News
Susan Kamil Emerging Writers Fellowship Program Debuts at Center for Fiction
October 15, 2021
Brooklyn-based Center for Fiction, the 200-year-old community of writers and readers, celebrated the tenth anniversary of its vaunted storytelling talent-discovery sponsorship with its renaming—after one of book publishing’s great champions of early-career writing talent. The Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writers Fellowship Program, is inspired by the cherished namesake Random House Publisher and Editor, who died September 8, 2019.
Penguin Press Author Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on Literary Freedom as an Essential Human Right
October 15, 2021
This week The New York Times published an essay, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on Literary Freedom as an Essential Human Right. It was adapted from remarks the Penguin Press author delivered at PEN America’s annual literary gala on October 5, when Mr. Gates was presented with the 2021 PEN/Audible Literary Service Award.
Penguin Classics to Collaborate With Marvel to Publish Special Editions of Classic Comics
October 15, 2021
Penguin Classics will be collaborating with Marvel Comics to publish a new series, the Penguin Classics Marvel Collection, marking the first time that comics have been published by Penguin Classics. The first three books in the series – BLACK PANTHER, CAPTAIN AMERICA, and THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN – will be published on June 14, 2022.
This Collection of carefully curated comic book anthologies presents the original stories and seminal tales of key Marvel characters, and serves as a testament to Marvel’s transformative impact on graphic fiction and icons and stories across popular culture.
Friday Reads: Truman Capote
October 15, 2021
With the publication of CAPOTE’S WOMEN this week, we are reminded of Truman Capote’s enduring legacy among the great American writers and literary figures of the twentieth century. In the following collection of books, by and about Truman Capote, it’s clear why his life and writing remain so much a part of popular culture as well as academia.
Dip in and let Capote captivate you!
Markus Dohle Receives 2021 HORIZONT Award as a Media Person of the Year in Germany
October 14, 2021
Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle received the 2021 HORIZONT Award, which annually honors Germany's Media Persons of the Year, at a ceremony in Frankfurt am Main on Wednesday, October 13. HORIZONT is a nationally recognized media outlet, and its HORIZONT Award, one of the most prestigious honors in the German media and marketing industry, has been presented since 1983.
There's a Book for That: National Reading Group Month
October 13, 2021
October is National Reading Group Month, an initiative of the Women's National Book Association (WNBA). Founded in 1917, WNBA “promotes literacy, a love of reading, and women's roles in the community of the book.” This is truly our forte. Please enjoy these recent Great Group Reads, a mix of memoir and fiction, selected by the WNBA:
Penguin Random House Partners With Harlem Grown to Provide Books to Underserved Communities
October 12, 2021
Beginning this month, Penguin Random House is partnering with Harlem Grown, a remarkable organization serving the children of Harlem by offering resources, inspiration, and a safe place where they can just be kids.
TODAY's Dylan Dreyer Launches Her New Picture Book Virtually
October 12, 2021
TODAY Show co-host and meteorologist Dylan Dreyer celebrates the publication of her new picture book, MISTY THE CLOUD: A Very Stormy Day (Random House Books for Young Readers), in conversation with DIARY OF A WIMPY KID author Jeff Kinney at a virtual event hosted by An Unlikely Story Bookstore & Café via Crowdcast tonight, October 12 at 6:00 pm (ET).
To register, click here.
Doubleday’s Todd Doughty Makes His Literary Debut With LITTLE PIECES OF HOPE
October 12, 2021
Todd Doughty, author photo credit: Michael Lionstar
Future RHUK Author Maria Ressa 2021 Nobel Peace Prize Co-Winner
October 11, 2021
Maria Ressa, the co-recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, is a Penguin Random House UK author. Next April, Ebury Publishing's WH Allen imprint will publish her “How To Stand Up To A Dictator.”
What is Crazy Faith? WaterBrook Author Michael Todd Tells Us
October 8, 2021
Michael Todd is author of the #1 New York Times bestselling book, RELATIONSHIP GOALS, and the just released New York Times bestseller, CRAZY FAITH, both titles published by WaterBrook. Michael is also the lead pastor of Transformation Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and his Crazy Faith sermon series has been viewed more than 11 million times on You Tube.
Kupersmith, Lockwood, Polzin Center For Fiction ‘21 First Novel Prize Finalists
October 8, 2021
The seven-title shortlist for the 2021 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize includes three Penguin Random House imprints’ authors. This year’s judging panel, comprised of Alexander Chee, Susan Choi, Yaa Gyasi, Raven Leilani, and Dinaw Mengestu, selected the finalists from a longlist featuring 27 debut novels published in the United States between January 1 and December 31, 2021.
Each shortlisted author will receive $1,000; the winner to receive a $15,000 prize.
Esi Edugyan’s Novel WASHINGTON BLACK Being Adapted for a Hulu Series
October 8, 2021
Esi Edugyan’s WASHINGTON BLACK (Knopf/Vintage) is being adapted for a nine-episode Hulu series. Emmy and Golden Globe Award -winning actor Sterling K. Brown (This Is Us) has been tabbed to star and serve as an executive producer. Selwyn Seyfu Hinds will write the adaptation and is also an executive producer. Edugyan will be a co-producer on the series, which will be produced by 20th Television.
Friday Reads: Mental Health Memoirs
October 8, 2021
As Mental Health Awareness Week winds down, we want to highlight personal memoirs and biographies that help destigmatize mental illness. To quote Mark Vonnegut, “None of us are entirely well, and none of us are irrecoverably sick.”
RED COMET: THE SHORT LIFE AND BLAZING ART OF SYLVIA PLATH by Heather Clark
This groundbreaking biography of Sylvia Plath focuses on her remarkable literary and intellectual achievements while restoring the woman behind the long-held myths about her life and art.
HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD: INSIDE THE MIND OF AN AMERICAN FAMILY by Robert Kolker
The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science’s great hope in the quest to understand the disease. With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family’s unforgettable legacy of suffering, love, and hope.
BUILDING A LIFE WORTH LIVING: A MEMOIR by Marsha M. Linehan
Marsha Linehan tells the story of her journey from suicidal teenager to world-renowned developer of the life-saving behavioral therapy DBT, using her own struggle to develop life skills for others.
A MIND SPREAD OUT ON THE GROUND by Alicia Elliott
The Mohawk phrase for depression can be roughly translated to “a mind spread out on the ground.” In this urgent and visceral work, Alicia Elliott explores how apt a description that is for the ongoing effects of personal, intergenerational, and colonial traumas she and so many Native people have experienced.
THE EDGE OF EVERY DAY: SKETCHES OF SCHIZOPHRENIA by Marin Sardy
Against the starkly beautiful backdrop of Anchorage, Alaska, where she grew up, Marin Sardy weaves a fearless account of the shapeless thief—the schizophrenia—that kept her mother immersed in a world of private delusion and later manifested in her brother, ultimately claiming his life. In the process, Sardy casts new light on the treatment of the mentally ill in our society. Through it all runs her blazing compassion and relentless curiosity, as her meditations take us to the very edge of love and loss—and invite us to look at what comes after.
THE CRYING BOOK by Heather Christle
This bestselling "lyrical, moving book: part essay, part memoir, part surprising cultural study" is an examination of why we cry, how we cry, and what it means to cry from a woman on the cusp of motherhood confronting her own depression (The New York Times Book Review).
HEART BERRIES: A MEMOIR by Terese Marie Mailhot
A powerful, poetic memoir of an Indigenous woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Band in the Pacific Northwest—this New York Times bestseller and Emma Watson Book Club pick is “an illuminating account of grief, abuse and the complex nature of the Native experience . . . at once raw and achingly beautiful (NPR).
ROBERT LOWELL, SETTING THE RIVER ON FIRE: A STUDY OF GENIUS, MANIA, AND CHARACTER by Kay Redfield Jamison
In this magisterial study of the relationship between illness and art, the best-selling author of An Unquiet Mind brings a fresh perspective to the life and work of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Lowell. In his poetry, Lowell put his manic-depressive illness (now known as bipolar disorder) into the public domain, and in the process created a new and arresting language for madness. A bold, sympathetic account of a poet who was—both despite and because of mental illness—a passionate, original observer of the human condition.
JUST LIKE SOMEONE WITHOUT MENTAL ILLNESS ONLY MORE SO: A MEMOIR by Mark Vonnegut, M.D.
