Building conflict into a novel or story — which is what propels plot and reader — is tricky, especially for writers trying to avoid cliché or melodrama. Hence the next Traveling Pen workshop from Hampton Roads Writers: It’s by Alma Katsu, author of historical thrillers.
Her “Upping the Ante” workshop, Feb. 20 via Zoom, defines conflict and lays out four kinds and how to build them. Participants can submit samples for discussion; they’re due by Feb. 13.
Katsu’s novels include “The Hunger” and “The Deep,” with supernatural takes on the Donner Party and the sinking of the Titanic. They received “favorites” nods from, among others, NPR and Booklist.
Coming in March is her first espionage novel, “Red Widow.” Publishers Weekly wrote, “Best known for her novels of psychological terror, Katsu shows a sure hand at a new genre.” Crime Fiction Lover, noting her background working for CIA and RAND Corp., wrote, “We’re looking forward to this one, because espionage remains a fairly male-dominated genre and a new, authentic female voice here could give it the shake-up it arguably needs.”
Details: Check-in, 9:15 a.m.; workshop, 9:30 to noon. Fees: about $25 and lower. Details and registration: hamptonroadswriters.org/tps2021.php
Coming in June from Lawrence Wright: “The Plague Year,” a history of the COVID-19 pandemic from its origins in China into what publisher Knopf calls “the critical first weeks and months of its arrival in the U.S.” The New Yorker, where Wright is a staff writer, ran an excerpt in late December. His previous works include Pulitzer-winning “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” and a pandemic novel, “The End of October.”
Good news for book sales: As hoped, Barack Obama’s memoir “A Promised Land” provided a boost in November as adult book sales rose 35.4%. The nudge to shop earlier contributed. Overall, sales rose 24.5%. (Publishers Weekly)
Major awards for children’s books included, to Tae Keller (“When You Trap a Tiger”), the Newbery medal for overall children’s work. The Caldecott medal, for best children’s picture story, to Michaela Goade, who illustrated “We Are Water Protectors” by Carole Lindstrom; Goade is the Caldecott’s first Native American recipient. To Daniel Nayeri, the Michael L. Printz Award for “Everything Sad Is Untrue (a true story).” To Jacqueline Woodson, her third Coretta Scott King award, for “Before the Ever After.”
New and recent
From Cicely Tyson, “Just as I Am,” a memoir, published two days before her death Thursday … From Joan Didion, “Let Me Tell You What I Mean,” a collection of previously published works (Knopf, 192 pp.).
From Charles M. Blow, “The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto,” a call for Black Americans to fight white supremacy. (Harper, 256 pp.) “The proposition is simple,” writes the native Louisianan and New York Times opinion writer. “As many Black descendants of the Great Migration as possible should return to the South from which their ancestors fled.” Concentrating their political power in key Southern cities would have the potential to remake the American social and political landscape. (NPR)
Blow has a segment on C-Span’s BookTV, as does Helen Andrews, author of “Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster.” She’s a senior editor at The American Conservative.
From Kristin Hannah, “The Four Winds.” An epic novel of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, starting in 1921 Texas, after the Great War. A mother and farm woman is forced by social strictures to make choices to keep herself and her children alive. (St. Martin’s, 464 pp.)
— Erica Smith, erica.smith@pilotonline.com
