Man Booker Prize Shortlist

The shortlist has been announced for this year's Man Booker Prize. The winner will be announced in London October 18.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman
Snowdrops by A.D. Miller

2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalists

Finalists have been announced for this year's Dayton Literary Peace Prize. The award is given annually to promote the power of literature to promote peace.Winners will be announced November 13th in Dayton, Ohio.

This year's finalists are...

Fiction
The Surrendered by Chang-rae Lee (Riverhead)
How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu (Riverhead)
Beneath the Lion's Gaze by Maaza Mengiste (Norton)
The Gendarme by Mark Mustain (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam)
Kapitoil by Teddy Wayne (HarperCollins)

Nonfiction
Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 by Kai Bird (Scribner)
Little Princes by Conor Grennan (HarperCollins)
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House)
For Us Surrender is Out of the Question by Mac McClelland (Soft Skull Press)
In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance by Wilbert Rideau (Knopf)
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House)

PEN Awards

PEN Award winners were announced today. New to this year's award categories: PEN Emerging Writers Award, the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, and the PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing. Congratulations to all winners.

2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction

The longlist for this year's Man Booker Prize for Fiction was announced today. The list includes 4 first-time novelists (Yvvette Edwards, A.D. Miller, Patrick McGuinness, and Stephen Kelman), as well as a previous winner (Alan Hollinghurst, 2004), two authors previously shortlisted (Julian Barnes and Sebastian Barry), and one author (Carol Birch) longlisted in 2003.
The list also includes books not currently available in the U.S. These titles are noted on our list with an asterick (*).

Comic Industry Awards and Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

This weekend's Comic-Con celebrated winners of the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards. Joe Hill was awarded Best Writer for Lock and Key (IDW). Best Writer/Artist went to Darwyn Cook and Richard Star for Parker: The Outfit (IDW). Best Comic-Related Book was awarded to 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking by Paul Levitz (Taschen).

What is the worst sentence of 2011? The winner (or loser?) has been chosen!

Bridget Jones, No Dark Tower, and the Silver Gavel Award

Helen Fielding's bestseller Bridget Jones's Diary has already become a popular film. Now it's about to hit the stage. A musical version of the book is expected to open in London's West End some time in 2012. British singer/songwriter Lily Allen is reportedly penning a dozen songs for the venture.

National Book Award Winners

Earlier this week, we offered a list of the Man Booker Prize winners. Today we're taking a peek at the past winners of the National Book Award for Fiction. This award is given every November by the Association of American Publishers. Years not listed indicate years where no award was given.

Man Booker Prize

Last week, we offered a list of Nobel Prize winners. This week, let's take a look at Man Booker Prize Winners. This prize is awarded every October for the best English-language novel by a citizen of the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth, Ireland, Pakistan, or South Africa.

Looking for a Classic?

Summer can be a great time to get caught up on your reading. But where to start? For some, it may be those latest summer blockbusters (check out our summer catalog for those). For others, it's a great classic. For the next few weeks, we'll post lists of winners for some of the major literary awards. Let's start with the Nobel Prize for Fiction.

Goethe Medal and Pritzker Winners Announced

John le Carre has been named as one of this year's winners for the Goethe Medal in Germany. The award is given for "outstanding service for the German language and international cultural dialogue."

The 2011 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing has been awarded to Carlo D'Este. D'Este's works on World War II include biographies as well as titles such as Decision in Normandy and Bitter Victory.

Literary News: Lawsuits, Insults, and More

Literary News Today....

*A second lawsuit was filed last week against Greg Mortenson amid the controversy surrounding allegations that his bestselling memoirs Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools are both full of false claims and inaccuracies. This lawsuit also names Mortenson's co-author, David Oliver Relin, and his publisher, Penguin. Mortenson has been under fire since a 60 Minutes episode made its allegations in April and was quickly followed by a lengthy expose article by respected journalist Jon Krakauer. A full article on the newest lawsuit can be found here.

*They say the pen is mightier than the sword. Check out Flavorwire's 30 Harshest Author-on-Author Insults in History. They've got everyone from Mark Twain to Virginia Woolf to William Faulkner to Vladmir Nabokov all weighing in on their contemporaries and predecessors.

*Head over to our Book into Movie News Page for the latest on casting for Peter Jackson's film The Hobbit.

