Monday, April 27, 2009

S&S to reprint Pulitzer winner
23.04.09 Graeme Neill in The Bookseller

Simon & Schuster has reprinted 10,000 copies of Olive Kitteridge, after the collection of short stories won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this week. Author Elizabeth Strout, (pic left, NYT photo), beat an all-female shortlist.
Following the win, Waterstone's has placed the book into its front-of-store offer.
Suzanne Baboneau, publishing director at Simon & Schuster, said: "The announcement came out of the blue for us because I think all of publishing was focused on the Orange Prize announcement this week. But then we were stopped in our tracks when Random House [Strout's US publisher] told us what happened. It was rather wonderful to hear."

Olive Kitteridge is a collection of 13 short stories set in a small town in Maine. The eponymous heroine, an indomitable retired schoolteacher, links each of the stories and the book is about her struggle to make sense of the changes in her life and the lives of those around her.
"She's one of those exquisite female novelists and is massively underrated here. She's like Anne Tyler. She writes beautifully but has never really had the same level of success in the UK as she has in the United States," Baboneau said.
The New York-based author has written two novels, Amy and Isabelle, a former Orange Prize finalist, and US bestseller Abide with Me. Her short stories have been published in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker.

No comments: