Swedish Poet wins Nobel in Literature

Swedish Poet Wins Nobel Prize In Literature

by NEDA ULABY

Audio for this story from All Things Considered will be available at approx. 7:00 p.m. ET

 

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October 6, 2011

Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer is this year's winner of the Nobel Prize in literature. Transtromer has been mentioned as a candidate for the award for years. His work often walks a line between concrete reality and dreams — he's worked as a psychologist and social worker in addition to his writing.

ALA presents Newberry and Caldecott Medals, others awarded too

The American Library Association announced winners and finalists of their Youth Media awards, including the Newbery and Caldecott Medals, at a ceremony Monday . The Newbery Medal honors a distinguished work of children's literature. The Caldecott Medal acknowledges excellence in illustration. The awards are presented annually.

The Newbery Medal was awarded to Clare Vanderpool's "Moon Over Manifest," which is the story 12-year-old Abileen Tucker and her adventures upon arriving in Manifest, Kansas in 1936.

The Caldecott Medal was awarded to "A Sick Day for Amos McGee" by Philip Christian Stead and illustrated by Erin Stead. The book tells the story of zookepper Amos McGee and the animals who visit him on a day he stays home with a cold.

"Ship Breaker" by Paolo Bacigalupi, also a National Book Award finalist, was awarded the Printz Award at the ceremony, a prize for young adult fiction. Bacigalupi is previously the recipient of the Nebula science fiction writing award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for his adult novel "The Windup Girl."

Also presented at the ALA ceremony were the Coretta Scott King Awards, which acknowledge an African-American author and illustrator, to Rita Williams-Garcia for "One Crazy Summer" and to Bryan Collier for his illustrations in "Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave" by Laban Carrick Hill. Also presented to an author and an illustrator, the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Awards for New Talent were given to Victoria Bond for T.R. Simon for their jointly written "Zora and Me" and for Sonia Lynn Sadler's illustration of "Seeds of Change: Wangari's Gift to the World" by Jen Cullerton Johnson.

The winner of the Pura Belpré Award, presented to Latino writers whose children's books best "portray, affirm and celebrate the Latino cultural experience," was Pam Muñoz Ryan, for her book "The Dreamer," a fictional biography of Pablo Neruda.

The winner of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award was Tomie dePaola, author and illustrator of more than 200 books, including "26 Fairmont Avenue" (Putnam, 1999), "I Love You Sun, I Love You Moon" (Putnam, 1994) and "Strega Nona" (Simon & Schuster, 1975). The Laura Ingalls Wilder Award honors a U.S.-published author or illustrator whose work has made a "substantial and lasting contribution" to literature for children.

Also at the ceremony was the Schneider Family Book Awards for work that depicts or promotes understanding of disabilities. The winners, by recommended reader age, were "The Pirate of Kindergarten" by George Ella Lyon, illustrated by Lynne Avril, "After Ever After" by Jordan Sonnenblick and "Five Flavors of Dumb" by Antony John.

A complete list of all award winners and finalists is available on the American Library Association Web site, ala.org.

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo tops best of lists for 2010

USA Today pegged Stieg Larson's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series tops for 2010.
Here's a excerpt from their article by Anthony DeBarros and Deirdre Donahue, USA TODAY

Millennium trilogy unbeatable

Stieg Larsson's girl with the dragon tattoo might weigh all of 92 pounds, but she made the late Swedish author the year's ultimate sales heavyweight. His Millennium trilogy —The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest— outsold every other author in 2010.

According to Larsson's publisher, Knopf, the thriller series — set in Sweden and starring computer hacker Lisbeth Salander — has sold 12.5 million print copies and 2.5 million e-books.

This year is likely to be another big one for Larsson and Lisbeth, with David Fincher's film adaptation of Dragon Tattoodue in December.

How the series did on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list:

• It had a perfect week on June 3, taking the three top spots. (The third book, Hornet's Nest, hit stores in late May.)
• For all 52 weeks, at least one Larsson novel was in the top 50.
• Tattoo held the No. 1 spot for nine weeks; Hornet's Nest for one.
• Larsson's trilogy accounted for 5% of all sales tracked.

