Between the Covers

Man Booker Prize shortlist announced

Six finalists have emerged from the Man Booker Prize long list, and to no one's surprise Peter Carey is among them. Carey is one of two authors to have won two Bookers (for Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang) and would probably get a nomination for his grocery lists, if only the Booker judges could get hold of them. He's nominated this time for Parrot and Olivier in America, which Herald reviewer Ellen Kanner called "as big and bold as the country itself."

The other finalists:

Emma Donaghue, Room

Damon Galgut, In a Strange Room

Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question

Andrea Levy, The Long Song

Tom McCarthy, C 

The winner gets $50,000 and will be announced on Oct. 12.

Rona Jaffe Foundation awards announced

The 2010 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Awards have been announced, honoring six women who "demonstrate excellence and promise in the early stages of their careers."

This year's winners are Hannah Dela Cruz Abrahms (nonfiction); Rachel Aviv (nonfiction); Sara Elizabeth Johnson (poetry); Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich (nonfiction); Laura Newbern (poetry); Tiphanie Yanique (fiction). Two of the writers have already published works: Nebern has published the poetry collection Love and the Eye, and Yanique is the author of How to Escape from a Leper Colony: Novella and Short Stories.

The awards, $25,000 each, will be presented on Sept. 23. 

Dayton Literary Peace Prize finalists

Here are the finalists for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, which seeks to reward literature that - not surprisingly - promotes peace:

FICTION

A Postcard from the Volcano, Lucy Beckett

A Good Fall, Ha Jin

Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese

The Book of Night Women, Marlon James

The Calligrapher's Daughter, Eugenia Kim

The Thing Around Your Neck, Chimamanda Adiche

NONFICTION

Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty, Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman

In the Valley of the Mist, Justine Hardy

Stones Into Schools, Greg Mortenson

Tears in the Darkness, Michael and Elizabeth Norman

The Education of a British-Protected Child, Chinua Achebe

Zeitoun, Dave Eggers

Click here to read more about these books. The winners will be announced on Sept. 22 and will receive an $10,000 honorarium. The runners-up in each category are awarded $1,000.

World Fantasy Awards nominees

The nominees for the 2009 World Fantasy Awards have been announced; winners will be named Oct. 29-31 in Columbus, Ohio.

For best novel:

Blood of Ambrose, James Enge (Pyr)

The Red Tree, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Roc)

The City & The City, China Miéville (Macmillan UK/ Del Rey)

Finch, Jeff VanderMeer (Underland)

In Great Waters, Kit Whitfield (Jonathan Cape UK/Del Rey)

Click here to see a complete list in other categories, including novella, short story and anthology.

Rick Atkinson wins military writing award

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian Rick Atkinson has been awarded the 2010 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.

The prize comes with prestige - and an honorarium of $100,000.

Atkinson won Pultizers for his work as a journalist for The Washington Post and for his book An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, the first in his "Liberation" trilogy charting the course of World War II. The second is The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944; he's working on the third now.

Amazon Breakthrough Novel winners announced

Amazon and Penguin have announced the winners of the Breakthrough Novel award (a $15,000 publishing contract from Penguin).

For the first time, there were two awards given: the general fiction winner was Patricia McArdle's Farishta, about a female American diplomat in remote northern Afghanistan. The novel will be published on August 1. Click here to read an excerpt.

The young adult novel winner was Amy Ackley's Sign Language, about a young girl coping with her father's cancer. It's due out August 18. Click here to read an excerpt.

Mary Robison wins Rea Award

Mary Robison joins some fine company - Eudora Welty, Amy Hempel, John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates - by winning the Rea Award for the Short Story. The 61-year-old author of books including Days, Believe Them, Why Did I Ever and most recently the novel One D.O.A., One on the Way - which was chosen for Oprah's Book Club in 2009 - will receive $30,000.

Judges Hempel, Andrea Barrett and Jayne Anne Phillips applauded Robison's stories for "their lean, cool ferocity and their wry takes on people in pivotal moments.''

Robison now teaches at the University of Florida. And so we say: Go, Gator.

Orange Prize nominees include Moore, Kingsolver, Mantel

Here is the shortlist for the prestigious Orange Prize for fiction, which honors female writers of any nationality for the best full-length novel written in English:

The Very Thought of You, Rosie Alison

The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver

Black Water Rising, Attica Locke

Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (of course - it's already won the National Book Critic Circle Award and Man Booker Prize)

A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore (if you read this blog, you know I'd love this one to win)

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle, Monique Roffey

Last year's winner was Marilynne Robinson for Home, her sequel of sorts to the breathtaking Gilead.

A side note worth checking out: On his Open Page blog, Chauncey Mabe wonders if it's time to get rid of an award solely designated for female writers, simply because women make up most of the general reading public. Let him know what you think.

2010 Pulitzer Prizes in literature announced

Here are the winners in literature (we know there are other winners, of course, but this is a books blog, after all). I confess freely I have read none of them:

Fiction: Tinkers, Paul Harding

Biography: The Last Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, T.J. Stiles

General nonfiction: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy, David E. Hoffman

History: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, Liaquat Ahamed

Poetry: Versed, Rae Armantrout

Click here for a full list of winners.

Audiobook of the Year nominees announced

The Audio Publishers Association has announced its nominees for the top award at the 2010 Audies:

For Audiobook of the Year:

Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales, with a cast that includes Samuel L. Jackson, Helen Mirren, Don Cheadle and Alan Rickman, an introduction by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and directed by Alfre Woodard. Everyone donated their time on this project, so 100 percent of the proceeds from sale benefit African children with HIV/AIDS.

The Time of My Life, Patrick Swayze. The book was the late actor's final performance.

The Word of Promise Audio Bible, narrated by Michael York, with a cast of more than 600.

The winner will be announced May 25.