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INSPY Award Winners Announced – Evolving in Monkey Town Wins the Award for Creative Non-Fiction

December 14, 2010 in award, memoir, spirituality by Kim | No comments

Several months ago I ran across the following twitter:  Do you blog?  Are you a Christian?  Do you like creative non-fiction?  My answer is yes to all three so I sent Amy Riley an e-mail.  Amy told me about a new award, the INSPY, designed to “discover and highlight the very best in literature that grapples with expressions of the Christian faith.”  She asked me to join the creative non-fiction judging panel for the creative non-fiction.  I agreed.

The short-list was released on October 1st:  Evolving in Monkey Town by Rachel Held Evans, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller, Halfway to Each Other by Susan Pohlman, God Hides in Plain Sight by Dean Nelson, and Hear No Evil by Matthew Paul Turner.  All of the authors were new to me, although I have heard of Miller’s best seller, Blue Like Jazz.  From reading the blurbs, I didn’t have a sense of which book I would be drawn to, which I guess is a good place to start the process.  I’ve never ‘judged’ a book before and found that I read each one with a much more critical eye.  There are exclamation points in the margins or comments such as “needless tangent” and “pacing shift too abrupt.”

I entered the discussions last week with a couple of favorites and a top choice, Evolving to Monkey Town.  Many Christians, including myself, don’t have a dramatic conversion story.  We weren’t drug dealers, evil bosses or abusive people, we simply grew up in the church.  For us, there is a time when we transition from accepting the faith of our families to finding a faith of our own.  That transition can be subtle or rocky, quick or lifelong.  For Evans it was tumultuous and she showed great courage in sharing it so honestly in her book. As I stated in the INSPY Award press release:

Evans’ Evolving in Monkey Town chronicles the author’s move from complete acceptance of the faith of her childhood, through a desolate period of questioning, arriving at a renewed conviction about the love of God. Interweaving her own tale with the views of people she meets, Evans juxtaposes all of the voices about God in her life. Evans’ honesty in telling her faith journey impressed us along with how much her love of the Lord imbued the entire narrative.

In an interview on the INSPY Award website, Evans described why she writes about her faith journey:

For me, the biggest challenge in writing about my faith is that it is always changing. Like a lot of twenty-somethings, I’m going through that quarter-life reevaluation of things, struggling through some difficult questions about life and faith and Christianity. So rather than sharing these grand spiritual insights with my readers, I find myself writing about the highs and lows of the faith journey, the view from wherever I happen to be. As it turns out, this ever-evolving approach to faith is a bit more universal than I originally thought, because readers seem to really connect with the idea that faith is less about certainty and more about risk. So the challenge is also the benefit. I’ve made my readers feel less alone in the journey, and now I feel less alone too. And isn’t that the point of writing? To feel less alone?

I found it delightful to read about Evans faith journey.  She asks the questions that many Christians mull over without dictating an answer.  In fact, that’s one of the points of her book, to spend less time insisting on the answer and more time explore the questions with God.  Congratulations to Rachel Held Evans on winning the first INSPY Award for creative non-fiction.

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Colum McCann wins the First Annual Medici Book Club Prize

October 26, 2010 in award, book group, Literary Event by Kim | 1 comment

The Beverly Hills Literary Escape concluded giving Colum McCann the  Medici Book Club Prize.  The $5,000 cash prize is awarded in recognition of a distinguished work of fiction that has inspired thoughtful conversation and contributed to a deeper understanding of the human experience.  McCann’s exploration of the intertwining of various lives and events in 1974 while constantly driving the reader towards 9/11 in Let the Great World Spin exceeded the expectations for the award.

When I read the first few pages of Let the Great World Spin, in my head I knew McCann was talking about Petit tightrope walk, but from my forehead down I was reliving the morning of 9/11/2001.  I asked McCann where he was when that morning, he said at 71st and 1st in New York City with his wife and children. His father-in-law worked in the first building hit but the second to come down.  The family didn’t know he survived until six hours later when he appeared on their doorstep covered in dust and debris.  McCann’s daughter ran to him and said “Poppi smells like fire.”  They explained it was from the smoke and she replied “no, he smells like he’s on fire from the inside out.”  McCann’s father-in-law showered and threw all of his clothes away, he never wanted to see that suit again.  However, he took off his shoes at the doorway and they have kept them in the same condition.  The shoes will be part of the 9/11 museum.  Clearly, McCann’s experience comes alive in the opening chapter of the book.

Here are few of McCann’s other comments during his conversation with Julie Robinson:

  • Hope in Reality. He used the tightrope to show that we are all on a tightrope either half a mile up or just six inches up like Jasmine’s daughters, or the a mother who sends her son to war, or a mother who witnesses her daughter walk the streets.  He wanted the book to be about recovery and grace, so all the characters chose to live and survive.  While recognizing that the world is harsh, he answers with a so what?  He chose to write a book that embodied how hard life can be, but to imbue it with hope.  He doesn’t find hope sentimental, but tougher to maintain than cynicism.
  • Spoiler Alert: One of his goals was to write a ‘good’ character, which is difficult.  He wanted a Catholic character because of the recent bad events in the church.  McCann modeled Corrigan (note his initials are JC, I didn’t catch that, McCann pointed it out) after a true-life radical priest.  McCann didn’t want Corrigan to die and he tried all kinds of scenarios to ‘roll away the stone’ and resurrect him, but it never worked.  McCann mused that for evil to exist it only has to happen once, but for good to exist it needs to occur repeatedly.  The reader experiences repeated acts of kindness with Corrigan.  I think everyone misses him and wishes he didn’t die.
  • Tightrope. McCann believes that the tightrope walk will be remembered as one of the great art achievements of the 20th century because it created a moment of fullness and completeness.  Moreover, it can never be replicated.  A little book trivia, McCann changed Petit’s walk Read the rest of this entry »
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A Sartorial Look at Authors

October 16, 2010 in award by Claire | No comments

With all the writing awards being handed out lately, I feel like we’re all getting a little TOO fixated on books. There are more important things to take into consideration when judging the greatness of a literary figure. Thank goodness someone agrees with me and has taken the time to put together a list of the best dressed authors of all time.  Check out the piece and if you have anyone or anything to add to it, let us know.  Also come join the discussion on our new Facebook page.

