Gabe Habash
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Articles by Gabe Habash
The Top 5 Books by Roberto Bolaño
With Picador’s reprints of the now-classic Bolaño catalogue in full swing, we asked former PW fiction reviews editor and novelist Gabe Habash (Stephen Florida) to reflect on his top five by the author. Since 2024, Picador has released Amulet, Antwerp, By Night in Chile (with a new introduction by Nicole Krauss), The Insufferable Gaucho, Monsieur Pain, and The Return. This month brings A Little Lumpen Novelita, Posthumous Stories (previously titled The Secret of Evil), and The Skating Rink.
The Children's Digital Market: Still Uncharted Territory
The growing complexity of the children’s digital market was parsed by industry experts at the Publishers Launch Children's Publishing Goes Digital Conference in New York on January 15, as panelists and speakers agreed that the transition from print to digital will not be a clean, easy movement and that things are still very much in the experimentation stage.
Weird, Perverse Fun: PW Talks with Nick Drnaso
In Acting Class (Drawn & Quarterly, Aug.), Drnaso follows a group of characters who join an acting class, through which their understanding of themselves— as well as the limits of reality—gets tested. Without spoiling anything, some pretty dark, strange things happen to the characters. Can you talk about how you approached the story? I’ve never really found my limit of a story that’s too gruesome or too horrific that doesn’t pique my interest.
The Lighter Side of Dan Chaon
With his fourth novel and sixth book, , Dan Chaon wants to show he can be lighter of heart and not just depressive. Chaon's work is notably dark (and acclaimed-his books regularly appear on best books lists and have been nominated for many prizes, including the National Book Award).
Ada Limón and the Poetry of Rebellion
Ada Limón was always going to be an artist. "I love the idea of making things, creating things, performing things," she says via Zoom from her home in Lexington, Ky., where she's lived for the past decade with her husband, Lucas Marquardt, a horse racing reporter. Her office's door is closed until the relentless pawing of their ancient cat ("I think we've figured out she's 21") forces her to hop up and let the animal in.
Obsession, Collection, and Connection: On Pixar's 'Soul' and Jazmina Barrera's On Lighthouses
A chunk of bagel. The crust of a slice of pizza, pale as a sliver of fingernail. A spool of blue thread. A yellow subway card with cobalt lettering. A red lollipop, unwrapped and glistening as though still wet. And, finally: a single helicopter seed from a molting maple, veined and translucent, like an earlobe in sunlight. These are just a few of the endearingly New York mementos accumulated by the protagonists of Disney Pixar's latest animated feature, Soul.
PW Picks: The Best New Books for the Week of June 24, 2013
This week, the worst book ever to take on an airplane, "the skirt amongst men," and why obsessive-compulsives helped build the United States. Plus: Curtis Sittenfeld's latest.
Digital Imprints Take Root
Jim Milliot, Calvin Reid, Gabe Habash, and Rachel Deahl | Traditional trade publishers have been testing the digital-first/digital-only publishing waters for more than two years now, and the pace is accelerating.
Big Names Dominated Bestsellers in 2012
Parsing through the top 10 bestsellers of 2012 in a number of major publishing categories reads like a usual suspects list, as a small number of authors filled a large number of spots. The result: 2012’s bestseller lists showed relatively little variety, and the phenomenon wasn’t just limited to any one category.
Stephen Florida (Paperback)
$16.95 On Our Shelves Now On hand as of Feb 12 9:40am (FICTION & LITERATURE) June 2017 Indie Next List “Spanning a college wrestler's senior season, Stephen Florida is eerie, unsettling, and unlike anything else. It can be hard to live in Stephen's head, but it is impossible to stop reading or to forget what you find there. Stephen is unpredictable, sympathetic, focused, frenzied, cold, and tender. He is hard to love, yet I love him.
