2010 Next Generation Indie Book Award Winners Announced
The Independent Book Publishing Professionals Group has named the winners of the 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. The non-profit awards program was created to identify indie books that deserve to reach a wider audience.
Children's Choice Book Award Winners Announced
The Children's Book Council (CBC) in association with Every Child a Reader, Inc. (the CBC Foundation), has announced the winners of the third annual Children's Choice Book Awards. Here is the list of this year's winners.
Author of the Year: James Patterson for Max (A Maximum Ride Novel) (Little, Brown)
Illustrator of the Year: Peter Brown for The Curious Garden (Little, Brown)
Kindergarten to Second Grade Book of the Year: Lulu the Big Little Chick written and illustrated by Paulette Bogan (Bloomsbury USA)
Third Grade to Fourth Grade Book of the Year: Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute written and illustrated by Jarrett J. Krosoczka (Knopf/Random House)
Aravind Ariga's The White Tiger Head Up Longlist for Impac Prize
Aravind Ariga is at the top of the longlist for the Dublin Impac literary prize, which features a cash award of 100,000 euros. Adiga's Booker Prize-winning novel The White Tiger had the most nominations by librarians around the world.
Aravind Adiga's Booker prize-winning novel The White Tiger has emerged as an early frontrunner for the Impac Dublin literary award, but the Indian writer will have to see off the likes of Nobel laureates Jose Saramago and Toni Morrison if he is to take the world's richest -- and most eclectic -- literary prize.
The Impac, which sees librarians around the world nominate their favourite titles for the award, has longlisted 156 books this year, spanning 46 countries and 18 languages. Bestselling English-language writers Sebastian Barry and Joseph O'Neill are jostling with the largest number of books in translation ever nominated for the prize, including works by Icelandic crime novelist Arnaldur Indridason, Chinese author Ma Jian and Serbian surrealist Zoran Zivkovic. Evelio Rosero's Colombian civil war-set The Armies, which won the Independent foreign fiction prize, also makes the running.
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Adiga is the librarians' favourite, gathering nine nominations for The White Tiger, but he is closely followed by Toni Morrison, who picked up eight for A Mercy, the story of a 17th century slave girl bought by an Anglo-Dutch trader. Muriel Barbery's French bestseller The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Barry's Costa-winning The Secret Scripture and Canadian writer Steven Galloway's The Cellist of Sarajevo all won eight nominations as well.
Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence, Peter Carey's His Illegal Self, Philip Roth's Indignation and
Neal Stephenson's Anathem also made the longlist. The shortlist will be announced on April 14, 2010.
The winners of the 2008 National Book Awards have been announced. The New York Timessays the night gave a nod to history. Annette Gordon-Reed's was the nonfiction winner. Her book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family was based on extensive research of three generations of a slave family owned by Thomas Jefferson. Peter Matthiessen won in fiction but his novel, Shadow Country, contained research of a "a 19th century ruthless cane farmer in Florida who was said to be a serial killer."
Here's the list of the winners.
Fiction: Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country (Modern Library)
National Book Awards Finalists Announced
The National Book Award finalists were announced today. The winners will be announced on November 19, 2008. The Fiction Award Finalists are:
Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project (Riverhead)
Rachel Kushner, Telex from Cuba (Scribner)
Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country (Modern Library)
Marilynne Robinson, Home (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Melodrama, murder, suspense and courtroom drama suffuse the book that has been awarded the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction.
Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher beat the favourite for the award -- Patrick French's biography of VS Naipaul -- to the cheque for 30,000 pounds. The winning book presents a detailed account of the famous murder, in 1860, of a three-year-old child of a respectable middle-class family. Saville Kent, the child, disappeared from his bedroom at night and was later found stuffed down a servants' privy in the grounds of the house. As events unfold, suspicions become focused on the family and household servants: was this gruesome murder an inside job?
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Rosie Boycott, who chaired the judging panel, said: "The judges were unanimous: this is one of those great non-fiction books that uses the techniques of fiction to magnificent effect. On first reading, it is an absolute page-turner. Then, when you reread it, you realise how many levels it has, how much it tells you -- about the founding of the police, the Victorian study of physiognomy, the inherent snobbery of the time that meant that the police wouldn't touch anyone from the upper classes, because they 'couldn't' have committed a crime.
Rawi Hage Wins World's Richest Literary Prize
Rawi Hage won
the world's most lucrative literary prize. The $155,000 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award went to Hage's debut novel, De Niro's Game, about two childhood friends who take different paths to survive amid civil war in the Lebanese capital.