Read the entire article here.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2011-01-13-topbooks201013_ST_N.htm

Little Bee - there's nothing "little" about this powerful novel

This is one of the most moving books I've read this year. It reaches in and grabs hold of you and won't let go. I found myself examining my own life choices, could I have made different decisions that would have impacted the people around me more, or less? The harsh and sometimes difficult material is bathed in straightforward prose, so much so that it sneaks up on the reader. Often one finds oneself with an unconscious hand over mouth in stunned review as you keep on reading, unable to turn away. You'll emerge with a greater awareness of our world, and maybe even a bit of change to your own world view, on the themes of violence, immigration, friendship, and the power of one person to impact them all.

From the Washington Post Review: "Little Bee" deserves a warning label: "Do not judge this book by its cover. Contents under pressure." Despite the cutesy title (the book was more sensibly published in Britain as "The Other Hand") and the coy book-flap description ("It is a truly special storyand we don't want to spoil it"), "Little Bee" will blow you away.

Like Ian McEwan's propulsive novel "Enduring Love," in which a fatal hot-air balloon accident binds together two strangers who witness it, "Little Bee," by Guardian columnist Chris Cleave, hinges on a single horrific encounter. On a beach in Nigeria, the lives of Little Bee, a teenager from a small village, and Sarah O'Rourke, editor of a posh British women's magazine, are brought into brutal conjunction. Little Bee and her older sister have the misfortune to live on valuable Nigerian oil deposits, for which their family pays a deadly price. Sarah and her husband, heedless tourists out for a walk in the sand, are confronted in an instant with a choice: Save the girls at great personal cost or ignore them.

Mysteries Resolved: Edgar Awards Given

The Mystery Writers of America announced the winners of their prestigious Edgar Awards for the best crime and mystery writing at a banquet in New York City on Thursday night. Edgars went to John Hart, right, for his novel “The Last Child” and Stefanie Pintoff, whose “In the Shadow of Gotham” won best first novel by an American author. In nonfiction, “The Lineup: The World’s Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives,” edited by Otto Penzler, won in the critical-biographical category, and Dave Cullen took the prize for best “fact crime” for “Columbine,” his account of the 1999 shootings at that Colorado high school. Dorothy Gilman was named this year’s grand master. A complete list of winners is at theedgars.com.

Other best novel nominees - winner in red:

• The Missing by Tim Gautreaux (Random House - Alfred A. Knopf)
• The Odds by Kathleen George (Minotaur Books)
• The Last Child by John Hart (Minotaur Books)
• Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston (Random House - Ballantine Books)
• Nemesis by Jo Nesbø, translated by Don Bartlett (HarperCollins)
• A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn (Simon & Schuster - Atria Books)

A complete list of winners is at theedgars.com.

Pulitzer Prize 2010 fiction to "Tinkers" by Paul Harding

For distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).

Awarded to "Tinkers," by Paul Harding (Bellevue Literary Press), a powerful celebration of life in which a New England father and son, through suffering and joy, transcend their imprisoning lives and offer new ways of perceiving the world and mortality.

Finalists

Also nominated as finalists in this category were "Love in Infant Monkeys," by Lydia Millet (Soft Skull Press), an imaginative collection of linked stories, often describing a memorable encounter between a famous person and an animal, underscoring the human folly of longing for significance while chasing trifles; and “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders,” by Daniyal Mueenuddin (W.W. Norton & Company), a collection of beautifully crafted stories that exposes the Western reader to the hopes, dreams and dramas of an array of characters in feudal Pakistan, resulting in both an aesthetic and cultural achievement.