Spring 2020 Announcements: Literary Fiction
This spring’s fiction is headlined by family stories, debuts, and highly anticipated novels from the likes of Hilary Mantel and Elena Ferrante. Top 10 Afterlife Julia Alvarez. Algonquin, Apr. 7 ($25.95, ISBN 978-1-64375-025-5) From the author of In the Time of the Butterflies: Antonia Vega has just retired as an English professor when her unstable sister disappears and a pregnant, undocumented migrant teenager shows up on her doorstep. 100,000-copy announced first printing.
Catapult Community | Nonfiction Workshop with Richard Panek | Catapult & WME
“In one fundamental way, creative nonfiction is no different from any other form of creative writing. While the ‘nonfiction’ part of the label requires that the writer stick to the facts, the ‘creative’ part allows the writer to use those facts in the service of telling a story.”- Richard Panek Creative nonfiction is a powerful but sometimes mysterious genre.
Olga Tokarczuk Takes on the Detective Novel
In 2007, Olga Tokarczuk had just published her novel Flights in Poland, where it would go on to be a bestseller and win the 2008 Nike Award, the country’s most prestigious literary prize; a decade later, it would win the Man Booker International Prize in an English translation by Jennifer Croft. But after she finished writing Flights, Tokarczuk was uncomfortable.
The Near-Mythic Inevitability of Olga Tokarczuk's Novels
In 2007, Olga Tokarczuk had just published her novel Flights in Poland, where it would go on to be a bestseller and win the 2008 Nike Award, the country’s most prestigious literary prize; a decade later, it would win the Man Booker International Prize in an English translation by Jennifer Croft. But after she finished writing Flights, Tokarczuk was uncomfortable.
PW Picks: The Best New Books for the Week of July 15, 2013
This week: an author who can do seemingly anything with words, a Florida to Alaska road trip, and David Rakoff's novel in verse. Plus, a $50,000 coat. Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan (Random House) - The person and work of Jesus of Nazareth has been a topic of constant interest since he lived and died some 2,000 years ago. Much speculation about who he was and what he taught has led to confusion and doubt.
Fall 2019 Announcements: Literary Fiction
With sequels, prequels, and big names taking first leaps into new forms, this fall’s fiction has enough to keep you reading until the spring—at least. Links to reviews are provided when available. Top 10 The Dutch House Ann Patchett. Harper, Sept. 24, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-296367-3 A 1920s mansion overshadows the lives of the broken family that occupies it in Patchett’s latest, which traces acts of cruelty and kindness through three generations over 50 years. Find Me Andre Aciman.
Intern with Catapult in NYC!
Catapult (books.catapult.co) is seeking one full-time (40 hours/week) publishing intern to provide support to our books team beginning no later than July 1, and one part-time (18 hours/week) publicity and marketing-focused intern to start in late summer. These are paid positions and located in our New York office. Duties will vary day-to-day, but we rely on our interns for time-sensitive, essential work.
Eamon Dolan Returns to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
To say that Eamon Dolan is glad to be back at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is a bit of an understatement: “I suppose I might seem cooler if I kept my heart off my sleeve, but I am compelled to state my exact emotions: it feels simply wonderful to be back home—better even than I’d imagined.” Dolan returned to HMH in May 2011 after moving to the Penguin Press in 2007. Since his return Dolan has immersed himself in preparing for the launch of his own imprint, Eamon Dolan Books.
Deadline extended: Intern with our books team in NYC!
Catapult (books.catapult.co) is seeking one full-time (40 hours/week) publishing intern to provide support to our books team in the New York City office. This is a paid position. Duties will vary day-to-day, but we rely on our interns for time-sensitive, essential work. We have hired six previous interns to in-house staff positions, and proudly strive to help all of our exemplary interns with their job searches upon completing the internship with us.
The 10 Most Anticipated Book-to-Film Adaptations of 2019
On the book-to-film adaptation front, 2018 brought us If Beale Street Could Talk, Crazy Rich Asians, Annihilation, and more. Here's what's on the horizon for 2019. 10. Chaos Walking (TBA) Based on Patrick Ness's 2008 novel The Knife of Never Letting Go, Chaos Walking has a reported budget of $90-100 million and stars Tom Holland, Daisy Ridley, Nick Jonas, and Cynthia Erivo.
