The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) named Gabriela Garcia’s debut novel OF WOMEN AND SALT a finalist for the 2022 Southern Book Prize. The award celebrates “bookseller favorites from 2021 that are Southern in nature—either about the South or by a Southern writer. Nominations were submitted by bookstore members of SIBA and culled from books that received strong reviews from Southern booksellers. The 18 finalists which received the highest number of nominations are a collection of the most beloved ‘hand sells’ in fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature of the year…Winners in each category will be chosen by popular vote from readers who support Southern independent bookstores.” Voting opened November 5, 2021 and will run through February 1, 2022, and the winners will be announced on February 14, 2022. Flatiron Books published OF WOMEN AND SALT on March 30, 2021.

Publishers Weekly awarded BOX 88 by Charles Cumming a starred review, proclaiming: “[An] excellent spy thriller from bestseller Cumming…Well-timed action scenes match focused glimpses into the world of spycraft. This outing cements Cumming’s place in the top rank of espionage writers.” Harper Collins will publish the book on January 1, 2021.

Dawnie Walton's THE FINAL REVIVAL OF OPAL & NEV has been longlisted for the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize, which is “one of the largest literary prizes in the United States, and one of the few focused exclusively on fiction with a social impact.” The shortlist will be shared on February 23, 2022, and the winner will be announced on April 21, 2022. 37 Ink published the novel on March 30, 2021.

Tanaïs' highly anticipated IN SENSORIUM received a glowing review from Publishers Weekly. The reviewer writes: “Novelist and perfumer Tanaïs (BRIGHT LINES) blends in this beautiful work memoir, history, and notes on perfuming to interrogate love, violence, and generational healing…Throughout, rich imagery and language are married as Tanaïs moves through their ancestral trauma to discover a place of healing, where, they write, 'a perfume emerges as a sensuous act of resistance.' Readers will find more than just their olfactory senses heightened by this beautiful meditation.” Mariner Books will publish the book on February 22, 2022.

Kiese Laymon sat down for an interview for The Ezra Klein Show podcast, guest-hosted by Tressie McMillan Cottom. In her introduction, Cottom raves: "Kiese Laymon is the most uncompromising artist I have had the pleasure of knowing...His nonfiction tackles race, gender, sports, popular culture, the politics of literary publishing and, above all, his relationship with his home state of Mississippi. His writing expresses a radical hope that Mississippi, and by extension America, can change for the better. Kiese’s prose crackles with wit, resistance and revolution, yes. But it also simmers with wisdom, vulnerability, empathy and even love. Breaking from iconoclastic American novelists like Hemingway and Faulkner, Kiese Laymon is not afraid to love on the page for all of us to see. His style of courageous art takes conviction and a very clear idea of who you are." Scribner published the reissue of HOW TO SLOWLY KILL YOURSELF IN AMERICA AND OTHERS on November 10, 2020.

Lauren Etter’s THE DEVIL’S PLAYBOOK was selected as finalist for the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing’s second annual Best in Business Book Awards. The book was amongst titles selected by SABEW that “demonstrat[e] the power of business news in this critical era.” Crown published the book on May 25, 2021.

THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING by David Graeber and David Wengrow continues to receive enthusiastic praise. In a review for the New Yorker, Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes: "THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING is a lively, and often very funny, anarchist project that aspires to enlarge our political imagination by revitalizing the possibilities of the distant past....The result is an almost hallucinatory vision of the human epic as a series of idiosyncratic digressions. It is the story of how we made it up as we went along—of how things could have been different and, perhaps, still might be." The New Republic describes the book as “historical and theoretical brilliance,” and Vulture calls it "[e]pic in ambition." For the Boston Review, Emily Kern writes: “THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING is a fascinating, radical, and playful entry into a seemingly exhaustively well-trodden genre, the grand evolutionary history of humanity. It seeks nothing less than to completely upend the terms on which the Standard Narrative rests…Erudite, compelling, generative, and frequently remarkably funny.” Lastly, The New York Times ran a feature on the book by Jennifer Schuessler titled “What if Everything You Learned About Human History Is Wrong?” where she notes that the book “took as its immodest goal nothing less than upending everything we think we know about the origins and evolution of human societies.” Allen Lane published the UK edition of the book on October 19, 2021, and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux will publish the US edition on November 9, 2021.

Celebrated poet Yrsa Daley-Ward’s first work of prose, THE HOW, received a stunning review from Nayantara Dutta for NPR. She raves: “I have followed Daley-Ward’s poetry for years, through her books and popular Instagram page – for its tenderness and warmth…[THE HOW] feels like a meditation and a guide, a therapy session and a cup of chamomile tea…This is a book to be taken in slowly, in the minutes before bedtime, or to return to in times of need. It's a map that takes us from where we are to where we want to be, and has helped me feel hopeful and prepared to start the journey.” Yrsa Daley-Ward spoke with Rachel Cargle on November 3 in a virtual event sponsored by The Strand and Elizabeth Bookshop & Writing Center to promote the book. She also spoke at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow on November 1, where she delivered an electric new poem to open the proceedings. In the poem, Daley-Ward exhorted world leaders to hold themselves accountable for the outcomes of the conference: “Nothing will be saved without you. It is important to begin with the fact. This is your invitation to lead with light.” Penguin Books published THE HOW on November 2, 2021.

Continuing its streak of positive reviews, SCIENTIST: E.O. WILSON: A LIFE IN NATURE by Richard Rhodes received another stellar review, this time from The Wall Street Journal. The reviewer raves that the book “is cause for celebration…providing succinct, nuanced summaries of some of [Wilson’s] major insights, enriched by frequent forays into the history of modern biology.” Doubleday will publish the book on November 9, 2021.

ON FREEDOM by Maggie Nelson continues to generate positive praise. The book received a glowing review from Commweal: “Nelson is, above all, a writer of prose and poetry often startling in its aptness, precision, and unexpectedness…[ON FREEDOM] is a subtle and elegant book…What is important about this book is not only its argument but also that it is an excellent example of the practices it commends.” Meanwhile, Ruminate raves: “The intellectual method of this poet, essayist, critic, and MacArthur genius grant recipient, is to focus her attention where the thicket of our inherited ideas is its thorniest, where mutually antagonistic concepts, practices, and values are knotted. This is where her subtle and nuanced thinking is at its best…Nelson is our day’s ur-thinker for nuance, our own private Susan Sontag.” Nelson also sat down to discuss ON FREEDOM with Christina Quarles for Artforum’s “Writers on Artists” series. Graywolf Press published ON FREEDOM on September 7, 2021.