From the Booklist review of "Tinkers":

A tinker is a mender, and in Harding’s spellbinding debut, he imagines the old, mendable horse-and-carriage world. The objects of the past were more readily repaired than our electronics, but the living world was a mystery, as it still is, as it always will be. And so in this rhapsodic novel of impending death, Harding considers humankind’s contrary desires to conquer the “imps of disorder” and to be one with life, fully meshed within the great glimmering web. In the present, George lies on his death bed in the Massachusetts house he built himself, surrounded by family and the antique clocks he restores. George loves the precision of fine timepieces, but now he is at the mercy of chaotic forces and seems to be channeling his late father, Howard, a tinker and a mystic whose epileptic seizures strike like lightning. Howard, in turn, remembers his “strange and gentle” minister father. Each man is extraordinarily porous to nature and prone to becoming “unhitched” from everyday human existence and entering a state of ecstasy, even transcendence. Writing with breathtaking lyricism and tenderness, Harding has created a rare and beautiful novel of spiritual inheritance and acute psychological and metaphysical suspense. --Donna Seaman

Pen/Faulkner Award announced, Sherman Alexie wins for "War Dances"

The prestigious annual award, presented by the Washington-based PEN/Faulkner Foundation, was given to Alexie because of his book's breadth of topics and innovative style, judges said. "War Dances" consists of short stories interspersed with poems.

Alexie, who lives in Seattle, won a National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2007 and this week, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas. He is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian who grew up on a reservation 50 miles northwest of Spokane. Severely ill as a child, he overcame his conditions and set out for a life of reading and writing. In high school he was the only Native American and became a scholar-athlete, later writing about those experiences in "True Diary."

Many of Alexie's works have been honored, including a story collection, "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven," which was a PEN/Hemingway Award winner for best first book of fiction. The attention led to a film, "Smoke Signals," which won two awards at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival.

Alexie, who receives $15,000 for the PEN/Faulkner honor, will be saluted May 8 on the 30th anniversary of the program.

The other finalists -- Barbara Kingsolver, Lorraine M. Lopez, Lorrie Moore and Colson Whitehead -- will also be recognized.

More>>>

Eat Pray Love - soon to be movie with Julia Roberts. Watch the trailer.

After months and months of waiting, the trailer for the adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, has finally arrived.

Here's a summary of the film from the NY Times:
A woman who once made it her goal in life to marry and rear a family finds her priorities suddenly shifting in director Ryan Murphy's adaptation of author Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling memoir. In the eyes of many, Gilbert was a woman who had it all -- a loving husband, a great apartment, and a weekend home -- but sometimes one realizes too little too late that they haven't gotten what they truly wanted from life. On the heels of a painful divorce, the woman who had previously looked forward to a contented life of domesticated bliss sets out to explore the world and seek out her true destiny.


Although I didn't love the book as so many others did, I do find the trailer for the movie to be intriguing, perhaps the parts of the book that annoyed me will be condensed or eliminated, so I'll probably venture out to see it when it releases on August 13, 2010 or thereabouts.

'Wolf Hall' By Hilary Mantel Wins National Book Critics Circle Award

Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall," winner last year of the Man Booker Prize in London, was honored Thursday night on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

The novel, set in the age of King Henry VIII, won the National Book Critics Circle Prize for fiction. It's a compassionate narrative of royal adviser Thomas Cromwell, a leading enforcer of the English Reformation and a rival of Sir Thomas More.

More>>>

Founded in 1974, the National Book Critics Circle Award is among the US's most prestigious literary prizes, along with the Pulitzer and the PEN/Faulkner, for books published in English including translations. Last year's fiction winner was Roberto Bolaño's 2666, which was published in English translation in 2008.

PEN/Faulkner Award finalists are announced

From the Washington Post:

By Marissa Newhall

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Books by Sherman Alexie, Barbara Kingsolver, Lorraine M. López, Lorrie Moore and Colson Whitehead are finalists for the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation announced Tuesday.

Alexie's short-story collection "War Dances" and Kingsolver's historical novel "The Lacuna" are in contention for the $15,000 prize along with López's "Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories," Moore's "A Gate at the Stairs" and Whitehead's "Sag Harbor."

The winner of the award, the country's largest peer-juried prize for fiction, will be named March 23.
Judges considered nearly 350 entries -- all novels and short-story collections by American authors published in 2009.
Last year's winner, "Netherland" by Joseph O'Neill, was rushed into paperback after President Obama mentioned it in a newspaper interview. Having tired of briefing books, Obama said, he had taken respite in O'Neill's tale of cricket and friendship in post-9/11 New York City.
As each year's winner is thought of as "first among equals," all five finalists will be honored May 8 at an award ceremony at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Each runner-up will receive $5,000.

Fantastic book with gorgeous writing: Colum McCann's 'Let the Whole World Spin'. Not to be missed.

Recently stayed up half the night delving into this work, "Let the Great World Spin", just named National Book Award Winner of 2009. I was hooked by the writer's talent by page two. If, like me, you love a writer that knows how to turn a phrase, intrigue the reader, and describes people and places with what seem at first simple, yet are so dead on and actually magical, words you should definitely pick up a copy of this book soon. Run, don't walk. Now in trade paperback at all the usual places.


from Amazon's review: Colum McCann has worked some exquisite magic with Let the Great World Spin, conjuring a novel of electromagnetic force that defies gravity. It's August of 1974, a summer "hot and serious and full of death and betrayal," and Watergate and the Vietnam War make the world feel precarious. A stunned hush pauses the cacophonous universe of New York City as a man on a cable walks (repeatedly) between World Trade Center towers. This extraordinary, real-life feat by French funambulist Philippe Petit becomes the touchstone for stories that briefly submerge you in ten varied and intense lives--a street priest, heroin-addicted hookers, mothers mourning sons lost in war, young artists, a Park Avenue judge. All their lives are ordinary and unforgettable, overlapping at the edges, occasionally converging. And when they coalesce in the final pages, the moment hums with such grace that its memory might tighten your throat weeks later.


I wholeheartedly agree.



See Colum McCann's acceptance speech here>>> 


Colum McCann at the 2009 National Book Awards, Fiction Winner from National Book Foundation on Vimeo.

Cute video! Wizard of Oz at the Library

Originally presented at the 2007 ALA Conference in Washington DC. A simple tale about library circulation. Presented by Salt Lake County Library. 

Watch

Barbara Kingsolver audio discussion on her new book, "The Lacuna"

Barbara Kingsolver, author of bestsellers "The Poisonwood Bible" and "The Bean Trees" discusses her new book "The Lacuna," how she came up with the name (and how her family felt about it) and her own recent relocation. Click on arrow below. For a good review of "The Lacuna" on the NY Times click here.

Publishers Weekly lists best of 2009

Year's best: Publishers Weekly today names its top 10 books of 2009:
1. Richard Holmes' The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science;
2. Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply;
3. Victor LaValle's Big Machine;
4. Blake Bailey's Cheever: A Life;
5. Neil Sheehan's A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon;
6. Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders;
7. Geoff Dyer's Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi;
8. David Grann's The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon;
9. Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft;
10.and David Small's Stitches: A Memoir.

I will be checking out Await Your Reply soon. If you've read any of the above, please comment on this post with your thoughts.

Herta Müller Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

Herta Müller, the Romanian-born German novelist and essayist who writes of the oppression of dictatorship in her native country and the unmoored existence of the political exile, won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday.
Relatively unknown outside her native country, you can read more about her here>>>

Tudors retelling wins Man Booker Prize

The prestigious Man Booker Prize has been awarded to Hilary Mantel for "Wolf Hall," her historical fiction of Henry VIII's court. Mantel was considered the odds-on favorite going into tonight's ceremony in London -- yes, the British do take bets on who will win a book prize -- and beat out shortlisted authors A.S. Byatt, J.M. Coetzee, Adam Foulds, Simon Mawer and Sarah Waters. In addition to the honor of winning the award, Mantel will receive $83,500.

"Wolf Hall," scheduled for U.S. release Oct. 13, is said to be a minutely researched yet sweeping historical novel of the Tudor period. Told from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell, the book follows the courtly machinations that keep Henry VIII in power as he breaks with Rome to marry Anne Boleyn.