Top Authors Pick Their Favorite Books of 2018
We asked the authors of our top 10 books of 2018 to share their favorite titles published this year. Gina Apostol Apostol’s Insurrecto (Soho) is a novel of staggering imagination about two women who write dueling film scripts about the Philippine-American War while on a road trip to the town of Balangiga, the site of a violent conflict between occupying American forces and Filipinos in 1901. Apostol picks a debut novel that follows a Filipino family through three generations.
Spring 2019 Announcements: Literary Fiction
Spring’s fiction features prize winners, bestsellers, and debuts and includes such settings as an alternate 1980s London, a Mennonite community, and a remote Russian peninsula. Top 10 Black Leopard, Red Wolf Marlon James. Riverhead, Feb. 5 (hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-0-7352-2017-1) James’s first novel since winning the Booker for A Brief History of Seven Killings is the first in the Dark Star trilogy.
Wednesday Links!
Good morning. Tomorrow is Take Your Daughters to Work Day, and this is the fifth year in a row our nine-year-old has declined to observe me at work because “it’s not interesting to watch you write. I already do that EVERY DAY.” My six-year-old will be with me all day, though, and no doubt she will experience a real thrill when I show her my best tweets of the day, so long as every single one of those tweets has something to do with Moana.
The Shocking, Subversive Endings of Taeko Kōno’s Stories
The fiery, beguiling stories in Taeko Kōno’s collection Toddler Hunting and Other Stories, translated by Lucy North, are vertiginous tightrope walks between two planes of reality. Kōno (1926–2015) wrote these stories between 1961 and 1969, when several Japanese women writers were poking holes in the long-held idea that a wife is defined in relation to her husband and is submissive to him.
A Western Without Cowboys: PW Talks with Hernán Diaz
Hernán Diaz, born in Argentina and raised in Sweden, upends the old-school western in his Pulitzer Prize–finalist In the Distance. This book is an immigrant story, a historical novel sort of removed from time and place, and a fascinating deconstruction of the western. What about these elements intrigued you? I found the kernel for this novel many years ago, when I first moved to London. By chance, I read several books about solitary characters in deserted settings.
Penguin and BlogHer Partner for BlogHer Writers 2011 Conference
Held at the Hilton in Manhattan on October 21, Penguin and BlogHer, the community and media company created in partnership with women in social media, hosted BlogHer Writers '11, a full day of events "designed for women who want to start on their path to publishing." The conference, which was limited to 200 attendees from blogging and writing backgrounds, featured breakout panel sessions and mentor brainstorming sessions with agents.
Fall 2018 Announcements: Literary Fiction
This fall’s fiction has works by bestsellers and debut novelists alike, and includes undercover agents, a mermaid specimen, and an island surrounded by barbed wire. In 1862, a group of artists journeys to a rural Oxfordshire manor. The trip results in a murder and a disappearance. A century later, a London archivist may have the clues to solve the mystery.
The 10 Most Anticipated Book-to-Film Adaptations of 2018
On the book-to-film adaptation front, 2016 brought us movies for Call Me By Your Name, It, and Wonder. Let's see what's on the horizon for 2018. Sarah Waters's thoroughly creepy gothic novel, which was a finalist for the Booker and one of PW's best books of 2009, is a natural fit for a film adaptation (another of her novels, Fingersmith, was the basis of Park Chan-Wook’s The Handmaiden), and this year will see Lenny Abrahamson (director of Room) bring it to the big screen.
Top Authors Pick Their Favorite Books of 2017
We asked the authors of our top 10 books of 2017, announced in the October 30 issue, to share their favorite titles published this year. Chaon’s Ill Will (Ballantine) is a terrifying novel about an Ohio psychologist named Dustin Tillman, whose adopted brother has just been exonerated through DNA evidence for the crime of murdering his family—and who was put away by Dustin’s testimony. Chaon picks an equally frightening novel.
