Awards

Since she spent years living in between New York City and Alaska, Joan Kane's poetry crisscrosses two vastly different worlds. In this video interview, she described how these two places influenced her new book, "The Cormorant Hunter's Wife."

Kane was one of the ten writers honored at the 25th annual Whiting Writers' Awards last week. GalleyCat prowled the aisles of the 2009 Whiting Awards, interviewing a number of the winners about their writing lives, the recession, and the future of literature. The ten recipients each took home a $50,000 award for their literary efforts.

Here's more about the author: "Kane is Irish and Inupiaq Eskimo, with family from King Island and Mary’s Igloo, Alaska. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and her M.F.A. from Columbia University ... In 2009 her play, 'The Gilded Tusk,' won the Anchorage Museum theater contest."

Last week an edition of L. Frank Baum's "The Wizard of Oz" re-imagined by artist Graham Rawle won Book of the Year at the 2009 British Book Design and Production Awards.

The UK version of the book was published by Atlantic Books, and Counterpoint/Soft Skull published the American edition. The 352-page book was filled with handcrafted photographs by the artist.

Here's more from former Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press publisher Richard Nash: "Rawle has stripped the epic story of Dorothy's journey to Oz of all remnants of Hollywood iconography. Gone are the Judy Garland braids, the Technicolor ruby slippers, the ethereal Glinda the Good Witch. In their place, Rawle has fashioned characters and scenery that are at once relentlessly modern and also devoutly loyal to Baum's original text." (Via Richard Nash)

"Think about the whole of things, as opposed to thinking about right now or about how much there is to eat at the moment or what the problem is necessarily today," said poet Jericho Brown when asked to give advice to young poets.

Brown was one of the ten writers honored at the 25th annual Whiting Writers' Awards this week. GalleyCat prowled the aisles of the 2009 Whiting Awards, interviewing a number of the winners about their writing lives, the recession, and the future of literature. The ten recipients each took home a $50,000 award for their literary efforts.

Here's more about the author, from his website: "Brown worked as the speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans before receiving his PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. He also holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans and a BA from Dillard University."

"Congratulations to all ten of you. I'll put you all in my blog." author Margaret Atwood told the 2009 Whiting Writers' Award recipients last night. She delivered some droll advice for the winners: "Write a cookbook or a book about vampires. Or troll through the classics, adding monsters...Or, better yet, write a vampire cookbook."

Last night, ten authors received a $50,000 check from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, part of the 25th annual Whiting Writers' Awards. Since 1985, the philanthropic foundation has given emerging creative writers these grants. Previous winners have included: "Denis Johnson, Michael Cunningham, Alice McDermott, and Colson Whitehead. The complete list of winners follows after the jump.

GalleyCat was there, shooting video interviews with the winners and finding out more about Atwood's recent foray into the world of Twitter. "It's been quite a lot of fun. I can send out desperate tweets and 15 people will answer my question," she explained after the ceremony. Twitter hadn't corrupted her writing style, she concluded: "It's a descendant of the telegram. Telegrams required succinctness because they charged by the word. It's a message."

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When the National Book Award nominations were announced earlier this afternoon, we were struck by one book in particular: David Small's graphic novel Stitches, one of the five finalists in the Young People's Literature category. What puzzled us was that we remembered all the buzz surrounding Stitches at this year's BookExpo America, and we hadn't gotten any impression that this was YA material—yes, it's an autobiographical comic book about the writer/artist's adolescence, but so is Alison Bechdel's Fun Home.

"There was a question among the judges [in the young people's literature category]," Harold Augenbraum, the executive director of the National Book Foundation, told us when we called asking about the nomination, "but it ultimately depends on where the publisher nominates the book, and this is where [Norton] nominated it."

"We always intended to submit Stitches in the young people's category," confirmed Erin Sinesky Lovett, Norton's assistant director of publicity. "We knew it would appeal to a YA audience as well as an adult audience." She added that because Small had never written for an adult readership before, the graphic novel could be seen as a "transitional" work, building from his distinguished background as a children's book writer and illustrator, and observed that the story was "age-appropriate" for teen readers who grew up on Small's earlier work.

