Great Place Books

New class with @adremily.bsky.social

Greatplacebooks.com/spark

Pilgrims by Devin Kelly — Great Place Books On Sale: November 18, 2025 A monk leaves the monastery to search for his teenage brother, who has run away from home in the middle of a high school cross-country race. Alternating between each bro...

🐆 www.greatplacebooks.com/books/p/pilg...

@greatplacebooks.bsky.social

People know the cheetah is fast. But people do not know that every cheetah is so closely related that you can transplant a heart from one to the other without worrying about infection. You can transplant a lung, a kidney. One cheetah can be suffering and another can pull the heart out of its chest and sprint it toward the other before it dies, and put that heart into the other’s chest. And nothing bad will happen. Nothing bad will happen at all.

a page from Devin Kelly’s novel Pilgrims

Reading Muriel Spark with Emily Adrian — Great Place Books Join author and GPB cofounder Emily Adrian in reading the dazzling fiction of Muriel Spark. This class will meet four times to discuss four of Spark’s most original, ambitious, and tightly constructed...

@greatplacebooks.bsky.social courses are back! With a seminar on the short novels of Muriel Spark.

www.greatplacebooks.com/spark

GPB has two new classes on offer in early 2025! First up is READING JOY WILLIAMS co-taught by @adremily.bsky.social and @alexhigley.bsky.social

Register here:
greatplacebooks.com/joy

Four Translated Novels I Enjoyed This Year Recommending some lovely and strange translated novels published in the last couple years.

Need to pad out your 2024 books read pile? Here are four great (and very short) translated novels I enjoyed this year
countercraft.substack.com/p/four-trans...

In February, Monika Woods will lead a workshop on three-act structures, using novels by Han Kang and Lisa Halliday as inspiration.

Register here:
greatplacebooks.com/3acts

GPB has two new classes on offer in early 2025! First up is READING JOY WILLIAMS co-taught by @adremily.bsky.social and @alexhigley.bsky.social

Register here:
greatplacebooks.com/joy

Happy pub day to EUPHORIA DAYS by Pilar Fraile and translated by @lizziedavis.bsky.social

Buy it from us or Bookshop!

greatplacebooks.com/books/p/euphor…

bookshop.org/p/books/euphor 

Into the Tubi-Verse The growing popularity of a free streaming service with a wonky algorithm and a library that’s both massive and confounding may shed some light on what exactly viewers want from their TV experience

My man @wilmes.bsky.social is going to turn me into a Tubi freak bc of this (really excellent) piece, I just know it

www.theringer.com/tv/2024/4/17...

CASCADE by Julia Hannafin is out now!

GPB: greatplacebooks.com/books

Bookshop: bookshop.org/p/books/cascad…

B&N: barnesandnoble.com/w/cascade-juli 

Begins April 23rd! If you are looking for a workshop, here it is:
greatplacebooks.com/fiction

Fiction to Film — Great Place Books

I've always loved when my students watch film adaptations of what we studying and share their insights in class. Decided to make a new seminar out of it! Join us for lots of close-reading, discussion, and feedback on your own WIP!

greatplacebooks.com/film

New April workshop with @alexhigley.bsky.social!

New
@greatplacebooks.bsky.social class starting in April! Inspired by a student's request 😍 We'll read Munro, Dubus, Eugenides, and Ishiguro and determine what film reveals about form—especially that of the short story!
tinyurl.com/y4cnkkva

BLOCKS WORLD, by Emma Catherine Perry, from Great Place Books

Emma Catherine Perry, straight chillin by the lake

Today on the blog: a review of former editor Emma Catherine Perry's extraordinary BLOCKS WORLD, her debut poetry collection, from @greatplacebooks.bsky.social. "Should we look to our own creations to examine ourselves?" www.epochliterary.com/blog/review-...

Teaching another fiction workshop in April, please share with potentially interested parties or broadly:

greatplacebooks.com/fiction

How does a ten-page short story lend itself to a two-hour movie? How can we make sure our own work is equally complex, rich, and open to interpretation?

Cover reveal for Pilar Fraile’s English language debut EUPHORIA DAYS, translated by National Book Award Nominee and finalist for the PEN Translation Prize @lizziedavis.bsky.social

ONE SPOT LEFT in Building a Memoir with the brilliant @johncotter.bsky.social

BUILDING A MEMOIR with @johncotter.bsky.social starts in one week! Register now and join GPB's cohort of memoirists.
greatplacebooks.com/memoir

Few spots left! Study memoir with @johncotter.bsky.social!

Why Setting Matters in Fiction — Great Place Books Fiction can introduce us to foreign cities, complicate our relationship to our own hometown, or make us long for places we’ve never seen. Why does it matter where a story takes place? Could Kazuo ...

Two spots left in this seminar I’m leading for @greatplacebooks.bsky.social
Join us!
greatplacebooks.com/setting

The bird of thanks, appreciating your submission

Happy New Year! We are OPEN for electronic submissions, through January. Send us your fiction, poetry, essay, comics, and translations. We pay between $100 and $500 depending on length. epoch.submittable.com/submit

Diving into some old favorites for my upcoming @greatplacebooks.bsky.social class on setting. Two spots remain if you'd like to join us! We'll read Erdrich, Baldwin, Proulx, James Joyce, Sally Rooney, Ling Ma, and Willa Cather. 😍 greatplacebooks.com/setting

In today's newsletter, Emily Adrian and Alex Higley interview each other about why they love teaching for GPB and the courses they've got coming up in 2024!
tinyurl.com/3f26zyfk

🤩 winter classes at Great Place Books! Perfect holiday gift for yourself or another writer in your life 🎁
greatplacebooks.com/classes

John’s book LOSING MUSIC is featured on Vulture today! vulture.com/article/best-books-of-2023.html