Spring 2018 Announcements: Literary Fiction
This spring’s fiction includes works by prize winners and debut novelists set in such locations as the Alaskan wilderness, a women’s correctional facility, and post-WWII London. Links to reviews are provided when available. From the author of The Interestings: Greer is a shy college freshman when she meets Faith Frank, who has been a central pillar of the women’s movement for decades. Greer, searching for purpose, finds it through Faith.
A First Novel, Wrestling With the Will to Rule the Mat
“People are bad at giving up,” a man tells the title character late in “Stephen Florida,” Gabe Habash’s debut novel. “A lot of the time they don’t do it early enough.” He’s commenting on life in the oil fields of North Dakota, where Stephen is considering a job after college, but he might as well be describing Stephen’s current situation: He’s a wrestler at Oregsburg College in the late 1970s, and it’s his senior year, which means it’s his last chance to win a collegiate championship.
Stephen Florida Indiespensable Edition
I spend most of my time in the Pearl Room. I love art books...
Fall 2017 Announcements: Literary Fiction
A dystopian novel, a magical prequel, historical novels, and a story collection: this fall’s literary fiction has enough prizewinners and bestsellers for everyone. The National Book Award winner’s story collection tells of a legendary Civil War–era toy, five strangers thrown together, an American president inspired by an overheard conversation, and the Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band members recounting stories from their messy lives.
The Seedcake Kiss
I read Ulysses over seven days in 2010. I had just finished my first year in graduate school in New York, and for that week in May all I did was read Ulysses. I didn’t have many friends, I didn’t go out, I was lonely, my roommate went home for the summer, so I stayed up reading Joyce. I didn’t read the Gifford annotations, and often I barely knew what was happening.
A Story About Two Men Unraveling in Isolation – Electric Literature
Nephew Shane, a person I’ve never met before, drives very fast. While he diddles with the stick, I mentally ?ll out the North Regional 133 bracket, which I copied down before leaving and stuck in my shoe. He lights a cigarette and tosses the pack onto the dash, next to a green glove and two socks. For most of the three-hour drive, we’ve been under a silence he insisted on. He turned the radio to the country station and the whole time, his hand has either been down his pants or holding a cigarette.
'Stephen Florida,' By Gabe Habash : NPR
'Stephen Florida' Goes To The Mat — And Wins Who is Stephen Florida? It's a little hard to say. He's an orphan who maybe hasn't yet come to terms with the death of his parents in a car crash. He's an obsessive with poor impulse control. He's possibly the best college wrestler in the state of North Dakota. He's an unapologetic megalomaniac. Or maybe he's not really any of these things: "There is no real Stephen Florida," he says.
Stephen Florida | Harper Collins Australia
‘A coming-of-age story with its own, often explosive, rhythm and velocity … This is a shape-shifter of a book, both a dark ode to the mysteries and landscapes of the American West and a complex and convincing character study' Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life Meet Stephen Florida: college student, amateur wrestler, visionary, outsider.Entering senior year, his sights are set on the championships.
How to Write an Internet Essay to Support Your Novel
You should probably write something about your book, now that it’s being published. But you are worried because you don’t have anything left to say about your book. The problem with writing is you haven’t really done it in two and half years, since you finished the book, which emptied you out. The space you entered to write the book now feels used-up and potentially noxious, a place of dormant chemicals you’re forbidden to revisit.
BookExpo 2017: Adult Galleys to Grab
[See children's and YA galleys featured at BookExpo here.] Simba Sana will attend the show to sign 60 galleys of his new memoir, Never Stop. Stacey Lender will sign 75 galleys of her debut novel, City Mouse. Also on hand will be 150 galleys of An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon and 75 galleys of The Book of Love and Hate by Lauren Sanders.