We took another quick look at the book this afternoon, and though we'll be re-reading it closely just to make sure, we can't argue with that. And thus David Small becomes the second graphic novelist (after Gene Luen Yang to be in the running for a National Book Award—we'll see what happens at the awards ceremony next month!

(And, in a neat twist, it's now the second consecutive year Small's illustrated an NBA nominee—he also did the artwork for Kathi Appelt's The Underneath.)

Out of all the National Book Award fiction finalists announced today, one writer had the Twittersphere buzzing--Bonnie Jo Campbell's nomination for "American Salvage," published by Wayne State University Press.

Washington Post Book World editor Ron Charles summed it up in this tweet: "AMERICAN SALVAGE (Wayne State) is the NBA's version of last year's NBCC-nominated BALLAD OF TRENCHMOUTH TAGGERT (W Va UP). The "Huh?" slot." Journalist (and former GalleyCat editor) Sarah Weinman pointed out that Campbell may have "the greatest bio of a National Book Award finalist ever," and we heartily agree.

Here's an excerpt from Campbell's intriguing backstory: "I'm a writer living in an unfinished house in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with my husband Christopher and other animals. I am six- feet tall and I drive a 1985 Chevy pick-up truck with a rebuilt 350 small-block engine. My first novel QRoad was released September 2002 and Kraftbrau Brewery in Kalamazoo has created a specialty beer, Q Brew, to celebrate the occasion."

This afternoon the National Book Foundation announced the finalists for the 2009 National Book Awards. Find out more on the NBF site, but here are the fiction finalists:
Bonnie Jo Campbell for "American Salvage" from Wayne State University Press
Colum McCann for "Let the Great World Spin from Random House
Daniyal Mueenuddin for "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders" from W.W. Norton & Co.
Jayne Anne Phillips for "Lark and Termite" from Alfred A. Knopf
Marcel Theroux for "Far North" from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

The nonfiction finalists are:
David M. Carroll for "Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook" from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Sean B. Carroll for "Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species" from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Greg Grandin for "Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City" from Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt
Adrienne Mayor for "The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy" from Princeton University Press
T. J. Stiles for "The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt" from Alfred A. Knopf

The rest of the nominees follow after the jump...

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A journalist, a novelist, and a librarian will judge the $20,000 Story Prize this year--awarded to a short story collection written in English and published in the U.S. during the calendar year.

Author A.M. Homes, LA Times journalist Carolyn Kellogg, and Ohio's Cuyahoga County Public Library librarian Bill Kelly will judge the 2009 prize. The winner will join a distinguished list that includes Edwidge Danticat, Mary Gordon, Jim Shepard, and Tobias Wolff. The winner takes home $20,000, and finalists each receive $5,000.

Here's more from the release: "The final deadline for submitting books is November 16, 2009. The three finalists will be announced in late January, 2010. The 2009 Story Prize winner will be announced on March 3, 2010 at an event open to the public and featuring conversations and readings with the three finalists at The New School in New York City."

President Barack Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

This well-known author urged children to grow up to be writers in a recent speech: "Every single one of you has something you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide. Maybe you could be a good writer--maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper--but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class."

In addition to writing his own memoir, Obama has never been shy about sharing his literary recommendations or summer reading list. While Americans missed out on the Nobel Prize for Literature once again this year, at least one American author will bring a Nobel Prize home.

56-year-old German author Herta Müller has won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. She grew up in Romania, struggling with the legacy of World War II, a harsh dictatorship, and the Soviet Union's influence on her country.

In a brief press release, the judges described the novelist: "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed." She beat some tough odds--the betting site Ladbrokes had Israeli author Amos Oz as the 4 to 1 favorite.

Here's more about Müller, from her biography: "The Romanian national press was very critical of these works while, outside of Romania, the German press received them very positively. Because Müller had publicly criticized the dictatorship in Romania, she was prohibited from publishing in her own country. In 1987, Müller emigrated together with her husband, author Richard Wagner."