Tag: Awards (21-30 of 51)

Mar 9 2012 07:34 AM ET

National Book Critics Circle fiction prize goes to Edith Pearlman

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binocular-vision

Short story author Edith Pearlman took the big fiction prize at the National Book Critics Circle awards last night for her book Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories.

The NBCC awards are among the most prestigious literary honors. Last year, Jennifer Egan won the award for A Visit from the Goon Squad before going on to win the Pulitzer.

Book awards, unlike film awards, can be wildly unpredictable and frequently go in favor of the author with the least buzz — in November, the National Book Award for fiction went to Jesmyn Ward for Salvage the Bones, arguably the least known of the nominated titles. (Binocular Vision was also shortlisted for the NBA). I was predicting that the NBCC would go to Teju Cole, a young, New Yorker-anointed author who wrote about a Nigerian immigrant in Open City. But Pearlman’s meticulously crafted sentences dazzled critics when Binocular Vision was released last year with little fanfare from Lookout Books, an imprint of the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

See below for a full list of finalists and winners:

READ FULL STORY »

Jan 23 2012 12:03 PM ET

National Book Critics Circle Award finalists announced

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Jeffrey-Eugenides

Image Credit: Ricardo Barros

The National Book Critics Circle announced the nominees for its 2011 book awards over the weekend, and there were a few surprises. Critical darlings and major 2011 breakouts like Chad Harbach, Téa Obreht, and Karen Russell were not named as finalists in the fiction category. Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot, which wasn’t a National Book Award finalist and didn’t make The New York Times‘ 10 Best Books of 2011 list, is now the NBCC’s headline nominee. But the dark horse to win fiction might just be Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta, whose rock-tinged novel calls to mind the very different but similarly hip A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, last year’s NBCC winner who went on to win the Pulitzer.

See below for a full list of nominees: READ FULL STORY »

Dec 6 2011 05:00 AM ET

Goodreads users select the best books of 2011

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Goodreads, a social network of sorts for readers, has announced its best books of the year according to a poll opened up to more than 6.5 million users. More than pretty much any other literary award, the Goodreads Choice Awards could be considered the People’s Choice Awards of books, since it’s a list decided by user recommendations and votes rather than critical reviews. Think of the books below as strong recommendations from a whole lot of your reader friends: READ FULL STORY »

Nov 18 2011 03:04 PM ET

Jesmyn Ward on winning the National Book Award -- plus, she takes the EW Book Quiz!

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Jesmyn-Ward

On Wednesday night, Jesmyn Ward joined the likes of William Faulkner and Jonathan Franzen when she won the National Book Award for fiction. Her novel, Salvage the Bones, is a searing portrait of a poor African American family living in coastal Mississippi during Hurricane Katrina. Ward took a moment to talk to EW about her big win and share some of her favorite books that inspire her as a writer.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Did any part of you think you would win?
JESMYN WARD: Not at all. I did not. [Laughs] You know, I’d written an acceptance speech just in case, because I figured I had a 20 percent chance of winning, but I did not expect to win. Actually, as they were announcing the winners in each category on Wednesday night, I just kept telling myself to breathe. I was mentally preparing myself to smile and clap and be happy for whoever won, and I just knew that was not going to be me. When they read my name aloud, I don’t think it registered until my publicist grabbed me by the shoulders, said my name very loudly, and shook me. That’s when it hit me that I’d actually won. READ FULL STORY »

Nov 17 2011 12:47 AM ET

National Book Awards: Jesmyn Ward wins fiction prize

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Despite a major snafu last month, the 62nd National Book Awards named its winners as planned at a ceremony in New York City on Wednesday night. Jesmyn Ward won the fiction prize for her critically lauded but under-the-radar Salvage the Bones, a fierce, lyrical novel set against the tragic backdrop of Hurricane Katrina. The nonfiction honor went to Stephen Greenblatt for The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, and Nikki Finney picked up the poetry prize for Head Off & Split.

In perhaps the most fraught category this year — due to the brouhaha surrounding Lauren Myracle’s mistaken and eventually rescinded nomination — Thanhha Lai beat out the other finalists for the Young People’s literature award. Her novel centers on 10-year-old Ha, a girl whose life is forever changed when the Vietnam War ravages her hometown.

See below for a full list of winners and finalists: READ FULL STORY »

Oct 20 2011 01:30 PM ET

Spoof of the National Book Award snafu -- VIDEO

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The National Book Awards nomination debacle — which began when the National Book Foundation mistakenly named Shine by Lauren Myracle as a contender for the young adult category instead of Chime by Franny Billingsley — is so ridiculous that it naturally invites parody. This video, animated in the text-to-voice style of the Xtranormal series of GEICO ads, spoofs the incident pretty much by recounting what actually happened. See the video below!