More than thirty years after the publication of his acclaimed memoir The Eden Express, Mark Vonnegut continues his story in this searingly funny, iconoclastic account of coping with mental illness, finding his calling, and learning that willpower isn’t nearly enough. Ultimately a tribute to the small, daily, and positive parts of a life interrupted by bipolar disorder, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So is a wise, unsentimental, and inspiring book that will resonate with generations of readers.
CRAZY: A FATHER'S SEARCH THROUGH AMERICA'S MENTAL HEALTH MADNESS by Pete Earley
Former Washington Post reporter Pete Earley had written extensively about the criminal justice system. But it was only when his own son—in the throes of a manic episode—broke into a neighbor's house that he learned what happens to mentally ill people who break a law.
AN UNQUIET MIND: A MEMOIR OF MOODS AND MADNESS by Kay Redfield Jamison
In her bestselling classic, An Unquiet Mind, Kay Redfield Jamison changed the way we think about moods and madness. Dr. Jamison is one of the foremost authorities on manic-depressive (bipolar) illness; she has also experienced it firsthand. Here Jamison examines bipolar illness from the dual perspectives of the healer and the healed, revealing both its terrors and the cruel allure that at times prompted her to resist taking medication. An Unquiet Mind is a memoir of enormous candor, vividness, and wisdom—a deeply powerful book that has both transformed and saved lives.
DARKNESS VISIBLE: A MEMOIR OF MADNESS by William Styron
A work of great personal courage and a literary tour de force, this bestseller is Styron’s true account of his descent into a crippling and almost suicidal depression. Styron is perhaps the first writer to convey the full terror of depression’s psychic landscape, as well as the illuminating path to recovery.
For more about these and related titles visit Mental Health Memoirs
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Abdulrazak Gurnah 2021 Nobel Literature Laureate: His Pantheon Connection
October 7, 2021
Abdulrazak Gurnah
Join Us for the Hurston/Wright Foundation Virtual Legacy Awards
October 7, 2021
The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation’s Annual Legacy Awards Ceremony on Friday, October 15 at 7:00 pm (ET) honors the best in Black literature in the United States and around the globe. Introduced in 2001, the Legacy Award was the first national award presented to Black writers by a national organization of Black writers. Since then, Hurston/Wright has recognized nearly 400 works by Black writers in the categories of debut fiction, fiction, nonfiction and poetry, and honored 97 students with College Writing Awards. As longtime partners of the Hurston/Wright Foundation, Penguin Random House is proud to support the only entity of its kind dedicated to discovering, mentoring and honoring Black writers at every stage of their careers.
Screen Adaptation of ONE OF US IS LYING Debuts on Peacock TV
October 7, 2021
Bayview High is now on screens nationwide with Peacock’s television adaptation of Karen M. McManus’ # 1 New York Times bestselling novel ONE OF US IS LYING. Thursday, October 7, marks the launch of the first three episodes of this iconic story that will keep viewers captivated as they immerse themselves in the story of four students fighting to prove that they are innocent in the murder of their fellow classmate. For the many existing fans of the book as well as teens and adults looking for another binge-worthy series, Delacorte Press will publish a special hardcover edition of the book featuring cover art from the show on sale November 30.
Knopf’s Omar El Akkad ‘21 Scotiabank Giller Shortlister
October 6, 2021
As shared Tuesday on Igloo, Penguin Random House Canada is celebrating its authors Omar El Akkad (published by Knopf in the US) and Miriam Toews with their shortlisting for the 28th Scotiabank Giller Prize. The announcement of the five finalists for the 2021 prize comes following the nomination in September of the twelve-book longlist – five of them published by us – for Canada’s most prestigious literary award.
There's a Book for That: Filipino American History Month
October 6, 2021
October is Filipino American History Month, recognized as such by U.S. Congress in 2009. Filipino Americans are the second-largest Asian American group in the nation and Filipino American History Month commemorates the first recorded presence of Filipinos in the continental United States, which occurred on October 18, 1587 in Morro Bay, California. We invite you to immerse yourselves in the culture and often personal history of Filipino-Americans in the following exemplary fiction and nonfiction:
Groff, Abdurraqib, Lo & 6 More PRH ‘21 NBA Finalists
October 5, 2021
On October 5, the respective 2021 National Book Award judges for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature revealed their short-list selections in each category.
Presenting our eight Penguin Random House imprint Finalists: