Barnes & Noble has announced the 2010 Discovery Award winners. First place and $10,000 went to The Disappeared by Kim Echlin (fiction) and The Autobiography of an Execution by David R. Dow (nonfiction). They will also each receive a full year of marketing and merchandising support from Barnes & Noble.

Second place and $5,000 went to Model Home by Eric Puchner (fiction) and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (nonfiction). Third place and $2,500 went to Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto (fiction) and The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee (nonfiction).

Here’s more from the press release: “Writers on the nonfiction jury panel included Eric Blehm, whose book, The Last Season, won the Discover Award in 2006; British journalist Christina Lamb, whose book, The Sewing Circles of Herat: A Personal Voyage Through Afghanistan, was a finalist for the Discover Award in 2002; and critic Terry Teachout, whose biographies include The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken, and Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong.”

Barnes & Noble has revealed the finalists for the 2010 Discover Great New Writers Awards. The fiction finalists were: Kim Echlin for The Disappeared, Nic Pizzolatto for Galveston, Eric Puchner (listen to our interview here) for Model Home. The nonfiction finalists were: David R. Dow for The Autobiography of an Execution, Siddhartha Mukherjee for The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, and Rebecca Skloot for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Winners in the nonfiction and fiction categories will receive a $10,000 prize and a full year of Barnes & Noble promotion. Second-place finalists receive a $5,000 prize and third-place finalists receive a $2,500 prize.

Here’s more about the judges, from the release: “This year’s nonfiction judges include Eric Blehm, 2006 Discover Award winner for The Last Season, and the author of The Only Thing Worth Dying For; journalist Christina Lamb, 2003 Discover Award finalist for The Sewing Circles of Herat, and author of The Africa House and House of Stone; and Terry Teachout, a drama and culture critic, whose work includes a biography of H.L. Mencken, The Skeptic, as well as a biography of Louis Amstrong, Pops.”