Pete Hautman has won the L.A. Times book award's Young Adult Literature prize for "The Big Crunch," his sweet (but not too sweet) tale of two teens in love (but all does not go smoothly).

"The program was entertaining and well-organized, but of course I was sunk deep in my own hopes and fears, wondering if the things that were happening in my chest were signs of an incipient cardiac event," Hautman wrote on his blog. (petehautman. blogspot.com). "When The Big Crunch was announced as the winner, all the tension drained out of me, to be replaced with a shaky, hallucinogenic calm that was equally weird but much more pleasant."

That hallucinogenic calm is something that Hautman -- winner of a National Book Award for "Godless," a Minnesota Book Award and many others -- should be used to by now.

Also ...

• Ray Gonzalez's 12th book of poetry, "Beautiful Wall," will be published in 2014 by BOA Editions. Several poems are forthcoming in American Poetry Review. Gonzalez teaches at the University of Minnesota.

• "Small Mercies: Glimpses of God in Everyday Life," by Nancy Jo Sullivan, has been published by Loyola Press of Chicago. Sullivan's work has appeared in Reader's Digest and Guideposts. She lives in St. Paul.

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Pete Hautman

• "The Long-Shining Waters," Danielle Sosin's novel about three families on Lake Superior, is out in paperback. The book won Milkweed Editions' national fiction prize and was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award. Sosin will read at 7 p.m. Thursday at Common Good Books, 38 S. Snelling Av., St. Paul, and at 7 p.m. May 17 at Open Book, 1011 Washington Av. S., Mpls.

• "What Did You Say? An Unexpected Journey Into the World of Hearing Loss," by Monique E. Hammond of Minneapolis, has been published by Two Harbors Press.

• A new, updated edition of "Exploring the Twin Cities With Children," by Elizabeth S. French, has been published by Nodin Press. Listed alphabetically, the book includes parks and libraries, museums and farms, zoos and theaters.

• "The Spoonriver Cookbook," by Brenda Langton and Margaret Stuart, has been published by the University of Minnesota Press. Langton and Stuart are also co-authors of "The Cafe Brenda Cookbook." Langton is a longtime Twin Cities restaurateur and the owner of Spoonriver Cafe along the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. They'll be at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska at 7 p.m. Thursday; at Magers & Quinn in Minneapolis at 7:30 p.m. May 16; and at the Mill City Museum, 704 S. 2nd St., Mpls, at 7 p.m. June 7.