READ FULL STORY »

Oct 18 2011 06:08 PM ET

Britain's Man Booker Prize goes to Julian Barnes

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Julian-Barnes

Image Credit: Ellen Warner

English author Julian Barnes won this year’s Man Booker Prize, Britain’s most prestigious literary award. (At $80,000, it’s also one of the most lucrative for a single book). The 65-year-old won for his brief, but concentrated, novel The Sense of an Ending, a story about a contented, middle-aged man whose past comes back to haunt him in surprising ways.

Stella Rimington, who headed the panel of judges this year, came under criticism recently for supposedly “dumbing down” the awards when she stated that the judges were looking to honor “readable” books: “We were looking for enjoyable books. I think they are readable books,” she said. “We wanted people to buy these books and read them. Not buy them and admire them.”

Barnes himself has criticized the Prize in the past, calling it “posh bingo” and accusing judges of being “inflated by their brief celebrity.”

The U.S. release of the book was fast-tracked from Jan. 2012 to Oct. 11 of this year in anticipation of the announcement of the award, which Barnes was widely favored to win.

Read more:
EW’s review of ‘The Sense of an Ending’
Lauren Myracle’s National Book Award nomination withdrawn — Myracle reacts on Twitter
National Book Awards finalists announced — Tea Obreht reacts to her nomination
On the Books Sept. 12: Knopf to fast-track publication of Julian Barnes’ novel

Oct 17 2011 12:51 PM ET

Lauren Myracle's National Book Award nomination withdrawn -- Myracle reacts on Twitter

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shine

In a truly embarrassing snafu, the National Book Foundation admitted that it incorrectly named Shine, the controversial novel by popular young adult author Lauren Myracle, as a nominee in the Young People’s Literature category last week. The debacle began on Wednesday when the NBF accidentally listed Shine instead of Chime by Franny Billingsley as a nominee. Initially, the list of nominees grew to six to include both Shine and Chime, but on Friday, Myracle was asked to officially withdraw from the running to preserve the “integrity” of the awards and the judges’ decisions. The NBF has agreed to donate $5,000 to the Matthew Shepard Foundation in recognition of their mistake. (The plot of Shine centers on a gay teen who falls victim to a heinous hate crime.) READ FULL STORY »

Oct 12 2011 02:06 PM ET

National Book Awards finalists announced -- Tea Obreht reacts to her nomination

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Tea_Obreh

Image Credit: Sang Tan/AP Images

The finalists for the National Book Awards were named today in Portland, Oregon. The list includes 20 authors in four categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people’s literature. In the fiction category, books about war and ones with an international bent reigned supreme. Not surprisingly, 26-year-old wunderkind Téa Obreht received a nod for her highly praised debut The Tiger’s Wife. EW was the first to reach her for comment soon after the announcement: “I am so thrilled and thankful for this honor. I was driving when I heard the news, and it was very difficult to stay in a straight line. I can’t wait for November and the chance to meet the other finalists.”

A bit more surprisingly, the most hyped literary novel of the year, Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding, was not listed, and neither was Pulitzer winner Jeffrey Eugenides’ first novel in nearly a decade, The Marriage Plot. Instead, rounding out the fiction category are great but somewhat lesser known books by Andrew Krivak, Julie Otsuka, Edith Pearlman, and Jesmyn Ward.

Unlike fiction, the poetry category is populated mostly by established names like Adrienne Rich. Manning Marable, who died just before the release of Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, received a nonfiction nomination. For young adult titles, Lauren Myracle was recognized for the rather controversial Shine.

The winners of the National Book Awards will be announced in Manhattan on Nov. 16 in a ceremony hosted by actor John Lithgow, who is also an author.

See the full list of the nominated authors and their works below: READ FULL STORY »

Oct 6 2011 07:27 AM ET

Nobel Prize for literature does not go to Bob Dylan -- Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer wins

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Despite wild rumors that Bob Dylan was the favorite to win, the Swedish Academy awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize for literature to one of their own, surrealist poet Tomas Tranströmer, who has been a long-time favorite to win the $1.5 million honor. The judges praised Tranströmer’s work for its “condensed translucent images” which give readers “fresh access to reality.” Born in Stockholm in 1931, he published his first poetry collection, 17 Dikter (“17 Poems”) while still in college at the University of Stockholm. His collections, which explore his native country and other regions of the world, include Hemligheter på vägen (1958), Klangar och spår (1966), and Östersjöar (1974).

The Guardian notes that Tranströmer is the eighth European to be awarded the Nobel, the world’s most prestigious literary honor, in the past ten years.

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