![]() |
||
|
Receive mediabistro.com's Daily GalleyCat Feed via email
AwardsTuesday May 06, 2008
PS Publishing, Tor, Take Top Finalist Spots in Inaugural Year of The Shirley Jackson Awards
The Shirley Jackson Awards finalists have just been announced and PS Publishing and Tor take top spots with four nominations each. UPDATE: If you count Joe Hill's story from Postscripts magazine, PS Publishing ends up with five noms. The awards, established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic will be presented on Sunday, July 20th 2008, at Readercon 19, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts. In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson's writing, and with permission of the author's estate, The Shirley Jackson Awards were created by a group of like-minded individuals, however who those individuals are is being kept mum by awards administrator JoAnn F. Cox. As for why we need another award, I found some answers on the Shirley Jackson Award Blog: Over the last few years, dark fiction has returned, and is even popping up on the best-seller lists. Big publishers are paying attention, and acquiring titles they wouldn't have touched with ten-foot poles in the 90s and early 00's. Dark fiction is getting serious critical attention. The New York Times' Book Review initiated a semi-annual column devoted to horror. So, now seemed like a good time to start an award honoring those works of fiction that would likely be overlooked by Booker Awards and Pen-Faulkner Awards as well as Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, but whose merit, often brilliance, is undeniable. Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) wrote such classic novels as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem has called Jackson "one of this century's most luminous and strange American writers." The nominees for the 2007 Shirley Jackson Awards are listed after the jump. Friday May 02, 2008
Scene @ The Edgars Pre-Banquet Reception![]() Last night, the Mystery Writers of America threw their annual banquet to celebrate the presentation of the Edgars at the Grand Hyatt, with an hour or so of cocktails and mingling outside the grand ballroom beforehand. That's where four of the five nominees in the best novel category—Ken Bruen, John Hart, Michael Chabon, and Reed Farrel Coleman—got together for a friendly group shot. (The fifth nominee, Benjamin Black, was not in attendance.) I ran into Lee Goldberg, the chair of the MWA awards committee, just before snapping this pic, and he told me he knew who all the winners were, and that there'd be plenty to get people talking as the results were announced. Did that mean, I wondered, that Chabon was going to snag an Edgar to go along with last week's Nebula? "I can't tell you that," he said, laughing as he made his way back into the crowd. Ultimately, the prize went to Hart's Down River; see the full list of winners. (I was glad Hart and I got to meet in person before the banquet, two years after I interviewed him over the phone for Publisher's Weekly. ) Taylor Branch to Get Special Literary Peace Prize; Other Nominees Still Welcome
Nominations are still open for the regular $10,000 prizes in both the fiction and nonfiction categories, but only until tomorrow, so start that ball rolling now! Once all the nominees are in, a panel of judges will select the winning books for a ceremony in September, which is also when Branch will formally receive his prize. Thursday May 01, 2008
Atlanta Still Loves BooksWhile the AJC might have gotten rid of Theresa Weaver, Atlanta hasn't given up on books and TV is picking up the slack the paper let out. Karen White's new book, The Memory of Water, is the book club pick selection for NBC affiliate 11 Alive's Atlanta & Company. Presented in conjunction with Borders Books & Music, the club selection is featured throughout the month in all Atlanta area Borders stores. Capping the shared month of reading, White will appear on Atlanta & Company to talk about The Memory of Water, with host Holly Firfer on Wednesday, May 28th. Now that's market saturation, especially when Weaver's review of the book is scheduled for the May issue of Atlanta Magazine. Wednesday Apr 30, 2008
And the Lifetime Achievement Award goes to... Peter Lovesey
I had the pleasure of attending the Agatha Awards Banquet for Malice Domestic XX on Saturday, alongside Soho's Marketing Director, Ailen Lujo. Despite the fact that the organizers had forgotten to assign Ailen and I seats, all worked out for the best. We found ourselves at table 44, alongside Jim Huang - owner of The Mystery Bookshop in Carmel, IN and a great Soho supporter. Later on, Margaret Maron - author of the Deborah Knott mystery series - and friends dropped in to occupy the empty seats. I had the pleasure of chatting with Ms. Maron's husband, who recounted stories of mystery conventions past for me. Find out who the award winners were and what was for dinner after the jump Tuesday Apr 29, 2008
Ron Currie, Jr.: NYPL's Newest Young Literary Lion![]() "It's very hard to create something beautiful in this world," Ethan Hawke told the nominees for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award last night, "and you all have done it, and we're in your gratitude." (Earlier in the ceremony, he'd joked that after actors had read excerpts from the five shortlisted books, "we're all going to applaud for the one you like the most.") And then, when NYPL CEO Paul LeClerc announced that the $10,000 prize, awarded annually to a fiction writer under 35, was going to Ron Currie, Jr. for God Is Dead, a collection of linked stories about what happens to the world when the titular proclamation comes true, squeals of delight arose from the Viking table. The money's going to take a while to arrive, though: LeClerc informed the audience that dummy checks were being handed out at the ceremony because, at last year's party, two of the runners-up managed to lose their $1,000 consolation prizes. (This, some of the guests might have said, is what happens when you have plenty to drink and nothing to eat but mixed nuts; one publicist and I were seriously contemplating whether or not we should run across the street and bring burritos back from Chipotle.) With the annual PEN gala and the Triangle Awards taking place the same evening, the crowd was a bit subdued, but one could still spot some major literati. Amanda Peet was one of the celebrity readers, so David Benioff was in the audience, and I took the opportunity to talk to him about City of Thieves, which I had just started reading. Given that the opening scene is narrated by a screenwriter named David who's romantically involved with an actress, how much of the subsequent story, in which that character's grandfather recounts his experiences during the siege of Leningrad, is true? Very little, Benioff admitted, beyond the fact that his grandparents are from there and now live in Florida—but it's still a great literary device, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the story turns out. I also caught a glimpse of essayist Sloane Crosley, who I'm told is on the library's Young Lions Committee; I went over to ask her about that, but by the time I'd finished chatting with somebody else and turned around, she'd wandered off to another corner of the hall. Monday Apr 28, 2008
Michael Chabon Can Haz Nebula!
And the nominations keep coming: Chabon just received a nomination for this year's Sidewise Awards, presented annually to works of alternate history. No wonder people are starting to think, as one humorous blog post puts it, "the impending conquest of true literature over speculative fiction is at hand." Friday Apr 25, 2008
Subterranean on top in Locus AwardsSubterranean Press - and works published by them - have made the final list in no less than five different categories for the Locus awards. Including best Magazine and Publisher. The winners will be announced at the Locus Awards Ceremony in Seattle, June 21st. Friday Apr 18, 2008
Michael Chabon's Award Collecting Season BeginsThe results may not be in for the Edgar, the Nebula, and the Hugo, but earlier this week Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union took home the California Book Award gold medal for fiction, with the silver going to Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. Other winners in the 76th annual presentation of the awards, honoring "the exceptional literary merit of California writers and publishers," included Ralph Ellison biographer Arnold Rampersad and Pulitzer winner Daniel Walker Howe for nonfiction, debut novelist Porochista Khakpour, and poet W.S. Di Piero—with special, out-of-category commendation for Robert Alter's translation of The Book of Psalms. Wednesday Apr 16, 2008
There Is No Future, and England's Dreaming: British Dystopia Wins Tiptree AwardYesterday, judges for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, awarded annually to a work of science fiction or fantasy that engages the subject of gender in new and thought-provoking ways, selected Sarah Hall's Daughters of the North as their 2007 winner. The novel, which was published last year in the U.K. as The Carhullan Army, had already won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for literary writers under the age of 35, and is still on the shortlist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Britain's most prominent SF prize. ![]() When she began writing it as a short story, Hall told me last week, during the first leg of her American tour, it felt completely different—not only was she used to writing historical fiction, she had never written in the first person before. "And after about 10,000 words," she said, "I realized it wasn't going to turn where I thought it would; more ideas kept coming." The novel is set in a dystopian future in which Britain has suffered an economic collapse in the wake of environmental disaster and is reduced to accepting airlifted foodstuffs from an American government under the control of Christian fundamentalists. Registered citizens are confined to urban centers, and the women have been fitted with contraceptive devices to regulate reproduction. The novel's protagonist (known only as "Sister") decides to seek out a rural community of women farmers in the remote northern countryside that turns out to be fiercely radical, blurring the lines between freedom fighting and terrorism; Sister tells her story after she has been recaptured by the government.
