The National Book Awards is adding a new prize for translated books. Beginning this year, the new category “will honor a work of fiction or nonfiction that has been translated into English and published in the U.S.” National Book Foundation director Lisa Lucas talked to the New York Times about the decision. “This is an opportunity for us to influence how visible books in translation are,” she explained. “The less we know about the rest of the world, the worse off we are.”
Barbara Kingsolver is working on a new novel. Taking place in both 2016 and 1871, Unsheltered “explores the foundations we build, crossing time and place to give us all a little more hope in those around us, and a little more faith in ourselves.” The book will be published next October by Faber in the UK and Harper in the US.
Simon & Schuster imprint Gallery Books is publishing a memoir by Catherine Oxenberg about “losing her daughter” to the Nxivm leadership organization. Captive: A Mother’s Crusade to Save Her Daughter From a Terrifying Cult will be published next fall.
BuzzFeed has announced the 2018 class of Emerging Writer Fellows.
Television rights for Gabe Hudson’s Gork, the Teenage Dragon have been bought by the Gotham Group.
On The Awl’s last day, founder Alex Balk offers a list of story ideas that never made it on the site. “Subway Astrology” was set to offer “personal and professional” guidance based on readers’ most-used subway stations, while “The Nihilist Advice Corner” would have answered each letter “with the same wisdom: ‘It doesn’t matter. We’re all going to die anyway. Nothing you do will make a difference in the long run.’”