Yesterday's NYT story about product placement in YA novels included an update on Cathy's Book, which got the anti-marketing types bent out of shape when the partnership with Cover Girl was announced in 2006. As Motoko Rich reveals, the specific references to Cover Girl brands have been altered to generic descriptions for the paperback edition coming out next week. It's strongly implied in the first half of the article that the decision was influenced by the controversy surrounding the venture; later, however, a co-author of the novel says that the cross-marketing campaign was always limited to the hardcover run.

Anyway, I got to wondering if there were any new developments in other stories that I'd covered here, and quickly discovered that Story Prize director Larry Dark had written a sharply critical op-ed in Critical Mass condemning Zadie Smith's withholding of a literary prize earlier this month because she didn't think any of the stories deserved it. "If you offer a prize you should give it to the best candidate that you can find that year," Dark argues. "The chief value of literary awards isn't that they bestow the mantle of greatness on great writing but that they bring attention to literature and stimulate conversation... Smith did bring a lot of attention to the Willesden Prize and to herself. The problem is that the focus of that attention should have been on giving out the prize and on the writer and story chosen as the winner."

And remember last summer, when Elizabeth Hayes left Scribner for indie film? According to a profile in the new issue of BeE Woman (with a photo by Justin Appenzeller and Olivia Marbert, as seen above), associate producer-dom is going well: Now that she's done helping Jonathan Demme film Dancing With Shiva, they've moved on to a documentary about New Orleans in the post-Katrina era, and she's involved in Brad Pitt's eco-friendly housing development plans.

Oh, one other thing: If you can stand it, I believe GalleyCat reader Jim Murray may have found the ugliest literary prize ever created, far more hideous than the ones I showed you last week...

Behold the Balrog, a short-lived fantasy award from the late 1970s and early '80s. This particular one was presented to the late Andre Norton, and the photo comes from her website.

And if you think that's bad, wait until you see the other side.