The winners of the 2023 Hugo Awards—one of science fiction and fantasy’s most prestigious awards, decided by the popular vote of WorldCon members—were presented this weekend at the 81st WorldCon in Chengdu, China. Here are the winners in the literary categories:

Best Novel: Nettle & Bone, by T. Kingfisher (Tor Books)

Best Novella: Where the Drowned Girls Go, by Seanan McGuire (Tordotcom)

Best Novelette: “The Space-Time Painter,” by Hai Ya (Galaxy’s Edge, April 2022)

Best Short Story: “Rabbit Test,” by Samantha Mills (Uncanny Magazine, November-December 2022)

Best Series: Children of Time Series, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Pan Macmillan/Orbit)

Best Graphic Story or Comic: Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams, by Bartosz Sztybor, Filipe Andrade, Alessio Fioriniello, Roman Titov, Krzysztof Ostrowski (Dark Horse Books)

Best Related Work: Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes, by Rob Wilkins (Doubleday)

Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book (presented by the World Science Fiction Society): Akata Woman (The Nsibidi Scripts), by Nnedi Okorafor (Viking Books for Young Readers)

Astounding Award for Best New Writer (presented by Dell Magazines): Travis Baldree

You can read the full list of winners and finalists here. 

Attention all writers who write about writing (or painting, or dancing, or music…): the Interlochen Center for the Arts and The Pattis Family Foundation have established a new annual award that seeks to recognize “outstanding works of fiction or nonfiction” that “inspire, illuminate, or exemplify the creative process in fields such as creative writing, dance, film and new media, music, theatre, and visual arts.”

The inaugural Pattis Family Foundation Creative Arts Book Award is open to all books of fiction or nonfiction originally written in English and published in 2022 or 2023. The author of the winning book will receive a $25,000 cash prize, and will be invited for a multi-day residency at Interlochen Arts Academy and to join the lineup of the National Writers Series in Traverse City, Michigan. Two runner-up awards of $2,500 may also be presented.

“We are delighted to partner with Interlochen for the latest in our series of book awards. Each of our awards supports an organization we hold in high esteem and puts a spotlight on important books exploring subject areas we deeply care about,” said Lisa Pattis in a press release.

“We have known Interlochen for more than 20 years and we truly admire its impact across the creative arts,” added Mark Pattis in the same release. “Interlochen’s long history and its transformative effect on its students make it an ideal partner to identify and recognize the most significant books exploring the creative process.”

Anyone can nominate a book for free by completing this entry form before June 1, 2024. A shortlist will be announced in September, and the winner and runners-up will be announced in November 2024.

In Nathan Thrall’s A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, the struggle over Israel and Palestine is told through heart-wrenching story of a tragic accident that killed Abed Salama’s five-year-old son, Milad. The book is granular in its recitation of the daily injustices that make up the lives of the roughly 3.2 million Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank and even-handed in detailing the intractable narratives of the region. Hailed for his “severe allergy to conventional wisdom” (Time), Thrall offers an indelibly human portrait of the struggle over Israel/Palestine and a new understanding of the tragic history and reality of one of the most contested places on earth. Thrall was in conversation with Masha Gessen earlier this month at the Center for Brooklyn History; their conversation is condensed and shared here.

*

Masha Gessen: This book is a staggering achievement. It’s particularly staggering because it’s so short, but it’s such an extraordinary work of history, it’s an extraordinary work of prose, it’s a couple of love stories, it’s a beautiful work of nonfiction that breaks through something that I’ve been thinking about a lot, which is that when you talk about the occupation, when you talk about Israel/Palestine, you always come up against the question of what the audience knows and who you’re talking to, and I think this makes Israel/Palestine really peculiar in the range of contemporary topics. Pretty much everything else that I’ve had to deal with, you kind of know what people know and what they don’t know if they read the papers, if they watch some television, if they maybe come to book events, if they read books. Yet for people living in the United States, for people living in Israel, the possibilities of not knowing are boundless. This is a book that makes that impossible. And it does it in a genius way, which I’m going to try to get to in this conversation, but really, have to read the book to understand just how brilliantly structured and told it is.

To start with, can you tell me about where you live and how you came to know Abed?

Nathan Thrall: I live about two and a half miles away from Abed in a neighborhood called Musrara, which is just outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. Abed lives in a town called Anata that has been partially annexed, so part of it is officially part of the sovereign state of Israel as far as Israel is concerned, and part of it is considered the West Bank, the unannexed part of the West Bank. Together with a Palestinian refugee camp called Shuafat, all of it lies within a walled ghetto. It’s surrounded on three sides by a twenty-six-foot-tall concrete wall, and on the fourth side by a different kind of wall that runs down the middle of a segregated road that’s famously known as the “apartheid road.” When the accident happened, I was living in Jerusalem, and I had been driving past this walled ghetto on a weekly basis, sometimes on a daily basis, and not paying it much mind. I think most people are that way. It was very easy to ignore this place that’s part of the city that I live in but with a radically different existence on the other side of that wall.

The way that Abed and I met is that when I started to investigate the accident, a very close family friend told me that one of the parents was a distant relative. She put me in touch with a relative of Abed’s, who put me in touch with Abed, and I found myself in his home.

*

MG: There were several families whose children died in the accident. You chose Abed and his family. There are many characters in the book, but the book, of course, is called A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, and it begins with an extremely close telling of Abed’s story. Why?

NT: When Abed finished the book, he asked me the same question. There are a couple of reasons. One of them is just the connection I had with him. The other is that the ambition of the book was to tell the entire story of Israel/Palestine through this single event, and I could only do that through Abed. He comes from a family that is very prominent in the town of Anata and who himself lived a life of activism in the First Intifada, who experienced imprisonment and torture. He was even forced by the system in which he lives to choose a wife at one point just to keep his freedom of movement and his job, to try and marry somebody who had the right color ID that would allow him to keep his job. So that’s why this is a day in the life of Abed Salama.

MG: What was the process like for you?

NT: A lot of the conversations felt less like interviews and more like therapy. Abed and I cried a lot together. I would come home and relay stories—Abed’s stories but also those of other characters, those of some of his relatives—and tell them to my wife, who would weep as I relayed the stories. It was a very intense process, emotionally, reporting the book. And I felt a tremendous responsibility because of the trust put in me.

MG: How many hours of interviews did you record? How long did this whole process take?

NT: Probably well over a thousand hours. It began in 2019, so we’re four years later.

MG: The writing approach, and I assume this was very much intentional, it’s what we call in the trade the “close third.” You’re always, and sometimes claustrophobically so, in the head space of the person who’s going through their life, and there isn’t a whole lot in quotations, unless we’re actually witnessing dialogue. So it’s written very much in the way a novel is written. You don’t see very much of this approach in non-fiction, although I’m partial to it. What kind of interviewing do you have to do in order to get to that? And what kind of questions do you ask? How do you get to what people smelled and what they saw?

NT: In this particular case I have to say that I don’t think it was any great virtue of mine. It was that many of these people were hungry to speak about something that nobody wanted to talk about around them. There was a cloud of silence in many of these homes around the accident. There were many times where I convened family members, and they said this was the first time they were talking about it since the weeks after the accident had happened. So in a number of cases, it just came pouring out. But it also took tremendous patience and trust and cooperation from people. Like Abed, who had me ask him things like, “what did you smell,” over and over again and come to him with very minor, specific details.

MG: Chapter 11, which describes the actual accident, comes in the middle of the book, which fascinates me as a structural decision. Can you talk about how you figured out the structure of the story?

NT: The structure of this book was the greatest challenge, and one of the reasons it was so challenging is that I was trying to balance two chronologies. The ambition of the book is to tell the whole story of Israel/Palestine; I’m also taking a character like Huda and telling the story of the Nakba. I have to tell the story of the Nakba before I tell things that follow the Nakba. On the other hand, Huda can only enter the picture when Huda actually enters the accident, and all these people came upon the scene of the accident at different times.