Now excuse me while I go spend several hours figuring out what to wear to my reading at Vroman’s Bookstore this afternoon (at 5 pm, if you live near Pasadena and are interested).  I’m bummed I didn’t make the best-dressed list this year, so I’m upping my game in the hopes of taking Jane Austen’s spot next year.  Maybe if I wear my new zipper-rose high heeled shoes to this thing . . .

Oh, fine, since you asked, here’s a photo of them, taking by my friend Dawn.

Nice, right?

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Here an Award, There an Award, Everywhere an Award

October 14, 2010 in award by Kim | No comments

I love the beginning of October.  Not because of the fall weather, in Los Angeles autumn means everyone covers their lawns in manure so it smells like, well you get the idea.  Plus, we have the Santa Anas which blow the smog to me and causes fires anywhere.  Despite the environmental hazards, October means literary award activity.  In case you’ve been too busy caring for your lawn or enjoying the changing leaves in other parts of the country, here’s a recap:

On October 7th, the Swedish Academy named Mario Vargas Llosa as the winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in literature “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat”.  Although some literary critics are unhappy with the choice because Llosa is no longer a socialist and they see this as a victory for the right.  Remember, one country’s right can be another country’s socialist.  I was grateful they picked an author I knew and read (loved reading Conversations in the Cathedral when traveling in Peru a few years ago), it feels like years since that happened.  The betting was pointing heavily towards Cormac McCarthy, which generally indicates the author will not be picked.  Hope he didn’t stay up late waiting for the call.

Earlier this week, Howard Jacobson won my favorite book award, the 2010 Man Booker Prize.  Actually, it’s my favorite short list and the start of my Christmas list every year.  Jacobson’s book The Finkler Question won him the award.  I didn’t know anything about the book, but the title alone made me giggle.  Rightly so, it’s a comic novel.  Jacobson penned an essay about the need for comedy in serious novels in The Guardian.

To my ear the term “comic novelist” is as redundant and off-putting as the term “literary novelist”. When Jane Austen rattled off the novel’s virtues in Northanger Abbey – arguing that it demonstrated the “most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour . . . conveyed to the world in the best chosen language” – she wasn’t making a distinction between the literary novel and some other sort, or between the comic novel and the not so comic. The liveliest effusions of wit and humour are simply what the reader of a novel has a right to expect.

Again, the odds makers were wrong.  The betting was so heavy for Tom McCarthy’s C that one betting house stopped accepting bets.  They should have taken the risk, all that money they left on the table.

Last, but not least, the National Book Foundation announced the finalists for the National Book Award:

  • Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America (Alfred A. Knopf)
  • Jaimy Gordon, Lord of Misrule (McPherson & Co.)
  • Nicole Krauss, Great House (W.W. Norton & Co.)
  • Lionel Shriver, So Much for That (Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
  • Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel (Coffee House Press)

And now my Christmas list is just about complete.  Of course, the scuttlebutt was more about who was not on the list, Jonathan Franzen for Freedom.  I’m not surprised, I enjoyed the book, but there wasn’t a single sentence that I underlined as stunning.  We’ve been having a discussion about Freedom on the Bookstore People Facebook page, hop over and tell us what you think.

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Beverly Hills Literary Escape

September 27, 2010 in award, book group, classics, giveaway, history, Literary Event, memoir, mystery, recommended reading, spirituality by Kim | 4 comments

I’m counting the days to this event!

Watch for a seismic shift in the literary landscape of Southern California next month.  No, it won’t be an earthquake, it’s the inaugural Beverly Hills Literary Escape, a unique weekend for literati.  This isn’t another festival where the attendee sits in the audience listening to a panel of authors and a moderator and then line up for a few Q & A, here the goal is for everyone to mingle and have conversations.  The organizers, Julie Robinson and Tyson Cornell, are striving to create an European cafe culture and Algonquin Round Table atmosphere of give-and-take between authors and readers.  Here’s the schedule:

I’m in a terrible choice bind about which events to choose for the lunches and afternoon lectures.  I can tell you this, I’ve never met a woman who hasn’t fallen in love with Lynn Batten after hearing him talk about Jane Austen.  I recommended both Ethan Canin and Susan Straight before and would love to hear them speak, but that could mean downgrading my groupie status with Lynn.   What could be better than having lemon cake with Aimee Bender, yet one of my favorite books this summer was Gin Phillips’ The Well and the Mine (if you liked The Help, run to the store to get The Well and the Mine).  I’ll be wallowing in the torture of deciding for awhile.

Two events are free:  An evening with Colum McCann author of Let the Great World Spin where he will receive the first Medici Book Club Prize (more on that in a future post) and a discussion with Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone. The prices for the remaining events vary and there are passes for multiple events. (Click here to purchase tickets.)  Readers of Bookstore People are entitled to purchase the lowest price passes and tickets for conversations by using the discount code LITERARY. There will be one private VIP event, a coffee with Joseph O’Neill, author of Netherland, on October 15th.  We have one ticket to the O’Neill coffee to giveaway, just leave a comment that you want it by 11:59 October 7th and we will pick the winner.

It looks like a spectacular event, don’t miss it!

Disclosure:  Kim is a Medici Founding Patron

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