Five judges from Ireland, Britain, Spain and the United States selected Hage for the $155,000 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work beat 136 other books from 45 countries, all works published in English in 2006. All the books had been nominated by libraries worldwide.
Hage is the second Canadian to win the award. The first was Alastair Macleod in 2001 for his novel "No Great Mischief."
Hage, 44, fled war-torn Beirut in the early 1980s, studied at the New York Institute of Photography and settled in 1991 in Montreal, where he has built a career as a photographer and essayist.
The judges praised "De Niro's Game" as "an eloquent, forthright and at times beautifully written first novel. Ringing with insight and authenticity, the novel shows how war can envelop lives."
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It was shortlisted in Canada for both a Giller and Governor General's Award.
Hage received the IMPAC prize in a ceremony at Dublin City Hall where he declared himself "a fortunate man."
"After a long journey of war, displacement and separation, I feel that I am one of the few wanderers who is privileged enough to have been rewarded, and for that I am very grateful," he said.
Hage said he sought to follow a tradition of authors "who have chosen the painful and costly portrayal of truth over tribal self-righteousness."
Only one Irish writer made the finalist list: Patrick McCable for his novel, Winterwood. The other finalists were The Attack, by Yasmina Khadra; Let It Be Morning, by Sayed Kashua; The Woman Who Waited, by Andrei Makine; The Sweet & Simple Kind, by Yasmine Gooneratne; Dreams of Speaking, by Gail Jones; and The Speed of Light, by Javier Cercas.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Nominated for Three BAFTAs Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is leading
the BAFTA Nominations.
The fifth film based on J.K. Rowling's novels is in the running for three prizes: best film, video game and the Bafta Kids' Vote, the only award chosen by the public.
In the film category, the boy wizard is up against the animated rodents of "Flushed Away"; "Happy Feet," about a tap-dancing penguin called Mumble and "Bridge to Terabithia," a fantasy adventure featuring a baddie called the Dark Master.
The BBC's long-running series "Byker Grove" was nominated for best drama prize at the British Academy Children's Awards.
The show, set in a Newcastle youth club, ran between 1989 and 2006 and helped launched the careers of Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly.
The best children's TV channel nominees are CBeebies, Nickelodeon UK, Nick Jr UK and Scamp.
The winners will be announced at a central London ceremony hosted by Keith Chegwin on November 25.
Nora Roberts' Angels Fall Named Book of the Year
Nora Roberts'
Angels Fallwon the Book of the Year Award at the 2007 Quill Book Awards.
Nora Roberts' Angels Fall (Putnam) was named Book of the Year by readers (as well as winner in the Romance category) at the 2007 Quill Book Awards, held October 22 in New York City at the spectacular Jazz at Lincoln Center theater. Quills were awarded in 19 categories, plus Book of the Year and Variety’s Blockbuster Book to Film Award, which went to the Bourne Trilogy by Robert Ludlum. The Quills also honored David Halberstam posthumously with a Platinum Quill.
Kicking off the awards ceremony, The Colbert Report's Stephen Colbert lamented the loss of the oral tradition, took a swing at the National Book Awards, and wondered why the Quills were "being televised instead of novelized." Presenters included Joan Allen, a star of the Bourne films and a supporter of First Book, which gives books to children from low-income families, footballer Tiki Barber, actress Brooke Shields, and novelist Mary Higgins Clark. Also on hand was Bourne Ultimatum screenwriter Tony Gilroy, who directed the recently acclaimed film Michael Clayton. With winners named in advance, many more authors were on hand, including Amy Sedaris, who took the Humor category for I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence (Warner), and Laura Lippman, whose What the Dead Know (Morrow) received the Mystery/Suspense/Thriller prize.
Congratulations, Nora! The Quills will be broadcast on NBC on October 27, 2007, at 7 p.m. Eastern time.
National Book Foundation Announces Lifetime Achievement Awards
The National Book Foundation announced that it will present its 2007 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to bestselling novelist Joan Didion, author of The Year of Magical Thinking. The award recognizes her lifetime of work as a novelist and essayist. The Year of Magical Thinking won the National Book Award in 2005.
Terry Gross of NPR's Fresh Air will receive The Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.
Harold Augenbraum, executive director of the Foundation, said, "These two women are icons in the literary world and their contributions are now legendary - Joan Didion as one of the keenest observers and finest prose stylists of our time and Terry Gross as one of the most intelligent voices on the airwaves and one of the few who devotes hundreds of hours a year to talking about books and literature. Both women are fearless in their questioning and their insights on the page and on the air have informed our understanding of America and of America's writers for decades. Our Board of Directors is honored that they will accept these awards and grace our gala with their presence."
