BOOK AWARDS
2010 WINNERS
Man Booker Prize (2010)
Scotiabank Giller Prize (2010)
(http://www.scotiabankgillerprize.ca)
The Scotiabank Giller Prize, established in 1994, is an award that goes to
the author of a Canadian novel or short story fiction collection published
in English (including translation) deemed by a jury to be the best published
in the previous year.
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2010)
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been
awarded since 1948 for distinguished fiction by an American author,
preferably dealing with American life.
Synopsis: An old man lies dying. As time collapses into memory, he travels
deep into his past where he is reunited with his father and relives the
wonder and pain of his impoverished New England youth. At once heartbreaking
and life affirming, Tinkers is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, and the
fierce beauty of nature.
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.
Author Biography: Paul Harding has an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop
and teaches creative writing at Harvard. He lives in Georgetown,
Massachusetts.
Orange Prize for Fiction (2010)
(http://www.orangeprize.co.uk)
The Orange Prize for Fiction, started in 1996, is one of the United
Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes, annually awarded to a female
author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in
English, and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year.
Synopsis: Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional
households in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is mostly a liability to his
social-climbing flapper mother, Salomé. From a coastal island jungle to the
unpaved neighborhoods of 1930s Mexico City, through a disastrous stint at a
military school in Virginia and back again, his fortunes never steady as
Salomé finds her rich men-friends always on the losing side of the Mexican
Revolution. Sometimes she gives her son cigarettes instead of supper.
He aims for invisibility, observing his world and recording everything with
a peculiar selfless irony in his notebooks. Life is whatever he learns from
servants putting him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets,
and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego
Rivera. Making himself useful in the household of Rivera, his wife Frida
Kahlo and exiled Bolshevik leader Lev Trotsky, young Shepherd inadvertently
casts his lot with art and revolution, and the howling gossip and reportage
that dictate public opinion.
A violent upheaval sends him north to a nation newly caught up in the
internationalist good will of World War II. In the mountain city of
Asheville, North Carolina, he remakes himself in America's hopeful image.
Under the watch of his peerless stenographer, Violet Brown, he finds an
extraordinary use for his talents of observation. But political winds
continue to throw him between north and south, in a plot that turns many
times on the unspeakable breach-the lacuna-between truth and public
presumption.
This is a gripping story of identity, connection with our past, and the
power of words to create or devastate, unfolding at a moment when the entire
world seemed bent on reinventing itself at any cost.
Author Biography: Barbara Kingsolver was born on April 8, 1955 in Annapolis,
Maryland and grew up in Eastern Kentucky. As a child, Kingsolver used to beg
her mother to tell her bedtime stories. She soon started to write stories
and essays of her own, and at the age of nine, she began to keep a journal.
After graduating with a degree in biology form De Pauw University in Indiana
in 1977, Kingsolver pursued graduate studies in biology and ecology at the
University of Arizona in Tucson. She earned her Master of Science degree in
the early 1980s. A position as a science writer for the University of
Arizona soon led Kingsolver into feature writing for journals and
newspapers. Her articles have appeared in a number of publications,
including The Nation, The New York Times, and Smithsonian magazines. In
1985, she married a chemist, becoming pregnant the following year. During
her pregnancy, Kingsolver suffered from insomnia. To ease her boredom when
she couldn't sleep, she began writing fiction Barbara Kingsolver's first
fiction novel, The Bean Trees, published in 1988, is about a young woman who
leaves rural Kentucky and finds herself living in urban Tucson. Since then,
Kingsolver has written other novels, including Holding the Line, Homeland,
and Pigs in Heaven. In 1995, after the publication of her essay collection
High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never, Kingsolver was awarded an
Honorary Doctorate of Letters from her alma mater, De Pauw University.
Barbara's new nonfiction book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was written with
her family. This is the true story of the family's adventures as they move
to a farm in rural Virginia and vow to eat locally for one year. They grow
their own vegetables, raise their own poultry and buy the rest of their food
directly from farmers markets and other local sources.
Nobel Prize in Literature (2010)
(http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature)
National Book Award (2010)
(http://www.nationalbook.org)
The National Book Awards, started in 1950 and among the most eminent
literary prizes in the United States, are presented annually to American
authors for literature published in the prior year, as well as lifetime
achievement awards including the "Medal of Distinguished Contribution to
American Letters" and the "Literarian Award".
(http://www.costabookawards.com)
The Costa Book Awards (previously known as the Whitbread), launched in
1971, are a series of literary awards given to books by authors based in the
United Kingdom and Ireland for both high literary merit, works that are
enjoyable reading and whose aim is to convey the enjoyment of reading to the
widest possible audience.
Governor General Awards – Fiction (2010)
(http://www.canadacouncil.ca/prizes/ggla)
Each year, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Governor General of
(http://www.canadacouncil.ca/prizes/ggla)
Each year, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Governor General of
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (2010)
The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is the largest and most international prize of its kind. It involves libraries from all corners of the globe, and is open to books written in any language. The Award, an initiative of Dublin City Council, is a partnership between Dublin City Council, the Municipal Government of Dublin City, and IMPAC, a productivity improvement company which operates in over 50 countries. The Award is administered by Dublin City Public Libraries.
The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker, is
the winner of the 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Published
by Harvill Secker / Vintage, UK
The Twin is the first novel
by Gerbrand Bakker, beautifully translated from the original Dutch by David
Colmer. Though rich in detail, it’s a sparely written story, with the
narrator’s odd small cruelties, laconic humour and surprising tendernesses
emerging through a steady, well-paced, unaffected style.
Helmer van Wonderen is a farmer. For forty years he’s lived a stalled,
frustrated life, with every decision on the farm being made by his father.
It wasn’t the life Helmer intended. Through childhood
more...
www.thecharlestaylorprize.ca
The Charles Taylor Prize commemorates Charles Taylor’s pursuit of
excellence in the field of literary non-fiction. The prize will be awarded to
the author whose book best combines a superb command of the English
language, an elegance of style, and a subtlety of thought and perception.
The prize consists of $25,000 for the winner and $2,000 for each of the
runners up as well as promotional support to help all shortlisted books
stand out in the national media, bookstores, and libraries. Authors whose
books have been shortlisted for the prize will be brought to Toronto for the
awards ceremony. The winner will be invited to read at the International
Festival of Authors, held in October at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto.
THE WINNER of the 2010 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction is Ian Brown for The Boy in the Moon: A Father’s Search For His Disabled Son, published by Random House Canada. Noreen Taylor, founder of the prize, announced the winner during a gala luncheon held at Downtown Toronto’s Le Meridien King Edward Hotel. see the other finalists for the 2010 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction
