Here’s more from the release: “Multi-dimensional program includes: a staged reading directed by Ralph Peña; artist Wangechi Mutu (MOMA, Guggenheim) talking about immigration; an open mic featuring Jen Kwok (Date an Asian), Negin Farsad (Nerdcore Rising) and others; stories from twenty years of the Workshop; and hard-hitting conversations about Occupy Wall Street, Islam and the West, the rise of China and India, and the national crackdown on immigration.”

The festival will feature appearances by Junot Díaz, Amitav Ghosh, Jessica Hagedorn, Kimiko Hahn, Hari Kunzru, Jayne Anne Phillips, Suketu Mehta, Min Jin Lee, Mark Nowak, Amitava Kumar, Granta editor John Freeman, and Guernica editor Joel Whitney. Attendees will also get a chance to hear from two stand-up comedians, five National Book Award finalists and seven Guggenheim Fellows.

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A taco truck served dinner and DJ Rob Sheffield spun everything from Jay-Z to Duran Duran. Attendees included 2006′s ’5 Under 35′ host Amanda Stern and a 2006 ’5 Under 35′ honoree Samantha Hunt. Country singer and author Rosanne Cash (pictured) introduced the readers: Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Scott Spencer, Colum McCann, Jayne Anne Phillips, and Kate Walbert. Afterward, each one of them stepped up to the podium to introduce the writer they chose.

Four of the five honorees read from their published work, but Paul Yoon took a step outside the box. He read something new, a work-in-progress short story entitled The Snow Hunters. (Photo Credit: Beowulf Sheehan)

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Two awards were also delivered at the celebration. Here’s more from the release: “[T]his year’s Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award is Joyce Carol Oates, announced by Kwame Anthony Appiah, president of PEN American Center, the 2008 Sandrof award winner. Winner of the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, announced by former Balakian winner Albert Mobilio, is Joan Accocela.”

Here are the year’s finalists for Fiction. All finalists follow after the jump:
Bonnie Jo Campbell for “American Salvage” (Wayne State University Press)
Marlon James for “The Book of Night Women” (Riverhead)
Michelle Huneven for “Blame” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Hilary Mantel for “Wolf Hall” (Holt)
Jayne Anne Phillips for “Lark and Termite” (Knopf)

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In response, More magazine’s editor-in-chief Lesley Jane Seymour fired back an email response. “Yawn–another men’s magazine editor proclaiming that men’s magazines are ‘much meatier’ than women’s. It’s such an old-fashioned concept, I’m surprised people feel the need to keep perpetuating it,” she explained in an email interview. “The truth is, there are fluffy magazines for men as well as women out there, but lumping women’s magazines as a whole into the fluffy category is just plain irresponsible.”

She also explained about her magazine’s literary content: “More readers are book lovers who tend to favor literary fiction, memoirs and historical non-fiction with a twist. Our coverage is headed up by Editor-at-Large and Author Dawn Raffel, who has been an assistant adjunct professor at the MFA program at Columbia. She oversees a stable of prominent reviewers including Jane Ciabattari, president of the National Book Critics Circle, and Jayne Anne Phillips, a 2009 finalist for the National Book Award for fiction. We do tend to favor books by or about midlife women, who are severely underrepresented in book circles. We do also take into account the lives of the author–does she have an interesting reinvention story or a unique spin on a news story. We consider ourselves the resource for intelligent and thoughtful midlife readers–and our book pages consistently rate high in the pages of the magazine and on More.com.”

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Hudson runs 65 full-service bookstores around North America, but sells books in over 350 Hudson News stands in airports and transportation hubs. This year the company sold $93 million worth of books. Here are the fiction winners, a list with only a single National Book Award nominee on it. The best nonfiction, business, and young adult books follow after the jump…

Best Fiction: “The Year of the Flood” by Margaret Atwood, “Little Bee” by Chris Cleave, “Spooner” by Pete Dexter, “The Magicians” by Lev Grossman, “The Lacuna” by Barbara Kingsolver, “Fool” by Christopher Moore, “The Song is You” by Arthur Phillips, “Lark & Termite” by Jayne Anne Phillips, “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett, and “Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.

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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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