RHODE ISLAND WINS!!! Providence-based Mary Cappello, author of Night Bloom, Awkward, Called Back and Swallow has been awarded a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction to work on her new book-length essay on “mood.”
Also, Canongate’s Jamie Byng acquired world rights to Pyg, a first novel by Russell Potter, a fellow Providence neighbor. Pyg is a faux memoir based on the true story of Toby, an exceptional 18th century pig in England who escapes the butcher’s knife. Toby packs theaters and concert halls with his ability to count, spell and read the minds of ladies “only with their permission,” Toby’s sensitive and wise nature and his empathy for those around him make him come across as ironically more human than some of the humans he meets; pitched as if Henry Fielding had thought of writing Babe.