 a.m panel, “The View From Country—Australia’s Aboriginal Writers.” This will be a near unique opportunity to see these writers in the northern hemisphere.

After a trip to UVA, and before he heads to Community Bookstore in Brooklyn, Scott will come up to Western Massachusetts for a reading at Easthampton’s own White Square Books on Friday, September 6, where I hope we can show him a SRO crowd of enthusiastic, open-minded, and curious readers.

Here’s the full list of events:

Aug. 31, 10 a.m “The View From Country—Australia’s Aboriginal Writers” with Jeanine Leane and Brenton McKenna , Library of Congress Book Festival, Washington, D.C.
Sept. 3, 5:30 p.m. Reading & Signing, Brooks Hall Commons, UVA, Charlottesville, VA
Sept. 5, 6 p.m. “Truth Telling,” Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, UVA, 400 Worrell Dr., Charlottesville, VA 22911
Sept. 6, 7 p.m. White Square Books, 86 Cottage St., Easthampton, MA
Sept. 9, 12:30 p.m., NYU
Sept. 9, 7 p.m. Community Bookstore with Terr-ann White, 143 Seventh Ave, Brooklyn, NY


Kim Scott in the Valley

Mon 19 Aug 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Kim Scott

We’ve just added a local reading for Australian author Kim Scott, whose novel Taboo, we are publishing next month. Kim will be reading at White Square Books, 86 Cottage St., Easthampton, MA, at 7 p.m. on Friday, September 6.

Kim is an Australian superstar and we’re hoping to get a crowd together for good nights in Easthampton and Brooklyn. Come on by!

The full list of Kim’s events is:

August 31, 10 a.m “The View From Country—Australia’s Aboriginal Writers” with Jeanine Leane and Brenton McKenna , Library of Congress Book Festival, Washington, D.C.
UVA
September 6, 7 p.m. White Square Books, 86 Cottage St., Easthampton, MA
September 9, NYU
September 9, 7 p.m. Community Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY


First Taboo trade reviews

Tue 16 Jul 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Taboo cover - click to view full sizeIn a couple of months we will publish Kim Scott’s new novel, Taboo. Those in the know, i.e. Australian readers, have given the book 4 awards and we give it an enthusiastic thumbs up.

Kim is coming to the USA in August for the Library of Congress Book Festival on August 31 — I’m going down to DC for that, see you there? — and we’re working on a reading in New York City and maybe further north. More on that and his other events closer to the actual days and in the meantime to whet your appetite, here’s a word from Publishers Weekly

“In this assured, complex novel, Scott (True Country) delves into the fraught history of race relations in Western Australia. . . .  Scott’s novel memorably describes this dramatic resurrection and the enduring power of ancestral traditions.”

and another from Kirkus Reviews:

“Scott (That Deadman Dance, 2010, etc.) has created a shadowy and elliptical story, but it is not as hopeless as it sometimes feels: Tilly is a survivor, and though her Aboriginal culture is not a perfect salvation, it nevertheless provides her with a touchstone in the chaos.”

As The Conversation says, Scott talks about events we don’t want to remember. He circles back to one in particular, which he wrote about in an earlier novel, Benang, and then fictionalizes here in Taboo. There’s an out-of-time grace to some of Scott’s writing although he shifts registers easily from humor to tense scenes where the possible outcomes are unknown and perhaps violent. Scott is one of the writers who are taking on the hard work of actually considering how to live with our pasts and, novel after novel, building a way for it to happen.

You can listen to the first two minutes read by the author here.


And Go Like This on Edelweiss

Wed 1 May 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Taboo cover - click to view full sizeReviewers, booksellers, librarians, bloggers, et al, I just added an uncorrected advance reading copy of John Crowley’s November 2019 collection And Go Like This: Stories to Edelweiss for downloading and reading.

Also available there (at least until the publication date for Air Logic): Laurie J. Marks’s four Elemental Logic novels — Fire Logic, Earth Logic, Water Logic, and Air — as well as our award-winning September drop-in title Taboo by Kim Scott.


Just Added: Taboo

Thu 11 Apr 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Taboo cover - click to view full sizeEagle-eyed readers of this website might note we added a new forthcoming title today — woohoo!

And also, hey, wait, it’s a September title being added in April, that’s a bit soon, isn’t it? Yes, it absolutely is! But when Kim Scott’s novel Taboo was submitted to us we started a countdown to get this book out asap because 1) it’s an incredible read, and while 2) Kim Scott is the keynote speaker at this month’s American Association of Australian Literary Studies conference in Fairbanks, Alaska, there are also plans to bring him back to the USA in time for the publication of Taboo.

Taboo is the latest novel from Scott, the first Australian writer of Indigenous Australian ancestry to win the Miles Franklin Award. He received it in the year 2000 for his first novel Benang (a joint winner with Thea Astley’s Dryland) and then again in 2011 for his novel That Deadman Dance. Taboo itself received four major Australian literary awards worth AU$80,000.

Taboo is a tremendous novel, with a full range of voices from contemporary Australia. From rural and small town to inner city life, from prisoners and those recently released to young women and men exploring the world for the first time, Scott gives them all voice and his enthusiasm for this life and this planet we are all living on carries the novel from the first titanic images of a runaway truck barreling through a small town all the way through. It’s a novel that threads hard paths of history and violence between the settlers and indigenous peoples of Australia and their descendants in a way that will bring hope in these days when governments are propounding violence as the answer in itself. It made me laugh out loud and hold my breath in wonder and there are moments when the world in the page is as weird as the world I see around me.

We’re sending out the first review copies this week and will have it out and grabbable by you before you can say, wait, summer’s barely begun!