• The Agency
    • News
    • Carole Blake Open Doors Project
    • BFLA Open Week
    • Industry Commitment to Professional Behaviour
    • Privacy Notice
  • Our Team
    • Book Clients
    • Submissions
    • Screenwriters, Playwrights & Directors
    • Book to Screen
    • Submissions
    • Translation Rights
    • Rights Guide
    • Contact
    • Vacancies
    • Permissions
Menu

Blake Friedmann

Street Address
City, State, Zip
Phone Number
Literary, TV and Film Agency

Blake Friedmann

  • About
    • The Agency
    • News
    • Carole Blake Open Doors Project
    • BFLA Open Week
    • Industry Commitment to Professional Behaviour
    • Privacy Notice
  • Our Team
  • Books
    • Book Clients
    • Submissions
  • Film & TV
    • Screenwriters, Playwrights & Directors
    • Book to Screen
    • Submissions
  • Translation Rights
    • Translation Rights
    • Rights Guide
  • Contact Us
    • Contact
    • Vacancies
    • Permissions

THE HYACINTH GIRL by Lyndall Gordon longlisted for 2023 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

January 20, 2023 Intern BlakeFriedmann

Lyndall Gordon’s ground-breaking biography THE HYACINTH GIRL: T. S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse has been longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography.

The PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography was established in 2008 by Rodman L. Drake and awards excellence in biography writing. The winning title is considered by the judges to be a work of ‘exceptional literary, narrative, and artistic merit, based on scrupulous research’, with previous winners including the likes of Amy Stanley’s STRANGER IN THE SHOGUN’S CITY and LOOKING FOR LORRAINE by Imani Perry.

The finalists for the 2023 award will be announced in early February and the winner revealed at the annual PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony at New York’s Town Hall on the 2nd of March. The other shortlisted titles for the 2023 award are as follows: AN AMERICAN MARTYR IN PERSIA: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville by Reza Aslan, CIVIL RIGHTS QUEEN: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality by Tomiko Brown-Nagin, DILLA TIME: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm by Dan Charnas, THE ADVENTURES OF HERBIE COHEN by Rich Cohen, G-MAN: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage, GURU TO THE WORLD: The Life and Legacy of Vivekananda by Ruth Harris, MR. B: George Balachine’s 20th Century by Jennifer Homans, THE POPE AT WAR: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer, and SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins by Aidan Levy.

Drawing on the dramatic new material of the only recently unsealed 1,131 letters, THE HYACINTH GIRL casts new light on T. S. Eliot’s life and great poetry, and restores a quiet, talented woman to prominence in literary history.

Virago published the hardback edition of THE HYACINTH GIRL in the UK in October last year, while the American edition was published by W. W. Norton in November. It has received enormous acclaim – from fellow biographers as well as readers and critics – and was highlighted by many publications as being one of the best non-fiction titles of the year. The UK paperback edition will be published in August 2023.

Lyndall also recently appeared in a BBC documentary about Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’, which forms part of programming across BBC television and radio designed to celebrate the centenary of the publication of the celebrated poem. You can read more about the documentary here. Lyndall is one of the luminaries appearing at the T.S .Eliot Summer School in the UK, 8-16 July 2023.

Photo credit: Nina Hollington

About Lyndall Gordon

A much-celebrated biographer, Lyndall Gordon lives in Oxford. Her ability to make the subjects of her biographies come vividly to life has won her many literary awards, including the Cheltenham Prize and the James Tait Black prize. She has also been longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize and the Comisso Prize in Italy for her Emily Dickinson biography LIVE LIKE LOADED GUNS.

Her previous biographical work on T. S. Eliot – two biographies, ELIOT’S EARLY YEARS and ELIOT’S NEW LIFE, incorporated into an updated edition, THE IMPERFECT LIFE OF T. S. ELIOT – won the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize and Southern Arts prize. THE IMPERFECT LIFE OF T. S. Eliot was also selected by the New York Public Library as one of 25 ‘Books to Remember’ from 2000 and by the Independent on Sunday as one of the ‘30 best biographies of the twentieth century’. Translator Xu Xiaofan won the Lu Xun Literary Prize for her translation of THE IMPERFECT LIFE OF T. S. ELIOT, published in China by Shanghai Literature and Art.

