Book News
Bellwether winner
Barbara Kingsolver’s biennial Bellwether Prize for Fiction goes to Heidi W. Durrow of Los Angeles for her novel, “Light- Skinned-ed Girl.”
Durrow will receive $25,000 and work with editors at Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. The Bellwether Prize is awarded to a promising first-time novelist working in the tradition of socially engaged literature.
Previous winners have included Donna Gershten for “Kissing the Virgin’s Mouth”; Gayle Brandeis, “The Book of Dead Birds”; Marjorie Kowalski Cole, “Correcting the Landscape”; and Hillary Jordan, “Mudbound.”
Durrow is a graduate of Stanford University, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Yale Law School. “Light-Skinned-ed Girl” is the story of a young woman’s coming of age complicated by society’s ideas of face, beauty and intelligence.
Judges were authors Ernest Hebert, John Nichols and Jordan, along with Kathy Pories of Algonquin, editor of the “New Stories From the South” anthology. The Denver Post
First Line
Murder At the Bad Girl’s Bar and Grill by N.M. Kelby
“It was the hissing that caught his attention. Like a tire going flat, like a snake giving a warning — but loud. Almost deafening. The security guard was making one last pass before dawn when he heard it. Then he saw it.
“At first, Wilson thought it was just bats. Laguna Key is home to hundreds of them, maybe even thousands. It’s not one of the features mentioned in any of the retirement community’s brochures, but every night clouds of bats come screaming out of the mangrove forest, fly low along the beach, bank over the tennis courts, cast shadows on the moon, and slip into dreams.
“But this was different. Louder. Angry. It made him uneasy. He followed the noise, the hum of it, back behind the bar, back to the Dumpster — then stopped. The air reeked of salt and death.
“And there were wings.
“Wildly flapping wings. They covered the Dumpster. Made it seem alive, as if it were some sort of new creature. Iridiscent in the blue-white glow of vaport lights. Menacing. Vultures.”
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Publishers Weekly