So this was a big puzzle. It wound up also meaning a lot of prioritizing and cutting. My temptation as a writer is always to include everything, but in order for the book to work, I really needed to keep tightly focused on the accident and not allow those historical interludes to go on for very long.

MG: We know that there’s an accident from the very beginning of the book, but by the time we get to really understanding how the accident happened, the word “accident” seems totally inappropriate. I’d love to hear you talk about that. Because to me it seems that that’s what the book is about. It’s about how it’s not an accident.

NT: Well, I’m glad that you think that’s what the book is about because that is what the book is about.

I was interviewed recently by an Israeli journalist. In Chapter 11, I mention a character named Salem, who went into the bus. He acted truly selflessly and went repeatedly on his own into this burning bus and rescued dozens of children, and afterward he had a meltdown and was screaming at everyone and anyone in his vicinity—at the emergency service personnel, both Palestinian and Israeli—he screams at them, “You killed these kids. Why didn’t you come?”

The Israeli journalist read that passage back to me and said, “So you’re saying that Israel wanted these kids to die? That Israel tried to kill these kids? That they knew that the bus was burning and they deliberately didn’t come?”

And I said, you’re reading what Salem said to these Israeli soldiers, and that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that the entire set of circumstances that happened on this day were the predictable outcome of an entire apparatus that put a wall around this community; the total neglect of the tens of thousands of people who live in it; a partition of the West Bank into Areas A, B, and C not allowing the Palestinian Authority to come onto the road where the accident took place, but at the same time Israel not caring at all about what happens on this road. It’s patrolled by Israeli police but entirely neglected. And in addition, just the very fact that this enclave that Abed and his family live in has this crazy system where some of them have green IDs and some have blue IDs in the same family. The municipality doesn’t provide them with a school, forces the kids to either go through a checkpoint for hours (and the parents are frightened to have their kids interact with soldiers) or go to a dilapidated school in a former goat pen or, as these parents did, to pay to send their kids to school in the technically unannexed part of the West Bank.

So that is the real cause of all of the delayed response and everything else that transpired on that day. That’s what the book slowly unravels.

I just wanted to add one thing. There is an overriding logic driving all of those micro-decisions, which is a very simple logic, which is: to keep as many Jews in the heart of Jerusalem and as few Palestinians. That dictated the route of the wall, and it’s an explicit goal of the state, to keep as high a proportion of Jews inside Jerusalem as possible. And the lives of these people are affected in a thousand different ways by that central goal.

In many of my conversations with parents involved in the accident, there was a real focus on many, many micro, proximate causes and almost no discussion of what was prominent in my mind, which is this macro structure that made this tragedy, which would be a tragedy anywhere, so much worse because of the unique circumstances of who the victims were and where it took place. There’s this famous David Foster Wallace graduation speech where he tells the anecdote of fish—one fish says something like, “How’s the water?” and the other fish says, “What’s water?” That’s a little what it felt like talking to people about the causes of this accident, because they were all thinking about the driver, and the weather, and the materials that the bus was made of. But what about the fact that these kids had a play area just on the other side of the wall that they couldn’t go to, and instead they had to follow the snaking path of the wall to the outskirts of Ramallah in order to go on an excursion?

MG: One of the things that I love about the book is that it forces you to make that conclusion that it’s not an accident. You don’t quite spell it out.

One of the things that really struck me is that by diving deeply into Abed’s life, and Huda’s life, we see over and over again how gradual this process of restricting people’s freedom was. In addition to fish in water, there’s the boiled frog syndrome—all those horrible allegories we use for describing that thing that we do as humans, which is that we adapt. When you write about what life was like when these people were younger and how there weren’t these color-coded IDs and how there wasn’t this sense of constant terror and, most important, how slowly the fear for their children’s safety descended on them. By the time you get to the actual scene of the accident, I think you’re terrified for all of your characters’ children all the time.

Audience:  Can you imagine a future that looks different and better?

NT: One of the main goals of this book is to take us away from a conversation about hypothetical futures. Those futures may come or they may not come. They certainly look very, very far away. But there is a certain comfort that a lot of people have with having this debate: “What ought that future look like? One state, two states, confederation, let’s debate it. Of course this present situation is horrible; there’s no denying it. It’s awful. But it’s temporary. Let’s focus on how to get out of it by agreeing all together on what that future state ought to look like.”

I feel that this very conversation actually facilitates the ongoing oppression and suffering that we see. The ambition of doing narrative work like this is to force people to confront the reality that those conversations allow them to ignore. People don’t want to talk about Huda being powerless to protect her teenage boy from being arrested at one in the morning for throwing stones at an occupying soldier and being entirely powerless to do anything to even find her son over the coming days after his arrest. Instead they want to talk about one state and two states and all the rest of it.

__________________________

Nathan Thrall’s A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy is available now from Metropolitan Books.

The situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate. At the time of this writing, some 4,200 people have been killed in Gaza in the last ten days—including over 1,000 children—hundreds of them in a horrifying explosion at the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday. According to Israeli authorities, there are also at least 199 people, captured by Hamas during the brutal October 7 attacks, who are currently being held hostage in Gaza, including children and the elderly.

Today, President Biden is in Israel; in a speech, he “announced $100 million in aid to help civilians in Gaza and the West Bank and said he had secured a commitment from Israel’s government to allow food, water and medicine to be delivered to Palestinians in Gaza from Egypt in a humanitarian effort overseen by the United Nations and others.”

However, despite the U.N. Secretary-General’s calls for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” as well as global protests and outcry—including a large group of Jewish demonstrators outside the White House—the United States has refused to call for a ceasefire; in fact, today, the U.S. vetoed a U.N. resolution “that would have condemned violence against all civilians in the Israel-Hamas war including ‘the heinous terrorists attacks by Hamas’ against Israel, and would have urged humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza.”

Here are a few recent pieces from around the internet that the Literary Hub staff has been reading about the worsening crisis and its many reverberations:

“Explanations Are Not Excuses,” Sarah Schulman, New York Magazine

Selective recognition is the way we maintain our own sense of goodness. Today, we see this process of denial in every aspect of our lives. In this moment, it has become a tool to justify the sustained murder of thousands in Gaza, where the current death toll sits at over 2,600 people. As Israel began its relentless retaliation last week, an accompanying image of Israeli and American moral cleanliness was put swiftly into action. This is called “manufactured consent” — Noam Chomsky’s term for a system-supported propaganda by which authorities and media agree on a simplified reality, and it becomes the assumptive truth. We’ve seen this erasure of history in the uniform responses by western world leaders, university administrations, heads of foundations, and even book fairs over the past week.

“Letter From the Editor: ‘We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other’,” Arielle Angel, Jewish Currents

Already complex and fragile relationships between Palestinian and left-wing Jewish activists—as well as factions within both of these groups—are being challenged as we struggle to derive the same meaning from the images coming across our screens. Friends and colleagues on all sides find themselves hurt by one another’s public reactions, or by their silence. . . . It is a situation none of us have ever before confronted in earnest, amid a long history of vastly disproportionate death tolls. And now, when we need it most, we find ourselves struggling with a lack of emotional and political vocabulary.

“Against the Imposters,” M. Muhannad Ayyash, The Baffler

The story of the Palestinian struggle is of course a complex one; the rise of Hamas within Palestinian political life alone has been the subject of many books and articles. And many Palestinians are opposed to Hamas on a number of issues and from a variety of perspectives, myself included. But what all these Western imposters have never understood is that we understand our struggle as a people’s struggle, not the struggle of this or that political faction. Across all our big and sharp differences, we know that we are all together in the end because it is all of the Palestinian people who are under brutal occupation and assault, aspiring for the same freedom and liberation. Palestinians, of course, share their experience of colonial violence with many communities and peoples from across the world, both historically and into the present. But we also understand that we are indeed alone in experiencing the specific structures of Israeli settler-colonial violence, and that we therefore must always stand together and help each other as people. Our collectivity as a people is our support and our guide.

