Last Kid News:

Author David Benjamin is in Paris doing a little bit of research and a lot of typing on his memoir, An Apartment in Paris, which recounts—with a wealth of local color and frequent digressions—the agony and ecstasy of buying a garret, almost thirty years ago, in the Latin Quarter.

“I wrote it right after we bought the place,” Benjamin recalls, “and then put away the manuscript. Then, I pretty much forgot about it. Lately, however, I went back—to edit, revise and embellish—under pressure from my wife and from our Paris ‘guardian angel,’ Roberta Beardsley. As I work on it, I’ve gone from reluctance to enthusiasm.” The author, in his alter ego as publisher, has slated the release of An Apartment in Paris on 1 April 2025, the sixth anniversary of the launch of Last Kid Books.

Last Kid Books, by the way, passed a threshold last month, with its 40th literary award (and its 41st and 42nd). The NYC Big Book Awards recognized four of David Benjamin’s LKB titles with five “Distinguished Favorites”, a designation comparable to “Finalist” or Top Three. Benjamin’s Paris-based novel, Bistro Nights was honored in the Literary Fiction genre. His short story anthology, The Melting Grandmother, won in Short Stories. Benjamin’s Brooklyn-based tale of serial murder, The Voice of the Dog, scored in Crime Fiction, and Cheat, fifth in the Jim Otis smalltown crime series, won two NYC Big Book Awards, in Mystery and for its Cover Design, by artist Greg Holfeld and book designer Kristin Mitchell.

Bistro Nights and The Melting Grandmother have now both received four  awards from independent press organizations.

Meanwhile,. Benjamin is pushing hard to get his anthology offbeat Christmas stories—an accumulation that began when he was sixteen—off the press. He has proofed the galleys of Christmas in a Jugular Vein assembled by Ms. Mitchell and all he needs is a book number from the Library of Congress (a process that’s always suspenseful!). So, watch this space.