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From the catalog:

López

While I didn’t recognize the title of the story collection, I thought I recognized the name: I had an English professor named Lorraine López as an undergraduate at Vanderbilt.

Turns out Professor López is not only an incredible teacher (her Latino literature class remains one of my favorites) but a greatly talented writer. I love this description of Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories, from fellow writer and critic Heather Sellers: “An amazingly original Flannery O’Connor/Loretta Lynn collision, this collection lets us witness the indomitable spirit and forces us to take pure joy in all we really ever have a chance at: flawed, gorgeous, weird, rollicking, screwed survival.”

Published in November 2009 by BkMk Press (at the University of Missouri, Kansas City), Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories is sure to get a lot of attention in the coming weeks—and we couldn’t be happier for its gracious and gifted author.

Lorraine M. López was kind enough to humor a former student—and took time out of her busy teaching/writing schedule to talk with BookPage today.

When did you find out you were named a finalist for the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction? What was your initial reaction?

My editor at the Press, Ben Furnish sent me an email saying he’d been contacted by the PEN/Faulkner Prize administrators who wanted my contact information, and soon afterward, I had an email telling me to call the director of the Prize. I called right away and she congratulated me for being a finalist for the award. I’m a low-key person, so I’d make a terrible game show contestant. I don’t whoop and holler. I think I said, “Wow,” but quietly. I don’t think I was able to take it in fully for the first 24 hours or so. I’m still processing the news, which is unbelievably wonderful, the kind of thing I wouldn’t even dare to dream. And when I saw the list of the other finalists, I went into super-fan mode, and I grew excited all over again with the anticipation of meeting these writers and hearing them read at the ceremony in May.

Were you aware that your publisher had submitted your stories for award consideration?

The remarkable Ben Furnish sent me a list of the competitions in which he’d entered the book months ago, so I suppose I had some awareness of this then. But many things happened between that time and now, and I didn’t have this on the tip of my consciousness when I heard the news, adding to my sense of surprise.

What are you most looking forward to about the awards ceremony at the Folger Shakespeare Library on May 8th?

I am looking forward to the reading. I cannot wait to hear Sherman Alexie, Barbara Kingsolver, Lorrie Moore and Colson Whitehead read their work. I have only heard Colson, whom I met through Kevin Young, read, and he is great. I know this will be a reading I will never forget.

What are you working on now?

Now, I’m working on surviving the semester, but I just turned in two manuscripts for publication in 2011. Realm of the Hungry Spirits, a novel, is due out from Hachette/Grand Central in spring of 2011 and a collection of essays titled The Other Latin@ that I coedited with Blas Falconer will be forthcoming from University of Arizona Press in fall of 2011. Next academic year I am on leave and have plans to work on another young adult novel, working title The Vidalia Onion Queen and a collection of linked stories with this working title: La Cariña. This phrase means “The Darling,” and it is an homage to Chekhov’s unforgettable story about a woman who absorbs identity from the various men she marries. While I enjoy writing novels, the short story is my true love and I can’t wait to get begin composing the pieces for this next collection.

For more on the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Prize finalists, click here. And keep your fingers crossed for Lorraine M. López!

Why are they re-making the film that won John Wayne his only Oscar? Were any locals auditioning for the role of 14-year-old Mattie Ross? Had anyone had a sighting of Portis, the novel’s reclusive author, who lives in Little Rock? And why on earth weren’t the Coens shooting the movie in Yell County, Arkansas, where the novel takes place? (Instead it’s being shot in New Mexico, which has high film incentives.)

Hailee Steinfeld

For a while we’ve known that Jeff Bridges will be Rooster Cogburn, the U.S. marshal who journeys with Mattie on the search to find her dad’s killer (played by Josh Brolin). Matt Damon will play Texas Ranger La Boeuf. But yesterday, Variety reported that newcomer Hailee Steinfeld has been cast in the all-important role of Mattie, who narrates the novel. Although the John Wayne version plays up the role of Cogburn, the Coens plan to focus on Mattie’s point-of-view in their adaptation.

There’s little information available about Steinfeld online, such as her age or hometown.

True Grit fans: Can you see her as Mattie?

Sarah and Nathan are just your average American couple: still in love after more than 10 years together, they have a toddler daughter and an infant son; Nathan is a novelist poised for commercial success with the release of his new book, Infidelity. But when Sarah learns that the book isn’t all drawn from Nathan’s imagination, what they thought they knew about their relationship is called into question.

Leah Stewart (Body of a Girl, The Myth of You & Me) is an acute social observer, and her take on this oldest of stories is worth reading. Told from Sarah’s perspective, the novel puts readers in her place and asks them to consider the temptations and trials of a longterm relationship.

“Do you still love me?” I asked, as though I was just now following up on what he’d said as we got in the car. Two hours ago it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to ask this question. Now I heard how tremulous my voice sounded when I did. I stared at his profile. The corners of his mouth turned down, as in a child’s drawing of a sad face.