“These New Ghosts,” Rob Delaney, Tribune

Can you kill anyone to fix this? Who? Where are they? Do you bring your other children with you to do it? Or do you get a babysitter for your other kids so you can go try and kill them? Is your babysitter alive? If you can’t kill your child’s murderer specifically, is there someone else you could kill? Would it feel good then and there, like working out or taking a shit? If so, how long would it take the feeling to dissipate?

“An Open Letter in Support of Adania Shibli From More Than 350 Writers, Editors, and Publishers,” Literary Hub

The shocking and tragic events that began on October 7th and are ongoing today have had repercussions all over the globe, including within the publishing world. Award-winning Palestinian author Adania Shibli, who was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for her book Minor Detail (New Directions/Fitzcarraldo, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette), was to receive Germany’s 2023 LiBeraturpreis for the same book, published in German as Eine Nebensache (Berenberg Verlag, translated by Günther Orth) at the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair, which begins this week.

On October 13, the organizers of the prize, Litprom, which is funded in part by the German government and the Frankfurt Book Fair, released a statement saying that the prize-giving ceremony would no longer take place at the book fair.

“Doomsday Diaries,” Sarah Aziza, The Baffler

I wake strangely early on October 7, groggy from a late night out. In my kitchen, I set my teapot to boil and the radio to BBC. A moment later I hear a news bulletin beginning with “Palestinian fighters from Gaza have crossed into Israel . . .” I turn in the direction of the disembodied sound. I am used to waking to news of violence in the West Bank—at least one morning each week seems to begin this way, with a story of settler attacks or another Israel Defense Force raid. In fact, Labib Dumaidi, a nineteen-year-old Palestinian university student, was shot yesterday during another pogrom in Huwara in the West Bank. But this report is something different, and my mind struggles to grasp the words. Gaza? How?

“Gaza: The Cost of Escalation,” Ben Rhodes, New York Review of Books

We don’t yet know how events will unfold. But the history of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the Middle East, and the US’s own recent experience suggests that violence is likely to beget more violence, that trauma will beget more trauma. It is easier to start or escalate wars than to end them, and the consequences of war are always unpredictable. Short-term victories can engender longer-term challenges. Victors on the battlefield can lose something of themselves at home.

“A letter to the friendships I have lost and will lose,” Ijeoma Oluo, Behind the Book

This letter is to my friends. To the people in my social circles. The people in my writing and activism communities. The people I know or have felt kinship with online or in person. This is to the people who have sent me messages voicing their disappointment and dismay at what I have been saying. And to those who have said nothing, and are instead deciding right now to fade away from my life for good.

I know that my immediate focus on the safety of people in Gaza in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks seems to be in poor taste to many.

I know that my refusal to include denouncements of Hamas in my posts and videos talking about what is happening in Gaza seems cold and uncaring at best, antisemitic at worst.

I know that the passion I have towards freeing the Palestinian people seems grotesque in response to your pain.

I know this because you have told me, because many of you are sharing such sentiments in your messages and your status updates.

But this is what I must do.

“An Open Letter on the Situation in Palestine,” The London Review of Books

The deliberate killing of civilians is always an atrocity. It is a violation of international law and an outrage against the sanctity of human life. In Gaza, neither the occupying power, Israel, nor the armed groups of the people under occupation, the Palestinians, can ever be justified in targeting defenceless people. We can only express our grief and heartbreak for the victims of these most recent tragedies, and for their families, both Palestinians and Israelis. . . .

We call on our governments to demand an immediate ceasefire and the unimpeded admission of humanitarian aid into Gaza. We also demand an end to all arms shipments and military funding, supplies that can only exacerbate the humanitarian catastrophe at hand. Although these measures will not be enough to secure true justice, liberation and equality for all in the region, they represent an urgent and indispensable first step. We plead for an end to all violence, an end to all oppression and denial of human rights, and a path towards a just and sustainable peace for all.

“‘The Interviewer Wants to Know About Fashion’: A Poem by Hala Alyan,” Literary Hub

Think of all the calla lilies.
Think of all the words that rhyme with calla.
Isn’t it a miracle that they come back?
The flowers. The dead. I watch a woman
bury her child. How? I lost a fetus
and couldn’t eat breakfast for a week.
I watch a woman and the watching is a crime,
so I return my eyes. The sea foams like a dog.
What’s five thousand miles between friends?

“How Social Media Abdicated Responsibility for the News,” Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker

An “algorithmically driven fog of war” is how one journalist described the deluge of disinformation and mislabelled footage on X. Videos from a paragliding accident in South Korea in June of this year, the Syrian civil war in 2014, and a combat video game called Arma 3 have all been falsely labelled as scenes from Israel or Gaza. (Inquiries I sent to X were met with an e-mail reading, “Busy now, please check back later.”) On October 8th, Musk posted a tweet recommending two accounts to follow for information on the conflict, @WarMonitors and @sentdefender, neither of which is a formal media company, but both are paid X subscribers. Later that day, after users pointed out that both accounts regularly post falsities, Musk deleted the recommendation. Where Twitter was once one of the better-moderated digital platforms, X is most trustworthy as a source for finding out what its owner wants you to see.

“Here’s how you can help people in Gaza right now,” Dan Sheehan, Literary Hub

The devastating humanitarian crisis in Gaza is deepening, with Israel cutting off access to food, water, fuel and electricity for the besieged enclave’s 2.3 million residents and unleashing wave after wave of air strikes that Palestinian authorities say have killed more than 2,800 people (including at least 724 children) and injured more than 10,000.

The situation is dire, but here’s what you can do right now to support the people of Gaza.

This letter was originally published by ArabLit.

The shocking and tragic events that began on October 7th and are ongoing today have had repercussions all over the globe, including within the publishing world. Award-winning Palestinian author Adania Shibli, who was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for her book Minor Detail (New Directions/Fitzcarraldo, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette), was to receive Germany’s 2023 LiBeraturpreis for the same book, published in German as Eine Nebensache (Berenberg Verlag, translated by Günther Orth) at the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair, which begins this week.

On October 13, the organizers of the prize, Litprom, which is funded in part by the German government and the Frankfurt Book Fair, released a statement saying that the prize-giving ceremony would no longer take place at the book fair.

In addition, a public discussion with Adania Shibli and her translator Günther Orth at the book fair has also been canceled.

The statement originally said that this decision had been made in accordance with the author’s wishes, which was then relayed, without verification, by an article in The New York Times (now corrected). This is untrue; Adania Shibli has said the decision was not made with her, she was presented with the decision. If the ceremony were to have gone ahead, she said, she would have taken the opportunity to reflect on the role of literature in these cruel and painful times. (Litprom and The New York Times have since made corrections.)

Shibli’s US publisher, Barbara Epler of New Directions, wrote a letter to the editor of The New York Times, which we excerpt here:

With the unbelievable heartbreak that is now being suffered on all sides, it serves no one to put forward falsehoods, especially about the author of a novel about the Nakba that is so historically true.

To cancel the ceremony and so try to silence the voice of Adania Shibli —“due to the war in Israel”—is cowardly.

But to say Shibli agreed (amid all the suffering in Gaza) is worse.

At a time when the fair has issued a statement saying it wants to make Israeli voices “especially visible at the fair,” they are closing out the space for a Palestinian voice.

While Shibli’s Minor Detail has been smeared as being anti-Semitic by two journalists and literary editors, other serious literary critics have clearly refuted this in the German press and elsewhere. The book makes reference to well-documented events related to the rape of a Bedouin girl in 1949 by an Israeli army unit.

Shibli’s UK publisher, Jacques Testard of Fitzcarraldo, writes, “One of the purposes of literature is to encourage understanding and dialogue between cultures. At a time of such horrific violence and heartbreak, the world’s biggest book fair has a duty to champion literary voices from Palestine and Israel. We stand in solidarity with Adania Shibli and her German publishers, Berenberg Verlag.”

In this spirit, those of us involved in writing, translation, and publishing strongly assert that canceling cultural events is not the way forward. We recall the Frankfurt book fair supporting Turkish publishers, and how last year Ukrainian president Zelensky spoke to the fair in a pre-recorded address. The Frankfurt Book Fair has a responsibility, as a major international book fair, to be creating spaces for Palestinian writers to share their thoughts, feelings, reflections on literature through these terrible, cruel times, not shutting them down.

We need to look for new language and new ideas in order to approach these bleak times in a new way. For this, we need writers—including Palestinian writers—more than ever.

—ArabLit

*

MINOR DETAIL TEAM

Rana Idriss, Dar al-Adab, Arabic publisher of Minor Detail

Ana Paula Hisayama, Todavia, Brazilian publisher of Minor Detail

Chris de Jong, Koppernik, publisher of Minor Detail in the Netherlands

Daniel Álvarez, Hoja de Lata Editorial, Spanish publisher of Minor Detail

Laura Sandoval, publisher, Hoja de Lata Editorial, Asturies

Djûke Poppinga, Dutch translator of Minor Detail

Elisabeth Jaquette, English translator of Minor Detail

Elisabetta Sgarbi, publisher, La Nave di Teseo, Italian publisher of Minor Detail

Günther Orth, German translator of Minor Detail

Salvador Peña Martín, Spanish translator of Minor Detail

Safa Jubran, Brazilian Portuguese translator of Minor Detail

Jonathan Morén, Swedish translator of Minor Detail

Farouk Mardam-Bey, Actes Sud/Sindbad, French publisher of Minor Detail

Halfdan Freihow, Cappelen Damm, publisher of Minor Detail in Norway

Jacques Testard, Fitzcarraldo, UK publisher of Minor Detail

Johannes Holmqvist, Tranan, publisher of Minor Detail in Sweden

Mehmet Hakkı Suçin, Turkish translator of Minor Detail

Michael Heyward, Publisher, The Text Publishing Company, Australia and New Zealand publisher of Minor Detail

Monica Ruocco, Italian translator of Minor Detail

Penny Hueston, Senior Editor, The Text Publishing Company, Australia and New Zealand publisher of Minor Detail

Şirin Etik, managing editor, Canyayinlari, Turkish publisher of Minor Detail

Stefanos Batsis of Plithos, Greek publisher of Minor Detail

Stéphanie Dujols, French translator of Minor Detail

PUBLISHERS AND EDITORS

Simona Gabrieli, publisher Alifbata

Joyelle McSweeney and Johannes Göransson, editors, Action Books

Stefan Tobler, publisher, And Other Stories

Tara Tobler, senior editor, And Other Stories

Michael Watson, UK Publicist, And Other Stories

María Rán Guðjónsdóttir, publisher, Angústúra

Jill Schoolman, publisher, Archipelago Books

Gianni Schilardi, publisher, Argo Editrice, Italian publisher of Sensi (Touch) and of the collection of short stories Pallidi segni di quiete 

Askold Melnyczuk, editor, Arrowsmith Press

Diane Mehta, poet, Arrowsmith Press

Brian Lam, publisher, Arsenal Pulp Press

Rachel Levitsky, publisher, Belladonna* Collaborative

Jan Marti, publisher, Blackie Books

Neil Astley, editor & managing director, Bloodaxe Books Ltd

Francisco Vilhena, translator and managing editor, Bloomsbury

Kevin Duffy, publisher, Bluemoose Books

Hazel Millar, co-publisher, Book*hug Press

Gavin Everall, director, publishing, Book Works

Jamie Byng, publisher, Canongate Books

Kendall Store, editor-in-chief Catapult Books

Mark Haber, Director of Marketing, Coffee House Press

Jeremy M. Davies, Executive Editor, Coffee House Press

Ra Page and Basma Ghalayini, publishers, Comma Press

Farhana Shaikh, publisher, Dahlia Books

Firoze Manji, Daraja Press

Marigold Atkey, publisher Daunt Books

Noah M. Mintz, marketing coordinator, Deep Vellum

Sarah McEachern, Rights Director, Deep Vellum

David Richardson, editor, dispersed holdings

Monika Lustig van Diesen, Publisher Edition Converso, Karlsruhe / Germany

Stephan Trudewind, publisher, Edition Orient, Berlin

Mylène Bouchard, Literary director, Editions La Peuplade

Martina Testa, Edizioni SUR, Italy

John Hatt, Eland Books

Eugene Lim, publisher, Ellipsis Press

Kenza Sefrioui, editor, En Toutes Lettres, Morocco

Emmie Francis, editor at Faber and Faber

Tiziana Triana, editor-in-chief of Fandango Libri, (Rome)

Fabio Muzi Falconi, editor, Feltrinelli

Sasha, Achille and Renae, publishers, 5ever Books

Nii Ayikwei Parkes, writer, publisher, flipped eye publishing

Simón Vázquez, publisher Ediciones Akal, Spain

Ariadna Akal, publisher Ediciones Akal, Spain

Esther Prieto, publisher Trabe Editorial, Asturies

Samuel Castro, publisher Trabe Editorial, Asturies

Zacarías Lara, publisher Barrett Editorial, Spain

Manuel Burraco, publisher Barrett Editorial, Spain

Ana Roza, publisher Delallama Editorial, Asturies

Daniel Moreno, publisher Capitán Swing, Spain

Laura Huerga, publisher Raig Verd Editorial, Catalonia

Almudena Cardeñoso, publisher Duermevela Editorial, Asturies

Rebeca Cardeñoso, publisher, Duermevela Editorial, Asturies

Hassan Ali, Faber Factory Manager, Faber & Faber

Tamara Sampey-Jawad, Associate Publisher, Fitzcarraldo Editions

Donatella Ianuzzi, publisher, Gallo Nero Editorial, Spain

Daniel Osca, publisher Sajalín Editores, Catalonia

Seif Salmawy, publisher, Al Karma Publishers

Mikel Buldain, publisher Txalaparta Liburuak, Basque Country

Garazi Arrula, editor Txalaparta Liburuak, Basque Country

Ane Eslava editor Txalaparta Liburuak, Basque Country

Kishani Widyaratna, publisher, 4th Estate

Alan Giagnocavo, CEO and publisher, Fox Chapel Publishing

Dan Machlin, executive editor, Futurepoem

Barbara Schwepcke, publisher, Gingko Books

Jason Arthur, Associate Publishing Director, Granta Books

Ethan Nosowsky, Graywolf Press

Federica Manzon, writer, editorial director of the Italian publishing house Guanda

Ami Tian, Hachette Book Group

Julie Fain, publisher, Haymarket Books

Beatrice Merz, director of hopefulmonster publishing house

Michel S. Moushabeck, publisher, Interlink Publishing

Norm Nehmetallah, publisher, Invisible Publishing

Andrea Morstabilini, editor, Iperborea

Cristina Gerosa, editorial director, Iperborea

Marco Agosta, Iperborea

Pietro Biancardi, publisher, Iperborea

Hazal Baydur, foreign rights, İthaki Yayınları

Helena Cobban, CEO, Just World Books

Emily Dewhurst, Kitchen Press

Nasim Mawji, Kitchen Press

Karam Youssef, publisher, Al Kotob Khan for Publishing

Lorenzo Ribaldi, publisher, La Nuova Frontiera – Italy

Maria Leonardi, acquiring editor, La Nuova Frontiera

Simón Vázquez, Manifest Llibres, Catalonia

E. Tracy Grinnell, publisher, Litmus Press

Adrian and Gracie Cooper, publishers, Little Toller Books and Pineapple Lane

Adam Shatz, writer, US editor of The London Review of Books

Brian Lewis, publisher, Longbarrow Press

Alexandre Sanchez, Lux Éditeur

Katharina Bielenberg, Publisher, MacLehose Press

Yara El Ghadban, author and editor, Mémoire d’encrier, Montréal

Anita Magno, editor, Mesogea, Italy

Abid Nouri, Med Ali editions (Tunisie)