The 58th National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner will take place on November 14, 2007, in New York City. Writer and humorist Fran Lebowitz will be the host.
Barnes and Noble Announces Winners of Discover Great New Writers Awards
Barnes & Noble Inc. announced the the winners of the 14th annual Discover Great New Writers Awards for fiction and nonfiction. The short story collection
Brief Encounters with Che Guevara by Ben Fountain (Ecco) won the fiction award. The nonfction award went to The Last Season by Eric Blehm(HarperCollins). Each writer was awarded a cash prize of $10,000, and a full year of additional marketing and advertising support.
Second place was awarded to Turkish writer O. Z. Livaneli's novel, Bliss (St. Martin's Press) for fiction and to Daniel Mendelsohn’s memoir, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (HarperCollins), for nonfiction. Each second place winner received $5,000. Sam Savage's first novel, Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife (Coffee House Press), and Marilyn Johnson's exploration of a literary art form, The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries (HarperCollins), won third place and a $2,500 prize for each.
The judges for the fiction awards were Mohsin Hamid, the author of the novel Moth Smoke, and an upcoming second novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist; Lily King, the author of The English Teacher, whose first novel, The Pleasing Hour, won the Discover Award in 1999; and Marcus Stevens, the author of the novels The Curve of the World and Useful Girl.
Winners of 2006 Borders Original Voices Awards Announced
Borders has announced the winners of the 2006 Borders Original Voices Awards, the retailer's program that spotlights emerging and innovative authors and musicians. The top fiction award went to Kevin Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead (Knopf), which members of the Borders selection committee, called "a powerful first novel. The language was poetic and the intertwining stories were the most lyrical accounts of death ever read." The book, set both on Earth and in "the city" -- a transitory, Earth- like plane --tells the story of what happens to those waiting in "the city" after death and how the afterlives of the dead depend on the memories of those still alive on Earth.
Top honors in teh nonfiction category went to The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl Timothy Egan (Houghton Mifflin). Egan won the National Book Award in November, 2006. Egan interviewed several survivors of the 1935 dust bowl: the book describes the heroism, sacrifice and hardship of their families.
Fancy Nancy by Jane O'Connor (HarperCollins) won in the
children's picture book category. The picture book follows a perky little girl who lives in a very un-fancy world and sets out to teach those around her to be glamorous. The Borders selection committee said that the book is "a cute, playful story with a lot of colorful vocabulary making it fun to read aloud. It's the perfect book for parents and grandparents to read to the aspiring princess in their lives."
Dairy Queen by Catherine Murdock (Houghton Mifflin) won the young adult category.
"We are committed to creating richer, more satisfying lives through knowledge and entertainment. We do this by sharing our passion for books and music with our customers" said Bill Nasshan, senior vice president of merchandising for Borders Group. "The five finalists of the 2006 Original Voices Award exemplify what our corporate office and store employees found to be some of the best new and emerging talent in the publishing and music industry," added Linda Jones, senior vice president of merchandising for Borders Group.
Winners will receive $5,000 from the company for their outstanding achievement in producing creative, original books and music. Congratulations to all the winners!
Costa Coffee Takes Over Whitbread Book Awards Costa Coffee, a UK coffee shop chain, is taking over the Whitbread Book Awards. The awards will now be known as the Costa Book Awards.
This marks the first time that Costa has entered the sponsorship market; and both Costa and the Book Awards are this year celebrating their 35th anniversary.
Created in 1971, the Whitbread Book Awards were established to celebrate the most enjoyable books of the year by writers based in the UK or Ireland, and have successfully developed into one of the foremost and most prestigious literary awards in the UK.
The Costa Book Awards will take place in late January 2007 at a central London location. Costa will continue with the same format as in previous years with five categories: First Novel, Novel, Biography, Children’s Book and Poetry.
The 15 category judges - three judges per category - have been appointed and include author and broadcaster, Kate Adie and author, Sophie Kinsella. Entry forms have this month been distributed via the Booksellers Association who will continue to undertake the administration of the Costa Book Awards with the book trade. Closing date for publishers to submit entries is Wednesday 28th June 2006.
It is good to see that the awards are continuing. The Guardianreports that Costa has placed Costa Book Award logos in 400 coffee shops. The Guardian also says the overall of winner of the Costa Book Award will receive £30,000.
Costa Coffee, a UK coffee shop chain, is taking over the Whitbread Book Awards. The awards will now be known as the 