Award: October 2009 Archives

The Associated Press reports:

Ten emerging writers, their home countries ranging from Vietnam to the United States, each have received a $50,000 prize.
The Whiting Writers' Awards, given annually for "exceptional talent and promise in early career," were announced Oct. 28. The recipients included fiction writer Vu Tran, born in Vietnam and now living in Las Vegas, and poet Jay Hopler, a native of Puerto Rico who lives in Tampa, Fla.
The other winners were poets Jericho Brown and Joan Kane, playwright Rajiv Joseph, nonfiction authors Michael Meyer and Hugh Raffles, and fiction writers Adam Johnson, Nami Mun and Salvatore Scibona, whose novel "The End" was a National Book Award finalist in 2008.
The awards, presented by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, were founded in 1985. Previous winners include such Pulitzer Prize winners as Jeffrey Eugenides, Michael Cunningham and Jorie Graham.

From the Associated Press:

MADRID -- Spanish writer and journalist Angeles Caso has won the country's most lucrative literary award for a novel about the ordeals of women from poor countries who emigrate in search of a better life.

Just in from the Associated Press:

NEW YORK -- Tycoons, evolution and the environment are among the subjects of this year's National Book Award nominees.

Marcel Theroux's global warming novel "Far North" and T.J. Stiles' "The First Tycoon," a biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt, were some the finalists announced Wednesday. Two books about evolution, including a story for young people about Charles Darwin, were also nominated.

Winners in the four competitive categories of the National Book Awards will be announced at a Nov. 18 ceremony in New York.

From the Associated Press:

STOCKHOLM -- Romanian-born German writer Herta Mueller won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday, honored for work that "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed."

The 56-year-old author, who emigrated to Germany from then-communist Romania in 1987, made her debut in 1982 with a collection of short stories titled "Niederungen," which was promptly censored by the Romanian government. In 1984 an uncensored version was published in Germany and her work depicting life in a small, German-speaking village in Romania was devoured by readers.

That work was followed by "Oppresive Tango" in Romania.

Because of her vocal criticism of Romania's government, and its feared secret police, she and her husband left the country.

The prize includes a 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) prize and will be handed out Dec. 10 in the Swedish capital.

From the Associated Press:

NEW YORK -- Ian Frazier is a funny man. Officially.

The author and frequent New Yorker contributor won the Thurber Prize for American Humor for his lighthearted book on parental guidance, "Lamentations of the Father." Frazier, who in 1997 received the inaugural Thurber award, will receive $5,000, prize organizers said Monday.

Other previous Thurber winners include David Sedaris, Christopher Buckley and Jon Stewart and the co-authors of "America (The Book)."

From the Associated Press:

NEW YORK -- A critical work on black intellectuals and an anthology of the late Chicano poet Jose Antonio Burciaga are among this year's winners of American Book Awards.

The awards, now in their 30th year, are given for outstanding work of multicultural literature and are sponsored by the nonprofit educational organization, the Before Columbus Foundation.

Recipients announced Tuesday included Houston A. Baker's "Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Right Era," "The Last Supper of Chicano Heroes: Selected Works of Jose Antonio Burciaga" and Claire Hope Cummings' "Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds."

Just in from the Associated Press:

LONDON -- A tale of political intrigue set during the reign of King Henry VIII won the prestigious Man Booker prize for fiction Tuesday.

Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall" scooped the 50,000-pound ($80,000) prize. Mantel's novel charts the upheaval caused by the king's desire to marry Anne Boleyn, as seen through the eyes of royal adviser Thomas Cromwell.

Mantel's novel beat stiff competition from a shortlist that included previous Booker winners A.S. Byatt and J.M. Coetzee.

From the Associated Press

STOCKHOLM -- The new frontman of the Nobel literature prize jury believes the secretive panel has been too "Eurocentric" in picking winners and says there are plenty of American writers who would qualify for the award.

Peter Englund's comments Oct. 6 come two days before the prize announcement. They contrast with his predecessor's view that U.S. literature is too insular.

Englund told The Associated Press that because award judges in the Swedish Academy are European they tend to a "European outlook" on literature. Europeans have dominated the literature awards in recent decades and won nine of the last 10.

Englund, who replaced Horace Engdahl as the Swedish Academy's permanent secretary in June, said "I think that is a problem."