Müge Sökmen, Metis Publishers

Daniel Slager, publisher & CEO, Milkweed Editions

Valeria Bergalli, publisher, Minúscula

Laura di Pietro, Editora Tabla, Brazil

Archna Sharma, publisher, Neem Tree Press

Jeffrey Yang, editor, New Directions

Tynan Kogane, senior editor, New Directions

Edwin Frank, editor, New York Review Books

Susan Barba, senior editor, New York Review Books

Susan C Wilson, writer

Stephen Motika, director & publisher, Nightboat Books

Azadeh Parsapour, Nogaam publishing

Andrea Gessner, publisher Nottetempo

Judith Gurewich, publisher, Other Press

John Oakes, OR Books

Zainab Juma, Head of Brand, Penguin Books UK

Kaliane Bradley, writer and commissioning editor at Penguin Press

Mary Mount, publisher, Picador

Richard Porter, editor, Pilot Press

Neda Tehrani, commissioning editor, Pluto Press

Ramsey Kanaan, publisher, PM Press

Kyle Dacuyan, Executive Director of The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s

Valentina Parlato, foreign rights QUODLIBET publishing house, Italy

Severino Antonelli, Rizzoli foreign fiction editor, Italy

Kapil Kapoor, Managing Director, Roli Books, India

James Sherry, editor, Roof Books

Lynn Gaspard, publisher Saqi Books

Elizabeth Briggs, Editorial Director, Saqi Books

Sara Hunt, publisher, Saraband

Naveen Kishore, publisher, Seagull Books

Mohamed El-Baaly, Sefsafa Publishing (Egypt)

Hedi El Kholti, publisher, Semiotext(e)

Dan Simon, publisher, Seven Stories Press

Allison Tamarkin Paller, Seven Stories Press

Tal Mancini, Seven Stories Press

James Webster, Seven Stories Press

Sarah Shin, Director, Silver Press

Kristen Vida Alfaro, director, Tilted Axis Press

Nuzhat Abbas, publisher/director of trace press

Adam Levy, publisher, Transit Books

Ashley Nelson Levy, publisher, Transit Books

Michael Holtmann, Center for the Art of Translation | Two Lines Press

CJ Evans, editor in chief, Two Lines Press

Anna Moschovakis, Ugly Duckling Presse

Daniel Owen, Ugly Duckling Presse

Kyra Simone, Ugly Duckling Presse

Lee Norton, Ugly Duckling Presse

Marine Cornuet, Ugly Duckling Presse

Michael Newton, Ugly Duckling Presse

Milo Wippermann, Ugly Duckling Presse

Rebekah Smith, Ugly Duckling Presse

Serena Solin, Ugly Duckling Presse

Silvina Lopez Medin, Ugly Duckling Presse

Yelena Gluzman, Ugly Duckling Presse

Aliya Gulamani, Commissioning Editor at Unbound

Leo Hollis, Verso Books, London

Tim Thomas, Verso Books, NYC

Ritu Menon, publisher, Women Unlimited

Ayrıntı Yayınları Publishing House, Turkey

Ellah P. Wakatama, publisher and literary critic

AGENTS, MEDIA & LITERARY JOURNALS & LITERARY FESTIVALS

Nicole Aragi, literary agent, Aragi Inc.

Christine Tohmeh, Director of Ashkal Alwan

Samar Hammam, Rocking Chair Book Literary Agency

Yasmine Jraissati, literary agent, RAYA Agency

Laura Susijn, literary agent, The Susijn Agency Ltd

Iwalani Kim, literary agent, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates

Rasha Salti, Commissioning Editor, Arte France

Léopold Lambert, editor-in-chief, The Funambulist

Rima Rantisi, Editor, Rusted Radishes

Christopher Merrill, Director, International Writing Program, The University of Iowa

Yasemin Çongar, founder, Istanbul Literature House

Olivia Maidment, literary agent, Madeleine Milburn Agency

Akin Akinwumi, founder, Willenfield Literary Agency

Jeffrey Pethybridge, poet, Director, Summer Writing Program, Naropa University

Zeina Maasri academic (UK) and editor @ Journal of Visual Culture

John Freeman, editor, Freeman’s

Peter Straus, RCW Literary Agency

Laurence Laluyaux, RCW Literary Agency

Safae El-Ouahabi, Associate, RCW Literary Agency

Anna Soler-Pont, Pontas literary and film agency

Merve Diler, Kalem Agency

Nermin Mollaoğlu, founder, Kalem Agency

Ayser Ali, Ayser Ali Agency

Hans Petter Bakketeig, Stilton Literary Agency, Norway

Pierre Astier, Laure Pécher, Astier-Pécher Literary Agency

Angelique Tran Van Sang, Felicity Bryan Associates

Sana Goyal, Deputy Editor, Wasafiri magazine

Emily Mercer, Editor and Publishing Director, Wasafiri magazine

Jessica Craig, Craig Literary Agency

Maddalena Vaglio Tanet, author and scout at De Stefano Literary Scouting

Maria Moschioni, literary scout

Brianna Zimmerman | Senior Scout Mary Anne Thompson Associates

Bhakti Shringarpure, writer & editor, co-founder of Radical Books Collective

Chiara Comito, Editoriaraba and Arabpop

Jim Hicks, executive editor, The Massachusetts Review

Nausikaa Angelotti, editor, Specimen

Vanni Bianconi, writer, editor at Specimen

Valentina Parlato, foreign rights, QUODLIBET

Lydia Wilson, editor New Lines magazine

Negar Azimi, writer, and editor-in-chief, Bidoun

Anna Della Subin, author and editor, Bidoun

Alexandra Büchler, Literature Across Frontiers

Sina Najafi, Editor-in-chief of Cabinet: A Magazine of Art and Culture

William Pierce, writer and co editor of AGNI

Shuchi Saraswat, writer and Senior Editor at AGNI 

Matvei Yankelevich, editor, World Poetry Books

Marcia Lynx Qualey, founder Arablit and Arablit Quarterly

Mairi Oliver, owner, Lighthouse Bookshop, Edinburgh

Nadia Saeed, Translation and International Officer, English PEN

Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company

Rafel Arias, bookseller

Guillermo Granado, bookseller

Oriol Díaz, bookseller

Verónica Piñera, bookseller

Luis Gallego, bookseller

Mahmoud Muna, Educational Bookshop, Jerusalem

Ángel de la Calle, Illustrator and Semana Negra Literary Festival Director, Spain

Paloma Saiz, Zócalo International Book Fair Director, Mexico

Kholod Saghir, Artistic Director, Uppsala International literary festival, Sweden

Windy Ariestanty, patjarmerah, the traveling literacy festival and book market, Indonesia