Praise for THE HYACINTH GIRL

THE HYACINTH GIRL - US cover.JPG
THE HYACINTH GIRL by Lyndall Gordon - Virago - UK Cover.jpg

‘Exemplary… revealed that the great man’s poetry was a lot less impersonal than he led us to believe.’ – Lucasta Miller, The Spectator, ‘Books of the Year’

 ‘A number of good books have marked the centenary of “The Waste Land”… but, for me, the most brilliant and incisive new book on Eliot is Lyndall Gordon’s The Hyacinth Girl: T.S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse, which looks at Eliot’s poetry in the light of his recently opened correspondence with Emily Hale.’ – Colm Tóibín, Irish Times, ‘Best Books of the Year’

‘Lyndall Gordon’s sensitive study of Emily Hale, Eliot’s childhood sweetheart in America’ – Iona McLaren, The Telegraph, ‘Best Biographies of 2022’

 ‘Gordon does an admirable job navigating the ambiguities of the tangled situations she chronicles; she is respectful of complications, of emotional messiness, of unusual attachments. She patiently evokes the intricacy and singularity of each intimate relationship. There is a human richness to Eliot’s cerebral poetry that we can appreciate more in the context of his knotted emotional life, and Gordon’s art is in drawing this out. She is also adept at mapping Eliot’s well-known religious and spiritual yearnings onto the sexual and emotional struggles that fed his beliefs. This is delicate and tricky work, if one is not overly reductive, and Gordon allows the reader to live with Eliot’s conflicts and contradictions. She is not interested in reducing or bludgeoning the mystery of his words, but in exploring layers and resonances.’ – Katie Roiphe, The New York Times

 ‘Exquisitely nuanced’ – Kathryn Hughes, Sunday Times

‘Lyndall Gordon is the first biographer to uncover the life of T.S. Eliot’s hidden muse, the inspiration of one of his greatest works of poetry …This is a work that will change the way that Eliot is seen.’ – Miranda Seymour, author of I USED TO LIVE HERE ONCE: THE HAUNTED LIFE OF JEAN RHYS

‘There is no finer guide into the mind of T.S. Eliot than Lyndall Gordon. Drawing upon Eliot’s newly unsealed letters to Emily Hale, THE HYACINTH GIRL reimagines one of the great literary love stories of the twentieth century… Thanks to Gordon’s meticulous research and inspired storytelling, we will never read these poems the same way again: It turns out that the great poet of ‘impersonality’ was baring his soul all along. Emily Hale, too, finally gets her due in this brilliant and revelatory work from one of our greatest biographers.’ – Heather Clark, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist RED COMET: THE SHORT LIFE AND BLAZING ART OF SYLVIA PLATH

 

Visit Lyndall’s website.

Tweet
Tags THE HYACINTH GIRL, Lyndall Gordon, Isobel Dixon, T.S. Eliot, PEN America, Longlisted, Longlist, Prize, Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award

Dima Alzayat's ALLIGATOR AND OTHER STORIES announced as a finalist for PEN America Award

February 11, 2021 Intern BlakeFriedmann
Screenshot 2020-12-21 at 08.57.59.png

We are thrilled that, ALLIGATOR & OTHER STORIES by Dima Alzayat, has been announced by PEN America as a finalist for the Robert W Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection category.

ALLIGATOR & OTHER STORIES (published by Picador in the UK and Two Dollar Radio in the US), is an intricate, thoughtful exploration of what it is to be ‘other’: as a Syrian, as an Arab, as an immigrant, as a woman. Each story of the stories is a snapshot of those moments when unusual circumstances suddenly distinguish us from our neighbours, when our difference is thrown into relief.

Here are ‘dangerous’ women transgressing, missing children in 1970s New York, a family who were once Syrian but have now lost their name, and a young woman about to discover the hollowness of the American dream. At its centre lies ‘Alligator’: a remarkable compilation of real and invented sources, which rescues from history the story of a Syrian American couple who were murdered at the hands of the state.

PEN America is an organisation committed to amplifying free expression globally, and their prizes are some of the most prestigious in the world. PEN America’s 2021 Literary Awards judges join a long tradition of esteemed writers and PEN America members committed to recognising their contemporaries, from promising debut writers to those who have had a continuous, lasting impact on literary excellence. Judging the short story category are Ben Marcus, Elizabeth McCracken, and Ingrid Rojas Contreras.