STEPHEN FLORIDA by Gabe Habash | Kirkus Reviews
A college wrestler is driven to win, to the detriment of his mental health. The captivating narrator of Habash’s debut novel is a sinewy senior at a small North Dakota college on a last-ditch effort to win the Division IV championship in his weight class. To do so, he takes easy-A classes (“Drawing II, Meteorology I, Basic News Writing, and What Is Nothing?”) and works out like a fiend (“I’m skin and gristle and little water”). But it’s clear early on that something is off.
Politics Was Front and Center At This Year’s AWP Conference
This year’s Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual conference—held in Washington, D.C., at the Washington Convention Center and the Washington Marriott Marquis from February 8 to 11—was, unsurprisingly, a highly politicized event. There were protests, vigils, and marches, in addition to the usual panels about writing, literary publishing, and academics.
9th Ave: Gabe Habash and Julie Buntin
This event will be held at our 9th Ave. location. Gabe Habash and Julie Buntin discuss their new novels Stephen Florida and Marlena. “In Stephen Florida, Gabe Habash has created a coming-of-age story with its own, often explosive, rhythm and velocity. Habash has a canny sense of how young men speak and behave, and in Stephen, he’s created a singular character: funny, ambitious, affecting, but also deeply troubled, vulnerable, and compellingly strange.
AWP 2017: A Political Book Fair
The AWP book fair, always the centerpiece of the conference experience, was as politically charged as this year's panels and protests. The fate of the National Endowment for the Arts was unsurprisingly on the minds of many at AWP, with the conference taking place only a couple of weeks after rumors started circulating that the Trump administration intends to slash the budget of the NEA.
The 11 Most Anticipated Book-to-Film Adaptations of 2017
On the book-to-film adaptation front, 2016 brought us movies for Arrival, Hidden Figures, and The Girl on the Train, among others. Let's see what's on the horizon for 2017. With its page-turning plot, Herman Koch's hit novel was destined for an adaptation since its original publication in 2009 (it was released in the U.S. in 2012).
12 Books That End Mid-Sentence
This article originally appeared as a post on the PWxyz blog, which is no longer online. Way back before The Sopranos made people angry/confused for cutting to black out of nowhere, books were messing with the heads of readers by daring to not use a period as the last typeset keystroke on the very last page. Here are 12 books that have no need for the standard last punctuation mark.
Finalists for 2016 National Book Awards Announced
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The Millions : Incest and Spouse Swapping: On Iris Murdoch's 'A Severed Head'
The remarkably prolific Iris Murdoch wrote 26 novels over a 40-year span; today, she’s best known for 1978’s The Sea, the Sea. The novel won the Man Booker Prize, and deservedly so: it’s a world-eating emotional chronicle in which the elderly narrator, Charles Arrowby, tries to fix his greatest mistake: letting his first and only love go.
Fall 2016 Adult Announcements: Literary Fiction
This fall’s fiction presents a mix of the everyday and the seismic. From deathbed confessions and earthquakes to family portraits and a total reimagining of the Underground Railroad, life’s moments, from smallest to largest, are explored. In her first adult novel in 20 years, Woodson combines grit and beauty in a series of vignettes, painting a mural of what it was like to grow up African-American in Brooklyn during the 1970s.
The Wonderful and Terrible Habit of Buying Too Many Books
"…ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them. So I have erected one of his dwellings, with books as the building stones, before you, and now he is going to disappear inside, as is only fitting." -Walter Benjamin, "Unpacking My Library" Last weekend, I found myself killing a Saturday afternoon at one of my favorite bookstores, McNally Jackson. I didn't go with any specific book in mind.
BEA 2016: Adult Galleys to Grab
There will be 75 galleys of The Ziggy Marley and Family Cookbook: Whole, Organic Ingredients and Delicious Meals from the Marley Kitchen. On offer will be 500 galleys of each of three titles: Gayle Forman’s Leave Me, Caroline Leavitt’s Cruel Beautiful World, and Susan Rivers’s The Second Mrs. Hockaday. Signing 125 galleys each will be Catherine McKenzie for Fractured and Allison Winn Scotch for In Twenty Years.
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