Louise Adler, director, Adelaide Writers’ Week

Ilke Froyen, Director Passa Porta International Festival of Literature

Pierce Alquist, director, Transnational Literature Series

WRITERS, EDITORS, ACADEMICS & ARTISTS

Khalid Abdalla, actor

Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, critic

Abdulrazak Gurnah, author

Annie Ernaux, author

Sophie Mackintosh, author

Olga Tokarczuk, author

Xiaolu Guo, author and filmmaker

Julia Armfield, author

Anne Enright, author

Valeria Luiselli, author

Evie Wyld, author

Simone Buchholz, novelist, Germany

Noreen Masud, author

Nadifa Mohamed, author

Juliet Jacques, writer and filmmaker

Deepa Anappara, author

Pankaj Mishra, author

Etan Nechin, writer

Heather Parry, author

John McGregor, author

Mohammed El-Kurd, writer

Nikesh Shukla, author

Edmund Gordon, author

Dur e Aziz Amna, author

Jenna Clake, author

Wajdi al-Ahdal, author

Shannon Chakraborty, author

Samuel Fisher, author

Emily Kenway, author

Jay Gao, author

Rabih Alameddine, author

Jay Bernard, writer

Katie Goh, author

Niamh Campbell, author

Yan Ge, author

Tawseef Khan, author

Roisin Dunnet, author

Kit Fan, author

Kathryn Bromwich, author

Eliza Clark, author

Jared Daniel Fagen, author

Sarah Bernstein, writer

Tatiana Salem Levy, author

Daniel Trilling, author

Sarah Bernstein, author

Annalena McAfee, author

Sinead Gleeson, author

Elaine Feeney, author

Megan Nolan, author

Francesca Wade, author

Alice Slater, author

Sarvat Hasin, author

Alycia Pirmohamed, author

Mathelinda Nabugodi, author

Maaza Mengiste, author

Kamila Shamsie, author

Wallace Shawn, actor and playwright

Rosie Bsheer, Associate Professor of History, Harvard University

William Dalrymple, author

Fatima Bhutto, author

Isabella Hammad, novelist

Gillian Slovo, novelist and playwright

Colm Tóibín author

Tim Winton, author

Olga Ravn, author

Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin, author

Don Mee Choi, poet

Haytham El-Wardany, author

Philippe Sands, author

Hisham Matar, author

Ahdaf Soueif, author

Rawi Hage, author

Yasmine Seale, translator

Naomi Shihab Nye, poet

Molly Crabapple, author and artist

Leila Aboulela, writer

Naomi Klein, author

Judith Butler, author

Eliot Weinberger, writer

K Patrick, poet and writer

Seán Hewitt, author

Jason Okundaye, author

Aidan Cottrell Boyce, author

Ryan Gilbey, author

Paul Bailey, author

Ali Millar, author

Maxine Peake, author and actor

Madeleine Thien, author

Caryl Churchill, playwright

Ben Ehrenreich, author

Sunny Singh, writer

James Schamus, film producer, director, and screenwriter

Hassan Abdulrazzak, playwright

Yasmin El-Rifae, writer

Marina Warner, author

Richard Flanagan, author

Robert Neuwirth, writer

Barbara Ofosu-Somuah, translator

Anton Shammas, author

Saleem Haddad, author

Samar Yazbek, author

Adam Thirlwell, author

Mohamed Kheir, author

Hari Kunzru, author

Ammiel Alcalay, poet and scholar

Solmaz Sharif, poet

Françoise Vergès, writer, producer, and scholar

Nicholas Blincoe, author

Monisha Rajesh, author

Mazen Maarouf, author

Anne Boyer, poet and essayist

Semih Gümüş, author

Daisy Lafarge, author

Kia Corthron, U.S. novelist and playwright

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Professor of Modern Culture & Media and Comparative Literature, Brown University

Elias Sanbar, writer, essayist and translator of Mahmoud Darwish to French

Mohammad Al Attar, Syrian writer / playwright

Ahmet Nesin, writer

Sarah Riggs, poet, co-director of Tamaas

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, professor emeritus and author

Eyal Weizman, author and architect

Anthony Vahni Capildeo, Trinidadian-Scottish poet and prose writer

Sema Kaygusuz, author

Eva Menasse, novelist, Berlin

Mirza Waheed, writer

Iman Mersal, poet and writer

Zahra Moloo, journalist

Suzanne Joinson, author

Rani Selvarajah, author

Sharon Duggal, writer

Geo Maher, writer and educator

Rodrigo Hasbún, author

Laila Hourani, Palestinian/Syrian novelist

Courttia Newland, author

Jacqueline Feldman, writer

Julia Bell, author

Gregory Norminton, author

Jude Brown, novelist

Alexander Chee, author

According to PEN America, Florida is one of the worst states in the country for those who care about the freedom to read: 13 school districts in Florida banned books in the second half of 2022—more than in any other state—adding up to a total of 357 bans. But now, Banned Books USA, in partnership with Electric Literature, is fighting back by offering free banned and challenged books to any and all residents of Florida.

Here’s how it works: go to their website, and pick a book from the list of banned and challenged titles. Enter a shipping address in Florida (yours or someone else’s) and pay the shipping cost, and soon the book will be on its way. It’s a win-win.

On Wednesday, at a ceremony at the Tribeca Rooftop in New York, Kirkus Reviews announced the three winners of the 10th annual Kirkus Prize: one each in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Young Readers’ Literature. The winners were chosen from a list of 18 finalists, which were all published between November 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023 (for fiction and nonfiction), and October 1, 2022 and September 30, 2023 (for young readers’ literature) and reviewed by Kirkus. The winners each receive a trophy and a cash prize of $50,000.

“History and community emerged as central themes in the most outstanding works of literature published this year. We see these ideas come to life in wildly different ways in all three of this year’s winners, each one compelling from beginning to end, begging to be celebrated, discussed, and shared,” said Meg Kuehn, publisher of Kirkus Reviews, in a press release. Congratulations to the winning writers:

FICTION:
James McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store (Riverhead)

Judges’ citation: Citation: Focusing on the Chicken Hill neighborhood of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, where, in the 1930s, the town’s Black and Jewish families lived side by side, James McBride has created a vibrant fictional world as only this master storyteller can. The characters’ interlocking lives make for tense, absorbing drama as well as warm, humane comedy. This is a novel about small-town American life that is clear-eyed about prejudice yet full of hope for the power of community.

NONFICTION:
Héctor Tobar, Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino” (MCD/FSG)

Judges’ citation: This vital work of autobiography and cultural commentary—which also serves as a potent manifesto—is an essential book by a veteran journalist and author at the height of his powers. Tobar goes beyond reductive newspaper headlines and inflammatory political discourse to portray the complexities and contradictions of Latinx experience in the U.S. Featuring eye-opening interviews with people from across the country, this elegantly written, refreshingly forthright book brings into sharp focus a massive yet marginalized community.

YOUNG READERS’ LITERATURE:
Ariel Aberg-Riger, America Redux: Visual Stories From Our Dynamic History (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins)

Judges’ citation: This rousing work of young adult nonfiction demonstrates that history, far from being dusty and irrelevant, is a subject that teens will eagerly engage with—if we give them what they deserve: provocative, courageous, and inclusive books that respect their passion and intellect. Balancing vibrant collage art with captivating text, Aberg-Riger inspires readers to think critically and ask probing questions. At a time when books that challenge whitewashed history are coming under fire from censors, this is a vitally important work that dares to tell the truth.

Today, the American Literary Translators Association announced the shortlists for the the 25th annual National Translation Awards. The NTAs are awarded, in both poetry and prose, to “literary translators who have made an outstanding contribution to literature in English by masterfully recreating the artistic force of a book of consummate quality.”

“The first National Translation Award was conferred 25 years ago at the ALTA conference held in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1998, and in the quarter century since then, 38 literary translators have been honored for their translations from 18 different languages,” said ALTA’s current President, Ellen Elias-Bursać, in a press release. “Since 2015, two NTAs have been awarded each year—one for prose and one for poetry. Since the award first began, more than 100 jury members have given their time to this extraordinary project. Every winter and spring they spend five months poring over the previous year’s production, and over the summer they turn to expert readers for a language-based assessment of each longlisted work. The result is the shortlist you see before you today, to be followed by the award ceremony, the high point of the autumn ALTA conference, when the literary translation community celebrates the year’s winners. So hat’s off to this year’s longlist, shortlist and winners, and to the many remarkable translations the NTAs will spotlight over the decades to come.”

This year’s prose judges are Natascha Bruce, Shelley Frisch, Jason Grunebaum, Sawad Hussain, and Lytton Smith. This year’s judges for poetry are Pauline Fan, Heather Green, and Shook. The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on November 11th, and be awarded $4,000 each.

Here’s the shortlist:

PROSE:

Thuân, Chinatown
translated from Vietnamese by Nguyễn An Lý
(New Directions/Tilted Axis)

Mikołaj Grynberg, I’d Like to Say Sorry, but There’s No One to Say Sorry To
translated from Polish by Sean Gasper Bye
(The New Press)

Monique Ilboudo, So Distant From My Life
translated from French by Yarri Kamara
(Tilted Axis)

László Krasznahorkai, Spadework for a Palace
translated from Hungarian by John Batki
(New Directions)

B. Jeyamohan, Stories of the True
translated from Tamil by Priyamvada Ramkumar
(Juggernaut)

Sheela Tomy, Valli: A Novel
translated from Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil
(HarperCollins India)

POETRY:

Phoebe Giannisi, Cicada
translated from Greek by Brian Sneeden
(New Directions)

Nelly Sachs, Flight and Metamorphosis
translated from German by Joshua Weiner with Linda B. Parshall
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

37 Tang poets, In the Same Light: 200 Poems for Our Century From the Migrants & Exiles of the Tang Dynasty
translated from Chinese by Wong May
(The Song Cave | Caranet)

Iman Mersal, The Threshold
translated from Arabic by Robyn Creswell
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Venus Khoury-Ghata, The Water People
translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
(The Poetry Translation Centre)

Ananda Devi, When the Night Agrees to Speak to Me
translated from French by Kazim Ali
(Deep Vellum/Phoneme | HarperCollins India)

But Will You Love Me Tomorrow is an oral history of the girl groups of the ’60. The songs that the girl groups created and sang are timeless, and have become embedded in American culture. Songs like “Mr. Postman,” “Be My Baby,” “Chapel of Love,” and “Where did our love go? ” As these songs rose to the top of the charts, girl groups cornered the burgeoning post-war market of teenage rock and roll fans, indelibly shaping the trajectory of pop music in the process. However, no matter how essential these songs are to the American music canon, many of the artists remain all but anonymous to most listeners. We interviewed over 100 people for this project, including women from acts like The Ronettes, The Shirelles, The Supremes, as well as the songwriters, to their agents, managers, and sound engineers—and even to the present-day celebrities inspired by their lasting influence.

Our book gives particular insight into the experiences of the female singers and songwriters who created the movement, but we didn’t want to speak for the women; we wanted them, as much as possible, to tell their own story. This oral history is a compilation of the stories we have access to and people shared only what they felt comfortable disclosing, constructed from what was told to us as the people we are, by the people who lived it, and it represents only a small portion of those people’s lives. These women’s contributions to society and culture have been neglected for so long, and continue to be so, and we wanted to honor the women in the project by letting their voices lead.  We have been attending doo-wop shows for years and wrote this book not only because we love this music but also because we think this history is important and necessary.

Below, The Marvelettes, the girl group that introduced Motown to the nation.

*

Katherine Anderson, The Marvelettes: We lived in the projects then, and Georgeanna and Wyanetta lived on the street opposite mine. And so we would always sit up and play cards and music and stuff like that. I think Gladys’s thing was, “What else do we have to do? So let’s do this.”

Gladys Horton, The Marvelettes: I already had in mind to ask Georgia Dobbins to be a part of my group. She was not only smart, but she was very kind. All the girls looked up to her, wanting to be just like her. I wanted her to be in the group, so I saved a spot for her.

Georgia Dobbins, The Marvelettes: Gladys needed another girl. She just came over to the house and asked me to sing background with her.

Gladys Horton, The Marvelettes: I heard on the loudspeaker about the talent show.

Katherine Anderson, The Marvelettes: If we did win, we had a chance to go to Motown and do the song.

Gladys Horton, The Marvelettes: I said, “Well, I’m going to get some girls.” I approached Georgeanna, and she brought Wyanetta and Katherine along.

Katherine Anderson, The Marvelettes: We came in fourth. Some of the teachers thought that we were exceptionally good and should have won and our teacher told us—Mrs. Shirley Sharpley—she told us that we were really good, and so she and several other teachers said that maybe we could go to Motown and sing.

Shirley Sharpley, The Marvelettes’ teacher: I thought they should have won. When I complimented them and told them that they should have won, they asked me if I would take them for the audition down at Motown.   The kids had the telephone number and I followed through. I just called. It was Gladys who gave me the number. I called and got an appointment.

Katherine Anderson, The Marvelettes: Oh, honey, oh, honey, please  yes, we were country girls—they didn’t want us to do anything. They didn’t want to be bothered with those country girls, because Inkster was a small community—Detroit is much larger.

Georgia Dobbins, The Marvelettes: They looked at us like we were dumb. To them, we were little young, country, dumb-looking chicks. We were square, we weren’t glamorous at all. We were country kids coming to the big city.

Katherine Anderson, The Marvelettes: Berry [Gordy] was the one who told us to come up with an original song. Berry said, “These girls are good, but do they have their original material? You can come back when you have your own original material.” You always get that “but” in there.

Gladys Horton, The Marvelettes: I thought it would be a month or two before Georgia finished the song, but in just two or three days, she was at my front door singing it.

Georgia Dobbins, The Marvelettes: I was standing by the window. I was waiting for the postman to bring me a letter from this guy who was in the Navy. That’s how I came up with the lyrics. Then I made up the tune.

Katherine Anderson, The Marvelettes: That’s the reason the song came out. You know when you’re eighteen, nineteen years old—you have a problem. [laughing]

Georgia Dobbins, The Marvelettes: I just hummed it over and over and changed it to the way it should be. I improvised.

Katherine Anderson, The Marvelettes: When we went to Motown with “Please Mr. Postman,” they were excited because we had brought them original material. Here again, Motown was growing, it was building. So bringing in new material was like bringing in new blood.

The few people there when we came, they were not necessarily of the magnitude you may expect them to be because you’re a new company. You can’t have everybody be perfect. You had a couple of writers, but you really didn’t have a stable of writers. Therefore, it was vitally important to get original material. At that point Robert Bateman was there, Brian was there.

Brian Holland, songwriter: She came to Motown, to Robert Bateman and I, with the idea of “Postman.” We said, “Oh, that sounds great, that sounds great. Let us go and finish it—write this song.”

Marc Taylor, music writer: Holland and Bateman made some adjustments to “Please Mr. Postman” in order to fit it to Gladys’s voice and also arranged the background vocals; thus, they took part in the writing credits.

Brian Holland, songwriter: It was really Robert Bateman and I and Georgia Dobbins that did the song. Then Freddie Gorman came in.

Mickey Stevenson, Motown A&R: And Freddie Gorman was a postman. You know, he was originally a postman.

Marc Taylor, music writer: Gorman, who was actually a mail carrier, also offered a few suggestions and became one of the five official writers of the song: William Garrett, an Inkster classmate who provided the title; Georgia Dobbins; Robert Bateman; Freddie Gorman; and Brian Holland.

Katherine Anderson, The Marvelettes: A lot of people are on that disc, but, see, if you can find one of the discs that came out earlier—you would only see the three names, which was Brianbert [Brian Holland and Robert Bateman’s production team] and Georgia Dobbins.

Brian Holland, songwriter: No, no, no…I don’t really know that. I can’t answer that because I don’t really recall that—I know she had a part of a song, but we had to finish a lot of that song—period. She didn’t have a complete song—she had the idea of “Please Mr. Postman.”

Georgia Dobbins, The Marvelettes: We were going through rehearsals for about a week or so before they brought out the contracts. When it came time for the contract, I presented it to my dad and he hit the roof. He asked my mother, “How long has this girl been singing?” My dad did not know I could sing. My brothers and I were raised in the church and grew up a little strict. My mom would let me out. She knew I was having little rehearsals in the basement.

I’m not knocking my parents, but they thought that when they signed the contract, that if we didn’t make it, they’d have to pay that money back. That was their understanding. They didn’t know anything but going to work and going to church on Sunday morning. And by them being Christian, entertainment and nightclub life was out of the question. That was ununacceptable. Back then they’d call you “fast,” “no good,” “won’t amount to anything.”

