Frances Goldin Literary Agency

BARBARA KINGSOLVER'S THE LACUNA WINS THE ORANGE PRIZE!

Barbara Kingsolver's THE LACUNA was selected on June 9 as the winner of the prestigious Orange Prize, a British award for fiction by women written in the English language. Now in its fifteenth year, The Orange Prize has become one of the most important literary awards of the year. The award was announced at an event at the Royal Festival Hall in London, and presented by the Dutchess of Cornwall, Camilla Parker Bowles. Faber and Faber, the publisher of the UK edition, has announced immediate plans to go back to press; a paperback edition of THE LACUNA will be published in the United States by HarperCollins in July.

THE LACUNA was also nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, America's largest peer-juried prize for fiction. Published on November 3rd to overwhelming critical acclaim, THE LACUNA is a richly detailed historical account of one man's odyssey, from Depression-era Washington D.C., to the Mexico City of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, to a postwar America of McCarthyite persecution. Reviewers across the country, including those in Publishers Weekly, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Chicago Tribune have praised the novel as being "brilliant," "masterful," and Kingsolver's "most ambitious yet." THE LACUNA spent ten weeks on The New York Times best seller list, reached #1 on the Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Independent best seller lists, and #2 on the Boston Globe and Denver Post best seller lists.

Two Goldin Agency books have been nominated for 2009 Lambda Literary Awards: Alix Dobkin's MY RED BLOOD: A Memoir of Growing Up Communist, Coming Onto the Greenwich Village Folk Scene, and Coming Out in the Feminist Movement (Alyson Books), and Elana Dykewoman's RISK (Bywater Books), a beautifully told novel that follows Carol, an idealistic, Berkeley-educated, Jewish lesbian living in Oakland, California, through the years from the mid-eighties to the post-9/11 world. Dykewoman previously won the Lambda award for her 1997 novel Beyond the Pale.

Eleanor Lerman's story collection THE BLONDE ON THE TRAIN (Mayapple) has been nominated for the Ferro-Grumley Award for fiction. This award, established in 1988 and named after authors Robert Ferro and Michael Grumley, honors gay and lesbian fiction, and has been won by Goldin Agency clients twice before: by Dorothy Allison for Bastard Out of Carolina, and by Elana Dykewoman for Beyond the Pale.

Eula Biss has won the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism for her latest collection of essays NOTES FROM NO MAN'S LAND: AMERICAN ESSAYS (Greywolf).

Biss's essays have garnered great acclaim in recent months. Her essay "Relations" was selected for the 2009 edition of Dave Eggers' The Best American Nonrequired Reading. This collection, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, assembles the country's best fiction, journalism, essays, humor, and graphic literature every year and introduces a large readership to dozens of new writers and publications. Another Eula Biss essay, "Time and Distance Overcome", which appeared in the February issue of Harper's Magazine, won a 2009 Pushcart Prize. And her essay "No Man's Land", called "one of the most affecting and original essays published in this decade" by National Public Radio, has been selected for The Believer magazine's best-of anthology titled Read Hard.

NOTES FROM NO MAN'S LAND was also the winner of the Graywolf Press Literary Nonfiction Award. The book received a starred review from Booklist, as well as raves from Sherman Alexie, Robert Polito and David Shields. You can learn more about Biss on her website.

ABOUT A MOUNTAIN (Norton), John D'Agata's moving book-length essay on the Yucca mountain nuclear repository, and a suicide in Las Vegas, was published in February to rave reviews. Charles Bock, in the New York Time Book Review, called the book "stylish" and "engrossing," and the book was selected as an Editor's Choice. The Los Angeles Times called it an "exquisite book" and "what, at its best, contemporary narrative nonfiction aspires to, a story that, like the novel, operates on many levels at once." John heads the graduate nonfiction writing program at the University of Iowa.

Obituary. Lester Rodney, the sportswriter for the Communist Party newspaper The Daily Worker who was a key figure in the desegregation of baseball in the 1940's, died in December at the age of 98. Rodney was the subject of a book called Press Box Red, (Temple University Press, 2003), really an extended interview with his friend Irwin Silber, in which he talks about his exploits as a left-wing sports reporter in the 30's and 40's. A favorite passage, talking about how he got ballplayers to take him seriously: "I was chatting with Leo Durocher when he was managing the Dodgers....We were talking about game strategy. Suddenly, Leo leans over to me, grabs my arm, and says, ‘You know, Rodney, for a fucking Communist, you sure know your baseball!'" He sure did, and we're fortunate to have this enormously entertaining record of his life. The New York Times obituary is a good summary of his life.

December 4 marked the 40th anniversary of the outrageous murder of Chicago Black Panther Fred Hampton in a police raid. Jeffrey Haas, one of Hampton's lawyers, has published a memoir, THE ASSASSINATION OF FRED HAMPTON (Chicago Review), detailing the 13-year civil suit that proved the FBI had orchestrated the assassination. He recently appeared on "Democracy Now" to talk about the book, and about the morning in December 1969 when he first learned the news that the dynamic Hampton was dead. He also has a column in The Nation magazine, pointing out the direct line from the FBI attacks on the Black Panthers in the 1960's, to warantless wiretapping today.

Agency news. We are proud to announce that as of last summer, the Frances Goldin Agency has changed from a sole proprietorship to a partnership. Ellen Geiger and Sam Stoloff have become co-owners of the agency with Frances, and we are all delighted that the future of this remarkable agency, founded more than 30 years ago, has been assured.

The Feminist Press has released a new edition of Ann Jones's classic WOMEN WHO KILL, which was originally published in 1980. It is the kickoff book in their Feminist Classics series, and marks a revival of the Feminist Press, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.

Far more than a study of women murderers, the book is a social history of women on the very edge of society - from colonial times to the present - who have been driven to kill. From infanticide in early American history to the poisoning of husbands in the nineteenth century, to battered wives of today and serial killers like Aileen Wouronos, this book reveals hard truths about American society and women's place in it. You can learn more about the book here.

The paperback edition of SIX GEESE A-SLAYING, the tenth installment in Donna Andrews's hilarious Meg Lanslow series, hit the New York Times extended bestseller list at #32. "Fans of comic cozies who have never read Andrews' Meg Langslow mysteries have a real treat in store," wrote Booklist. Read an excerpt on the author's website here.

We continue to mourn the death of our client, the remarkable Harriet McBryde Johnson, who passed away on June 4, 2008 at age 50. She would have objected to the epithet "remarkable," protesting that hers was an ordinary life. But while we hate to contradict her, remarkable she certainly was. A disability rights activist and lawyer, she was also a hugely talented writer, who came to national attention with the publication of her story "Unspeakable Conversations" in The New York Times Magazine in 2003. Her memoir Too Late to Die Young (Henry Holt 2005) is a delightful account of her varous adventures in life and politics, and her novel Accidents of Nature (Holt Books for Young Readers, 2006) is a vivid story of a girl's coming to political conscience in a summer camp for disabled kids in the early 70's. Harriet was a fierce advocate for the right of disabled people to determine their own lives, and the need for government to support them in that pursuit. Witty and contrarian, Harriet will be sorely missed.

An editorial appreciation of Harriet is here.