PreviouslyComic (Book) Genius Phoebe Gloeckner Gets A Guggenheim Fellowship Ernest J. Gaines Award Seeks Nominees And the Kafka Award Goes to... Fans Get Free Copies of 2007's Best Sci-Fi, Pick Favorite Of What Import Are Brief, Nameless Prizes... to Junot Diaz? Michael Chabon Gets the Hugo Nomination Are You the Best Young Writer in the World? PEN/Faulkner to Christensen; Lindgren to Hartnett VIDEO: Short Fiction Keeps Getting Better and Better LA Times Announces 2007 Book Prize Finalists VIDEO: Fame Hasn't Changed Jim Shepard Jim Shepard Wins 4th Story Prize Scene @ Books for a Better Life Awards Another Fantasy-Mystery Double Literary Threat Michael Chabon Wows Peers Across Two Genres Edgars vs Nibbies: The Ugliest Award in Literature? 2008 Commonwealth Writers Regional Shortlists Unfurled LA Website Rushes Writing Contest Into Production Essence Presents 1st Annual Literary Awards You Try Impressing Zadie Smith With Your Short Story L Magazine Might Like Your Fiction, Even If Zadie Smith Doesn't Jury for Thurber Prize Announced Cheerios, S&S Give Nashville Woman Book Deal A.L. Kennedy Wins 2007 Costa Book Award YA Librarians Honor Sci-Fi Writer, Stir Hornet's Nest PW Chats With 2007's Kids Book Champs Meet Your NBCC Awards Finalists Sayrafiezadeh: "I'm Going to Sirenland" Who's Up For the 2007 Philip K. Dick Award? Michael Portillo to Chair Man Booker Jury Scene @ Asian American Writers' Workshop Awards Dzanc Gives Author $5,000 for Prison Writing Nine Writers Receive $50K "United States Artist" Fellowships A Bit of Nat'l Book Award Trivia, Semi-Resolved Scene @ National Book Awards Ceremony Meet Your 2007 National Book Award Winners What Passes for National Book Award Gossip Handicapping the National Book Award for Fiction: Not That Hard Mendelsohn Wins French Literary Prize on Unanimous Vote Wolf Totem Takes Man Asian on Eve of US/UK Debut Elizabeth Hay Takes Canada's Giller Prize Brace Yourself for Sudden IMPAC Good Lord, Is It NaNoWriMo Again Already? Junot Diaz Wins Sargent First Novel Prize Story Prize Judges for 2007 Announced Lazard Frères Exposé Wins Goldman/FT Book Prize Scene @ the Whiting Writers' Awards Reception 1st Man Asian Literary Shortlist Unveiled Open Door Project Launches Big Gay Writing Contest Nora Roberts' Fans Snag Her 2nd Quills Prize Chip Kidd Gets Down With His Prize-Winning Self Meet Your Nat'l Book Award Fiction Shortlist Apparently, People Feel Strongly About Kola Boof Anne Enright Wins Man Booker Prize Kola Boof Wins Swedish "Woman to Woman" Award Nation Seeks Ridenhour Book Prize Nominees The Month-Long Nat'l Book Award Debate Begins Poetry Foundation's Pegasus Awards Presented What's Your Take on the Nat'l Book Awards? Meet Your National Book Awards Shortlist Finalists For Canada's Giller Prize Announced What's That Book Prize Really Worth? Thien Wins Canadian First Novel Award Should Claudio Magris Start Packing for Stockholm? A Few More New Women Writers for Your Consideration 2nd Annual Cybils Renew Focus on Kid Lit Academy Taps Notley for "Most Outstanding" Poetry of 2007 Rona Jaffe Foundation Recognizes Six Emerging Writers 2007: A Bad Year for New Women Writers? The Miranda July Backlash Has Begun Asian American Writers' Workshop Names 2007 Literary Award Winners All Your Prize Are Belong to Dybek Garrison Keillor Basks in Steinbeckian Aura Scene @ RWA's Golden Apple Awards McMichael Gets $25K Poetry Fellowship Nautilus Book Awards Now Accepting Submissions Medieval French Scholar Hits Million-Franc Jackpot Eggers Youngest to Win Heinz Foundation Award Didion, Gross to Receive Lifetime Achievement Awards How A.N. Wilson Got Left Off the Booker Shortlist Asimov's Dominates Sci-Fi's Hugo Awards McCarthy Nabs UK's Oldest Literary Prize TV Talent Pool Vies for Book Humor Prize New Zealander Wins 1st Scottish Book Prize Antarctic Photographer Wins IPA Book Prize Rona Jaffe Prize Announces 2007 Winners The Longlist is a Man Booker's Dozen NZ Prizewinners Soon in US Bookstores Snakes on a Plane Finally Snags a Prize Arac de Nyeko Takes the Caine Prize A Room Of Her Own, And $50,000 |
||