My mother’s illness was also the reason why they wouldn’t sign for me. I’m the oldest child in the family with six brothers and my family depended on me totally. My mother was ill all of my life.

Gladys Horton, The Marvelettes: Georgia’s mother was sick with a bad back, and Georgia made it clear that she was not going to leave her mother if we had to tour. Georgia wanted me to sing lead, so she taught me the song.

Georgia Dobbins, The Marvelettes: When my dad wouldn’t sign the contract, it was just like somebody had snatched the rug from up under me. It’s like wanting something and somebody just takes it away from you. You want to go, you’ve got your outfit ready, but Daddy says no. That’s the way it was for me. You’ve got your little dress and your shoes laid out, and you’re ready to go to the party, but Daddy said, “No, you ain’t going.”

I stayed in seclusion for about a year. I didn’t even come outside. I was so hurt. I felt…robbed. I wouldn’t listen to the radio or anything. It wasn’t until 1978 before I sang again.

Katherine Anderson, The Marvelettes: Well, you know what? Yes—she was sad, but after you have plenty of time to think, after everything is all over, back in the day, we didn’t think that much about it because we were busy performing. But then, after a while, you begin to think about it, and you say, “Georgia, who wrote ‘Please Mr. Postman,’ that was her claim to fame was ‘Please Mr. Postman,’ because none of us could write anything like that.” But she didn’t understand that for a while.

Georgia Dobbins, The Marvelettes: Gladys had a lead voice and the rest of them didn’t. When my dad refused to sign for me, I got Gladys and told her, “You’ve got to sing lead on this song.”

Katherine Anderson, The Marvelettes: I do remember that the session was long and then, on top of that, Gladys had to sing the lead because Georgia wasn’t any longer there. Then the background—Wyanetta, Georgeanna, and myself…we, and Wanda—because when Georgia left, Gladys took and recruited Wanda Young—so that means the four of us would be back there singing the background and Gladys would be singing the lead. Marvin Gaye played the drums. It was a long, long day.

Martha Reeves, The Vandellas: I think Gladys Horton gave her heart and soul, saying, “There must be some word today / from my boyfriend who’s so far away / please, Mister Postman, look and see / if there’s a letter in your bag for me.”

Katherine Anderson, The Marvelettes: Then the rest of it almost was history.

Brian Holland, songwriter: Let me tell you something—I was so elated when I first heard it on the radio. The Black station first started playing it. Then it became so popular, on CKLW—that was a big fifty-watt station at that time; it was the biggest station—they started playing it. That’s when it erupted. It became huge. I mean, that was the most exciting time for me as a songwriter to hear that song on the radio. Can you imagine? I mean, Jesus, it was like a miracle. It was a miracle. I mean, for me, as a songwriter, to hear that?

Katherine Anderson, The Marvelettes: The next thing that we knew “Please Mr. Postman” was number one on the Billboard chart.

Billy Vera, musician: Don’t forget—the audience for rock and roll had now grown up to the point where they were out of high school. Even though there was no war on yet, a lot of boys went off to the draft. And so there were a lot of songs about soldiers—soldiers going away and the girl waiting at home for them.

Brian Holland, songwriter: Motown’s first big record was “Please Mr. Postman.”

Katherine Anderson, The Marvelettes: Really to be truthful. . . when our record hit number one, they were not ready. They went and began to scurry around, trying to find people to do this and do that, and all of a sudden they made it seem like it was really, really big. But Motown was not as big as they wanted people to believe it was.

Gladys Horton, The Marvelettes: Everything happened so fast. It was like one-two-three-four. The talent show, the recording of the record, the release date of the song, the date it hit the number one spot on Billboard—all in the same year of 1961.

Katherine Anderson, The Marvelettes: But then they had five little Black girls from the suburbs of Detroit that took them there a little bit faster than they were ready for.

Marc Taylor, music writer: Motown needed to milk “Please Mr. Postman” as much as it could in order to generate some much-needed cash for the company.

Katherine Anderson, The Marvelettes: Motown had a tour that went out and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles were the head-liners, and Mary Wells was on it. People began to start chanting—they wanted The Marvelettes. They caused so much noise, Berry called back and talked to Mrs. Edwards, which was his sister, to get us out there. Because if we didn’t come out there, there would be five other girls that they would take and announce them as The Marvelettes. Mrs. Edwards told us that.

The album had a picture of a mailman, but our picture wasn’t anywhere on it, because during that time, Black people weren’t allowed to put their pictures on it, because the prejudices of some white people. We couldn’t have our pictures on the front cover, I knew that.

Gladys Horton, The Marvelettes: Berry Gordy wanted The Marvelettes to quit school because we had a hot record out, people wanted to see us, and at the time, Motown was able to sell more records when people could see us.

Katherine Anderson, The Marvelettes: All of us began to start thinking that we need to get it together and go out there. Because if we didn’t go out there to sing the song that we made, Berry would get somebody who would. We definitely didn’t want anybody else going out there to be singing any song that we had made, so we all got together and began to pack our little rags and then we left. We went to Washington, DC; that’s where our first major gig was.

Romeo Phillips, The Marvelettes’ principal: George Edwards, who was married to Berry Gordy’s sister Esther, came to the school right after the girls, on their own, made “Please Mr. Postman,” and he was encouraging them to drop out of school. In fact, I got on him because he did not stop by the office first. He just came into the building and walked straight back to the music room. He was talking to the girls, and they were expressing some ambivalence about drop- ping out of school. I think this was near the time they were about to graduate.

My experience in show business. One hit does not a career make, and I was raising hell with Edwards. We belonged to the same fraternity. He was saying, “You have to strike while the iron’s hot.” And I remember very vividly telling him, “You can strike while the iron’s hot, but unless the iron’s plugged in, it’s going to get cool.”

I know they faced pressure from George Edwards and he went to the parents and the guardians of the girls and told them this is a chance of a lifetime, that they could always go back to school but they couldn’t always have the chance. Once the record is out, they’ll promote it…the usual things that a promoter says.

Gladys Horton, The Marvelettes: Mrs. Edwards and her husband became legal guardians of me. I was an orphan so early in my life, that it wasn’t until I met her that I found out my real birth date, my middle name, my mother’s and father’s names, and place of birth. I had to send off for my birth certificate for the courts to acknowledge and sign the Edwards on as my legal guardians over my business and money affairs. That knowledge opened up a brand-new door for me. I discovered part of my roots and where I came from, the West Indies.

Katherine Anderson The Marvelettes: Because Gladys was in foster care, and George Edwards was in the House, or something [Michigan state legislator]. They took Gladys and made her a ward of the court. That means that they would have to care for her and watch after her. But anyway, they made sure that the money and stuff was right, or whatever they did, and—because I was only sixteen years old then—all I can do is speculate.

Romeo Phillips, The Marvelettes’ principal: I tried to get the girls to stay in school. We did not want the girls to be caught out there with no marketable skill. But then George Edwards went by their homes and talked about striking while the iron’s hot. I will never for- give him for that—he’s dead now. I’m very disappointed in him and I’m sure that fate would have taken a different turn for those young ladies had they stayed in school and graduated. That would’ve served as a platform for them to move on to something else if show business didn’t pan out.

Katherine Anderson, The Marvelettes: Unfortunately, that was the choice we had. We had a choice of staying in school or going out there and doing our record. So, why, if you were so family-oriented, would you think in terms of sending five other girls out there? Because the public doesn’t know what The Marvelettes look like anyway.

At sixteen years old, how could I know? How could any of us? Georgeanna was sixteen, Wyanetta was sixteen. We had the choice of going out there or staying in school, and all of us ended up making the choice—we made the record, we made it popular, and we were going out there and representing ourselves.

______________________________

Excerpted from But Will You Love Me Tomorrow?: An Oral History of the ’60s Girl Groups by Laura Flam and Emily Sieu Liebowitz. Copyright © 2023. Available from Hachette Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.