“Of course I do,” he said, but this time he didn’t sound sure, and I said so. “It’s just . . .” He shot a look at me, gripped the wheel with both hands. “Sometimes, part of me wishes I didn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wish I could say I didn’t love you, or we were unhappy, or I was in love with her. At least then I’d have a reason for doing what I did.”

“Yes,” I said. “That would be much better.” “You’re gazing at me adoringly!” I used to cry, when I caught him looking at me, and he’d deny it, and then I’d insist that he was, that he was freaking me out, and I’d pretend to flee his presence, and he’d chase me and tickle me and fix me with wide eyes, a goofy smile, and say, “I love you, I love you, I love you, you can’t get away.”

“Let me go!” I’d shriek, laughing and squirming. “Let me go!”

“I’m sorry,” he said now. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t really mean any of that. I love you. I just feel so bad.”

I said nothing, though what I wanted to say was, Yes, you love me, you do, and how could you ever for one moment wish that away?

Red Hook Road sounds a little more dramatic than Love, which centered on the not-so-unusual dilemma of a stepmother struggling to accept her role. In an interview with Amazon, Waldman says that Red Hook Road was inspired by a newspaper story—a young couple, killed in a car crash on their way to their wedding reception. On her twitter feed, she describes it more succinctly: “Abt 2 families in Maine, connected & divided by tragedy and hope. Hey, just pulled that outa my butt. Pretty good!”

On Monday, we’re posting the March print edition of BookPage online—but until then, here’s a preview of a few new books I’m particularly excited about. Best of all, each one comes out today! Browse the summaries below, then head to a bookstore or library. Which book will you read first?

John Banville won the Man Booker Prize for his latest novel, The Sea, and today you can read The Infinities—which BookPage columnist Robert Weibezahl describes as “a glimmering world that hovers between the lives of humans and the manipulations of the playful Olympian gods, exploring deep and ageless themes of love, loss and the meaning of time.” If that doesn’t hook you, how about this: Weibezahl calls Banville a “magical writer” with a “superlative gift for limning the essence of our own humanity in all its ungodly imperfection.” Read a full review of The Infinities.

Embezzlement, murder, blackmail, Celtic myth and a mysterious show woman? These elements come together in Venetia Kelly’s Traveling Show, Frank Delaney’s passionate tale of a boy’s coming-of-age in Ireland of 1932. Ben McCarthy must go on a quest to bring his father back from the circus, where he’s escaped to fall in love with Venetia Kelly. Delaney weaves Ben’s personal tale with Irish history—and the result is an “inventive, amazing work” writes Arlene McKanic in BookPage. Read a full review of Venetia Kelly’s Traveling Show. 

Elaine Beale’s Another Life Altogether has been regarded as a debut, although the author did publish a murder mystery in 1997 (now out of print). In any case, I’m glad that Beale is back. Her new novel deals with psychological development, the challenges of fitting in as a teen and a quirky family; it’s a worthy story filled with action and emotional drama. Read a full review of Another Life Altogether.

Any other recent releases you can’t wait to read?

I still think it was silly of Knopf to wait so long to release Hornet (why punish the first, and probably most loyal, fans of the series? not to mention, the below screen cap suggests there were more than a few sales lost to ebooks, the UK edition and illegal downloads) but it has made the release of the finale an anticipated event.

To do our part to fan the flames, here’s an excerpt from the first chapter:

The girl on the guerney could live with a piece of lead in her hip and a piece of lead in her shoulder. But a piece of lead inside her brain was a trauma of a whole different magnitude. He was suddenly aware of the nurse saying something.

“Sorry, I wasn’t listening.”

“It’s her.”

“What do you  mean?”

“It’s Lisbeth Salander. The girl they’ve been hunting for the past few weeks, for the triple murder in Stockholm.”

Jonasson looked again at the unconscious patient’s face. He realized at once that the nurse was right. He and the whole of Sweden had seen Salander’s passport photograph on billboards outside every newspaper kiosk for weeks. And now the murderer herself had been shot, which was surely poetic justice of a sort.

But that was not his concern. His job was to save his patient’s life, irrespective of whether she was a triple murderer or a Nobel Prize winner. Or both.

Though I haven’t read the series, this is an intriguing opening. And speaking of intriguing, the actress who plays Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish films is definitely that. Check out the trailer for The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest below. (We’ll get our own English-language version of the first Salander adventure in 2012.)

Are you counting the days until May 25?

Alexander McCall Smith’s La’s Orchestra Saves the World (December) was one of the first I noticed, followed by the paperback version of Jedediah Berry’s The Manual of Detection (January).

More are on the way this spring: Roddy Doyle’s The Dead Republic (April), the long-awaited final volume of the Henry Smart trilogy that began in 1999 with A Star Called Henry; and Emily Winslow’s The Whole World (June), an anticipated debut that is being compared to Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories.

Tell me about your favorite bicyclist hero/heroine—or, if you can’t think of one, your first bike—in the comments, and you’ll be entered to win a copy of The Manual of Detection. ETA: Contest closed.

What book is your guilty pleasure?