Octavia Butler, Sci-Fi Award Winning Author, papers going to the Huntington Library

The papers of Octavia Butler, the stereotype-shattering science fiction writer, will be added to the collection in the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., which also houses the papers of Christopher Isherwood, Charles Bukowski and Jack London.

The Pasadena-born Butler, the daughter of a shoe-shiner and a maid, found her voice in science fiction when few women -- and fewer African Americans -- were writing in the genre. She won two Hugo awards, two Nebula awards and was the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur "Genius" grant.

More from LA Times blogs>>>

(Even) Bad Writing wins national awards

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
Named after the Victorian novelist and playwright Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, author of the oft-quoted "It was a dark and stormy night," the tongue-in-cheek competition attracts as many as 10,000 entries in several categories, including detective fiction, Western and romance. Here's a few favorites:

Runner Up in Detective Fiction by Tony Alfieri of Los Angeles:
"The dame sauntered silently into Rocco's office, but she didn't need to speak; the blood-soaked gown hugging her ample curves said it all: "I am a shipping heiress whose second husband was just murdered by Albanian assassins trying to blackmail me for my rare opal collection," or maybe, "Do you know a good dry cleaner?"

Winner of Romance Fiction Jeanne Villa won in 2008 (so good, er - I mean "bad" I had to post it here) with this inspired opening:
"Bill swore the affair had ended, but Louise knew he was lying, after discovering Tupperware containers under the seat of his car, which were not the off-brand containers that she bought to save money, but authentic, burpable, lidded Tupperware; and she knew he would see that woman again, because unlike the flimsy, fake containers that should always be recycled responsibly, real Tupperware must be returned to its rightful owner."


2009 Winner in Fantasy Fiction: "A quest is not to be undertaken lightly--or at all!--pondered Hlothgar, Thrag of the Western Boglands, son of Glothar, nephew of Garthol, known far and wide as Skull Dunker, as he wielded his chesty stallion Hralgoth through the ever-darkening Thlargwood, beyond which, if he survived its horrors and if Hroglath the royal spittle reader spoke true, his destiny awaited--all this though his years numbered but fourteen.

Gives unpublished writers everywhere hope.

More>>>
For a list of winners in other categories>>>

Literary Prizes for Humanitarian Causes

Books that address the topic of contemporary slavery were among the honorees of the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, whose winners were announced on Tuesday. The selection committee for the prize, which recognizes “the power of literature to promote peace and nonviolence,” said in a news release that its nonfiction prize would go to “A Crime So Monstrous: Face to Face With Modern Day Slavery,” by E. Benjamin Skinner, and that its fiction prize would go to “Peace,” a World War II novel by Richard Bausch. Both prizes come with an award of $10,000; the committee said that Mr. Skinner is donating his honorarium to Free the Slaves, the American wing of Anti-Slavery International.

The committee said that it had chosen “Hot, Flat and Crowded,” by Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times, as the runner-up in its nonfiction category, and “Say You’re One of Them,” a short story collection by Uwem Akpan, as its fiction runner-up. The collection by Mr. Akpan, a Nigerian Jesuit priest, was also recently chosen by Oprah Winfrey for her book club.

Edgar Award Winners 2009

The Mystery Writers of America give these awards to honor the best in mystery fiction and nonfiction produced the previous year. The awards began in 1954 and are named in honor of Edgar Allan Poe.







2009 Winners
Best Novel:
· Missing by Karin Alvtegen
· Blue Heaven by C.J. Box -- Winner!
· Sins of the Assassin by Robert Ferrigno
· The Price of Blood by Declan Hughes
· The Night Following by Morag Joss
· Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz

Best First Novel by an American Author:
· The Kind One by Tom Epperson
· Sweetsmoke by David Fuller
· The Foreigner by Francie Lin -- Winner!
· Calumet City by Charlie Newton
· A Cure for Night by Justin Peacock

Best Paperback Original:
· The Prince of Bagram Prison by Alex Carr
· Money Shot by Christa Faust
· Enemy Combatant by Ed Gaffney
· China Lake by Meg Gardiner -- Winner!
· The Cold Spot by Tom Piccirilli

For complete list>>>