The winners of the Awards will be announced in Spring 2021.

About Dima Alzayat:

Dima Alzayat was born in Damascus, Syria, grew up in San Jose, California, and now lives in Manchester. She was the winner of the ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award 2019, a 2018 Northern Writers’ Award, the 2017 Bristol Short Story Prize, the 2015 Bernice Slote Award, runner-up in the 2018 Deborah Rogers Award and the 2018 Zoetrope: All-Story Competition, and was Highly Commended in the 2013 Bridport Prize.

 Her stories have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Bristol Short Story Award Anthology, Bridport Prize Anthology, and Enizagam. Her short story ‘In the Land of Kan’an’ was included in artist Jenny Holzer’s projection For Aarhus and was part of Holzer’s 2017 exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. She is a PhD student and associate lecturer at Lancaster University.

Praise for ALLIGATOR AND OTHER STORIES:

‘I love the range of the stories here. The title story is outstanding as is the opening story.’ — Roxane Gay (Goodreads)

‘Dima Alzayat proves herself an incredible literary chameleon, writing across history, nationality, gender and age with deep nuance and empathy.’ — Dana Czapnik, author of THE FALCONER

‘Tremendously assured, wise-cracking and elegiac, with a firm pulse on the magical and mundane. I loved it’s hard-edged lyricism and the tremendous empathetic range and distinctiveness of vision that Dima Alzayat demonstrates in this wonderful collection that will resonate with anyone who has ever felt caught between cultures, places and the interstices of memory and the loaded everyday.' — Sharlene Teo, author of PONTI 

‘Alligator and Other Stories is heartfelt, heartbreaking and heart-mending. It's also razor sharp on the shifting layers of history, family, faith, gender, culture and language that make up that strange thing we call “identity”. An important, necessary book.’ — Jenn Ashworth

‘Dima Alzayat's stories are nuanced, unusual and emotionally lacerating. Hers is a voice that is both vital and haunting.’ — Stuart Evers

‘This is a wonderful collection, exceptional in fact. Its consideration of displacement and identity is so nuanced, intelligent and tender, and its modes of telling so dextrous, apt and beautiful. In Alligator and Other Stories, lives are captured with care and formidable compassion.’ — Wendy Erskine, author of SWEET HOME

‘I've just read the first story in this collection and it is superb. I don't think I've ever noticed myself breathing so fast while reading.’ — Lara Pawson

‘Gloriously hypnotic. These charged, visceral stories get under the skin and stay there. This collection heralds the arrival of an electrifying new voice.’ — Irenosen Okojie

‘Dima Alzayat combines superb writing with razor-sharp imagination and focuses on social injustice, racial violence, and global immigration.’ – LitHub

‘Dima Alzayat’s startling, often shocking stories have at their heart a profound sense of dislocation.’ – Eithne Farry, The Daily Mail

‘This rich short story collection exploring gender, identity, family and inheritance packs an emotional punch.’ — Layla Haidrani, Cosmopolitan, ‘49 new books by black and POC authors you’ll be reading in 2020’

‘This debut short story collection has left us stunned’ — Daunt Books

‘Alzayat’s slim, powerful debut collection showcases the author’s deep empathy and imagination in stories about grief, assimilation, and trauma…This intelligent collection is a force to be reckoned with’ — Publisher’s Weekly

‘Sardonic, monstrous, tender, these well-crafted tales show us circumstances that might be our own, and let us see them through the eyes of others.’ —Matthew Adams, Sunday Times

‘Alzayat manages to execute a short but thoughtful meditation on the spectrum of race in America from Jackson’s presidency to present. Here and everywhere, Alligator is a collection about the power and limitations of empathy.’ — Colin Groundwater, GQ

ALLIGATOR.jpg
Tweet
Tags Dima Alzayat, ALLIGATOR AND OTHER STORIES, Juliet PIckering, Prizes, PEN America

Directors: Julian Friedmann, Isobel Dixon
Blake Friedmann Literary Agency Ltd. Registered in England no. 1203671
Registered office: Ground Floor, 15 Highbury Place, London, N5 1QP

Copyright Blake Friedmann Literary Agency Ltd 2023