“When she woke, she was red. Not flushed, not sunburned, but the solid, declarative red of a stop sign. She saw her hands first. She held them in front of her eyes, squinting up at them. For a few seconds, shadowed by her eyelashes and backlit by the hard white light emanating from the ceiling,Continue reading

Naomi Benaron’s riveting debut novel, Running the Rift (pub. date: January 17, 2012), chronicles the story of a gifted Rwandan boy, Jean Patrick Nkuba, from the day he knows that running will be his life (he dreams of competing in the Olympics) to the moment he must run to save his life, a ten-year spanContinue reading

Name: Josh Christie Bookstore: Sherman’s Books and Stationery, Freeport Title: Bookseller Brief Bio: Josh Christie started his career in bookselling in 2004, working as a frontline bookseller at Sherman’s Books and Stationery in Camden, Maine. While he is still working for Maine’s oldest bookseller (Sherman’s opened in 1886), he now hangs his hat at Sherman’sContinue reading

Algonquin Books Senior Editor Kathy Pories talks about the Bellwether Prize, the publication prize founded by Barbara Kingsolver to recognize literature that addresses issues of social justice. Algonquin published two Bellwether Prize winners–Hillary Jordan‘s Mudbound and Heidi Durrow‘s The Girl Who Fell from the Sky–to great success. Mudbound has over 170,000 copies in print andContinue reading

Five years ago, I stood on the periphery of the Duke University Chapel during the North Carolina Literary Festival, straining to hear the speaker. I was on the periphery because the chapel was packed full, so that many of us had spilled outside the large cathedral doors. On the stage, about the size of myContinue reading

Heidi Durrow’s The Girl Who Fell from the Sky is now available in paperback. And coincidentally, we just found out today that the book has moved up from #16 to #13 on the National Indie Next Bestseller List! Named a Washington Post Best Novel of 2010 and an Oregonian Top 10 Book of 2010, asContinue reading