*The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction has been awarded to Andrea Levy for her novel The Long Song. Levy's novel is set on a sugar plantation in Jamaica in the 1830s. The Washington Post has called Levy "one of the best historical novelists of her generation." The book was a finalist for the 2010 Man Booker Prize as well as a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year.

BBC Samuel Johnson Prize Shortlist Announced

The BBC Samuel Johnson Prize Shortlist has been announced. The winner will be announced July 6.

This year's nominees....

Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikotter
Caravaggio by Andrew Graham Dixon
Liberty's Exiles by Maya Jasanoff
The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley
Bismark: A Life by Jonathan Steinberg
Reprobates by John Stubbs

2011 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards

Winners have been announced for this year's 2011 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards. The awards are given for excellence in children's and young adult literature.

Fiction

Blink and Caution by Tim Wynne-Jones (Candlewick)

Nonfiction

The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism, and Treachery by Steve Sheinkin (Flash Point/Roaring Brook)

Picture Book

Pocketful of Poesies: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes by Sally Mavor (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Ben Franklin Awards, Lambda Awards, PEN/Malmud Award, Arab American Award Winners

Several literary award winners and nominees have been announced lately.

Keep reading for the latest on the Benjamin Franklin winners, Lambda Literary Award winners, the 2011 PEN/Malmud Award, and the 2011 Arab American Book Awards.

2011 Thriller Awards

Nominees have been announced for the 2011 Thriller Awards. The awards, given by the International Thriller Writers, will be handed out next month at the 2011 ThrillerFest.

2011 Thrillmaster Award: R.L. Stine

2011 Silver Bullet Award: Karin Slaughter

2011 True Thrill Award: Joe McGinniss

Orange Prize for Fiction and Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism

Orange Prize for Fiction

In a surprising win, this year's Orange Prize for Fiction went to twenty-five year old Tea Obreht for her debut novel The Tiger's Wife. Obreht is the youngest winner in the award's sixteen-year history. Other finalists for the award were: Emma Donoghue for Room, Nicole Krauss for Great House, Kathleen Winter for Annabel, and Emma Henderson for Grace Williams Says It Loud.


Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism
Out of 75 nominees, five finalists have been announced for this year's Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.

Indie Booksellers Choice Awards, Ondaatje Prize

Winners were announced Monday for the 1st Annual Indie Booksellers Choice Awards.
The winners are:

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade Books)

The Instructions by Adam Levin (McSweeney's)

The Singer's Gun by Emily St. John Mandel (Unbridled)

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes (Grove/Atlantic)
Wingshooters by Nina Revoyr (Akashic)

Also just announced: The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal has been awarded the 2011 Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize. The award is given "for a distinguished work of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, evoking the spirit of a place."

The shortlist for the prize included:

The Butterfly Isles by Patrick Barkham (Granta)

In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut (Atlantic Books)

Saraswati Park by Anjali Joseph (Fourth Estate)

Landed by Tim Pears (Heinemann)

Red Plenty by Francis Spufford (Faber)

Cinna is Cast! And the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize is Awarded

Fans can finally put a face to the role of Cinna. One of the most pivotal roles in the series, and most anticipated in the film, has been cast. Lenny Kravitz has joined the cast as Katniss's beloved stylist. The news was announced last night and has been met with mixed reactions from the fans. What do you think?

Also recently announced, this year's Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction has been awarded to Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart. This is the first time that an American has won the traditionally British Award.

2011 Nebula Winners

Winners have been announced for the 2011 Nebula Awards. The awards are given each year for works of Science fiction, fantasy, or related fiction genre originaly published in English in the United States.

2011 Nebula Winners

Novel: Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis (Spectra)

Novella: The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen's Room by Rachel Swirksy (Subterranean Summer '10)

Novellette: That Leviathan Whom Thou Hast Made by Eric James Stone (Analog 9/10)

Short Story (tie): "Ponies" by Kij Johnson (Tor.com, 1/17/10)
"How Interesting: A Tiny Man" by Harlan Ellison (Realms of Fantasy, 2/10)

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation: Inception

Andre Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy Book: I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett (Gollancz; Harper)

Congratulations to all the winners and nominees.

Man Booker International Prize

Philip Roth has been announced as the winner of this year's Man Booker International Prize. The award is given every two years to one living author for his or her full body of work. A formal dinner in Roth's honor will be held June 28 in London. In his acceptance, Roth said, "I hope the prize will bring me to the attention of readers around the world who are not familiar with my work. This is a great honor and I'm delighted to receive it."