Graham first US female to scoop Forward Prize

 | By Charlotte Williams

American poet Jorie Graham has won the £10,000 Forward Prize for Best Collection, for
P L A C E (Carcanet).

Graham is the first female to receive the prize since Kathleen Jamie in 2004, and is the first American woman ever to scoop the poetry award. The judges described her collection as “startling, powerful, never predictable” and “a joy” to read.

Meanwhile, Sam Riviere has won the £5,000 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection for 81 Austerities (Faber & Faber), with Denise Riley winning the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in memory of Michael Donaghy, worth £1,000, for “A Part Song” (London Review of Books), a meditation on the loss of her son.

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Costa launches story prize

 | By Charlotte Williams

Costa has launched a new award for a single, previously unpublished short story, with the winner to receive £3,500.

The Costa Short Story Award will run in association with the Costa Book Awards but will be judged independently of the main five-category system, with a separate judging panel to select a shortlist of six entries, unveiled in November. The six shortlisted stories will then be open to an online public vote, with the winner to be announced at the Costa Book Awards ceremony on 29th January 2013. Two runners-up will each receive £750.

The judges for the inaugural year of the award are Richard Beard, director of the National Academy of Writing; Woman & Home books editor and novelist, Fanny Blake; writer Victoria Hislop; actor, writer and musician Gary Kemp, and William Morris Endeavor agent Simon Trewin. All entries will be judged without the identity of the author being available to the judges.

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Winners of the 2012 Indies Choice and E.B. White Read-Aloud Awards Announced

A record-breaking number of independent booksellers nationwide cast their ballots in March, and today the American Booksellers Association announces the winners of the 2012 Indies Choice Book Awards and the E.B. White Read-Aloud Awards.

“After a month of voting by the owners and staff at independent bookstores across the country, we have an outstanding list of winners that reflects the types of books independent bookstores champion best,” said ABA CEO Oren Teicher. “We look forward to saluting the winners and honor recipients at the Celebration of Bookselling Author Awards Luncheon on June 5 at BEA.”

The 2012 Indies Choice Book Award winners, reflecting the spirit of independent bookstores nationwide, are:

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Sceptre Prize shortlist revealed

By Charlotte Williams

The story of a college dropout, a dark and comic novel about drug addiction, and the story of a passionate affair between two artists are the plots which have made the shortlist for this year’s £1,500 Sceptre Prize for emerging Scottish writers.

The prize is run jointly by the University of Glasgow and Hodder imprint Sceptre, and all students from the University’s Edwin Morgan Centre for creative writing who achieve Distinctions in their final projects are eligible to submit 5,000 to 10,000 words of a novel or novel in progress to the prize.

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2011 PEN Literary Awards Winners

By Gabe Habash

The PEN American Center announced the winners of this year’s PEN Awards, the 89th the organization has handed out. Of the 17 award categories, three are offered for the first time and one–the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay–returns after a five-year hiatus.

 

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The Nielsen Booksellers’ Choice Award 2010/2011 Shortlist

The 2010/2011 Nielsen Booksellers’ Choice Award shortlist has been announced.

The award, which is accompanied by a cheque for R10 000, recognises the home-grown title that SA booksellers large and small took the most pleasure – and profit – in reading and selling last year.

Books LIVE is delighted to see three of our members on the list: Alex Smith, Cynthia Jele and Lauren Beukes are joined by Alexander Parker, Zapiro, Derryn Campbell and Evita Bezuidenhout. Jele and Beukes, of course, have already had, oh, a smidgen of success with their 2010 novels this year (cf the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, M Net Film Award and a little something-something called the Arthur C Clarke Award).

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Trade gears up for industry awards

 | Graeme Neill

The starting gun has been fired for the Bookseller Industry Awards, which this year have been expanded with two new categories celebrating public libraries and children’s publishing.

The awards, which run  on 16th May during the Book Industry Conference, will laud the best of publishing and retail with seven awards for each sector and three awards that apply to the trade in general. They will be presented at a black-tie dinner at London’s Park Lane Hilton.   …read more

FutureBook ‘digital innovation’ awards open for entries

Entry is now open for The Bookseller’s FutureBook ‘digital innovation’ awards, the first of their kind to recognise how the trade is embracing the future with new products, new ways of working, and new marketing strategies.

There are seven categories in total, from ‘best app/enhanced e-book’ to ‘most inspiring digital person’ and entry is free. Entries can be submitted via an online form available at www.eventsforce.net/futurebookawards. The awards were first announced in November at the FutureBook Conference, the industry-leading digital conference….read more

Igloos and Aliens on Blue Peter shortlists

Igloos, aliens and a teenage detective novel all feature on this year’s Blue Peter Book Awards shortlist, announced yesterday (7th December).

Chris Riddell, Andy Stanton and Philip Reeve are on the shortlists for the awards, run in conjunction with Booktrust and now in their 11th year….read more

Koliadina Wins Russian Booker

The Flower Cross, a novel written in old Russian language by Elena Koliadina–which was published exclusively online–has won the 19th Russian Booker Prize and 600,000 rubles (about $19,200) in prize money. Russia’s biggest publisher, Publisher AST, will publish a print edition of the book this month….read more