Inaugural children’s book award from Radical Booksellers alliance

 | Lisa Campbell

A graphic novel about refugees forced to flee their homeland has won the inaugural Little Rebels Children’s Book Award, given by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers.

Azzi In Between by Sarah Garland (Frances Lincoln) was praised by judges for its power and simplicity, as well as tackling a topical and important subject in the contemporary climate.

Fen Coles, director of Letterbox Library, who administered the award, said: “At a time when there are so many damaging myths circulating about refugees and asylum seekers, it is heartening to see a book which tells the truth—and in a way which children can relate to.”

The Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing has also been awarded to a ‘shocking’ account of the working lives of Chinese rural migrants, Scattered Sand: The Story of China’s Rural Migrants by Hsiao-Hung Pai (Verso).

Click here to read the rest of this story

‘Wonderful’ shortlists for Food Writers awards

| By Lisa Campbell

The Guild of Food Writers Awards shortlists include a “wonderful diversity of subject matter” for 2013, the organisers have said.

The annual ceremony awards feature categories such as Cookery Book of the Year, Campaigning and Investigative Food Writing, Cookery Journalist of the Year, Food Blog of the Year and Food Broadcast of the Year. This year’s list includes names like Yotam Ottolenghi, who is up for the cookery journalist of the year award for work published in the Guardian’s Weekend magazine. Also on the list is work such as Consider the Fork: A History of Invention in the Kitchen by Bee Wilson (Particular Books), who is nominated for the Food Book of the Year award.

Click here to read the rest of this story

Folio Prize to allow self-published work

| By  Joshua Farrington

The Folio Prize has confirmed it is to consider self-published entries, a move which has been welcomed by the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi).

Sixty titles on the 80-strong longlist will be put forward by the Folio’s academy, made up of members of the literary community, and it is understood they will be allowed to select self-published works.

The remaining 20 will be called in by judges following publishers writing letters of support for particular titles. Self-published authors will be able to act as publishers and write letters of support for their own titles, which will then be considered to be called in.

Click here to read the rest of this story

Anne Somerset wins Elizabeth Longford Prize

 | By Joshua Farrington

Anne Somerset’s biography Queen Anne has won the 2013 Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography.

The book, published by HarperPress, was described by chair of judges Professor Roy Foster as: “a psychologically subtle and surprisingly vivid portrait of a ruler who has hitherto remained obscure to her biographers”.

Click here to read the rest of this story

Seren title on Ondaatje shortlist

A title from Seren/Poetry Wales Press has been shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize, in the running with Zadie Smith, Philip Hensher and Gavin Francis.

Call mother a lonely field by Liam Carson is shortlisted for the £10,000 prize alongside Zadie Smith’s NW (Hamish Hamilton), Hensher’s Scenes from An Early Life (Fourth Estate) and Francis’ Empire Antartica (Chatto). Completing the shortlist is Patrick Flanery’s Absolution (Atlantic) and Names for the Sea by Sarah Moss (Granta).

Click here to read the rest of this story

Mantel, Tremain, Keneally on Walter Scott shortlist

Hilary Mantel

| By Katie Allen

Novels ranging from Tudor England to the battlefields of the Western Front have been shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction, with Hilary Mantel adding another nomination to her prize haul for Bring Up the Bodies (Fourth Estate)

Mantel won in 2010 for Wolf Hall.

The £25,000 prize is rewarded to a book written in English, with the majority of its setting being at least 60 years ago.

 

Click here to read the rest of this story

Moggach and DeWitt on Wodehouse shortlist

Deborah Moggach

| By Katie Allen

Authors Deborah Moggach and Helen DeWitt are both shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, which has only been won once by a woman in the prize’s 14 years, when Marina Lewycka won for A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian in 2005.

Moggach is shortlisted for Heartbreak Hotel (Chatto) and DeWitt for Lightning Rods (And Other Stories). Previous winners Howard Jacobson and Michael Frayn are also in the running with Zoo Time (Bloomsbury) and Skios (Faber) respectively. England’s Lane by Joseph Connolly (Quercus) completes the list.

Click here to read the rest of this story

Plutocrats wins Lionel Gieber Prize

Chrystia Freeland

|By  Katie Allen

Chrystia Freeland’s Plutocrats has won the 2013 Lionel Gelber Prize.

The $15,000 (£9,900) annual prize celebrates the world’s best non-fiction book in English on foreign affairs that seeks to deepen public debate on significant international issues.

Freeland’s book, published by Penguin and Doubleday Canada, was awarded for its “immediacy and authority about the future”. Chair of judges William Thorsell said: “This year’s shortlist offered a wealth of opportunity to the jury. These are immensely erudite and creative books about where the world has been, and how it is becoming . . .

Click here to read the rest of this story

Tan Twan Eng wins Man Asian Literary Prize

 | By Benedicte Page

Malaysian writer Tan Twan Eng has won the $30,000 Man Asian Literary Prize for his novel The Garden of Evening Mists, which was last year shortlisted for the UK’s Man Booker.

Meanwhile the award organisers have said a new sponsor for the prize will be announced in April, following the withdrawal of Man Group.

The Garden of Evening Mists, set during the aftermath of the Japanese occupation of Malaya, is published in the UK by Myrmidon Books. Myrmidon is collaborating with Canongate on the mass market edition of the book, to be published in May. The author will visit the UK to support publication, including events at Hay on Wye, Asia House and Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights.

Click here to read the rest of this story

Folio to sponsor Literature Prize; stellar Academy revealed

 | By Charlotte Williams

The Folio Society has been announced as sponsor of the Literature Prize, the new award co-founded by Aitken Alexander director Andrew Kidd.

In an announcement at the British Library last night (13th March), organisers revealed the £40,000 prize, which aims to “celebrate the best English-language fiction from around the world”, will now be known as The Folio Prize.

The organisers also revealed a stellar and international list of over 110 authors and critics —including many of the biggest names in books—who have agreed to become members of the Folio Prize Academy, which judges the award.

Ian McEwan, J M Coetzee, Peter Carey, Zadie Smith, Margaret Atwood, John Banville, Philip Pullman and Jeanette Winterson are among them; they are joined by literary editors including Claire Armitstead (the Guardian), Gaby Wood (the Telegraph) and Erica Wagner (the Times), as well as Granta editor John Freeman. The Academy members are listed in full below.

The inaugural award will be presented in March 2014 for books published in the UK between 1st January and 31st December 2013, written originally in English from authors anywhere around the globe, and published in any form or from any genre.

The Academy will choose 60 titles, and then pick an additional 20 books from publisher nominations. The five judges of the prize will be Academy members, and will be drawn by lots in July. The panel must include three members from the UK, and two from outside the UK, and there must be no more than three members of the same gender. Five names will be drawn randomly from the two groups alternately, starting with those from the UK.

The selected judges then choose a shortlist of eight books, which will be announced in February 2014.

Click here to read the rest of this story