BOOKPATHS

2010 Orange Prize for Fiction

The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver, is the winner of this year’s Orange Prize for Fiction.

‘We chose 'The Lacuna' because it is a book of breathtaking scale and shattering moments of poignancy.’Daisy Goodwin, Chair of Judges

2010 Pulitzer Prize Winners

Letters, Drama and Music

Fiction
Tinkers, by Paul Harding

Drama
Next to Normal, music by Tom Kitt, book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey

History
Lords of Finance: the Bankers Who Broke the World, by Liaquat Ahamed

Biography
The First Tycoon: the Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, by T. J. Stiles

Poetry
Versed, by Rae Armantrout

General Nonfiction
The Dead Hand: the Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy, by David E. Hoffman

Music
Violin Concerto, by Jennifer Higdon

For additional information, including the winners for Journalism, visit The Pulitzer Prize website.

2010 Orion Book Award Winner

The winner of the 2010 Orion Book Award is Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing: Living in the Future, by Charles Bowden.  For additional information, visit Orion Magazine's website.

Selection committee chair Don Snow describes 'Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing' as a daring work in which ‘moments of acute consciousness and cognition seem to be refracted through a prism, scattering the light of various events across a mosaic of images, sensations, and sometimes stunning realizations. In the middle of it all, our narrator refuses to comfort us with familiar notions of activism, or betterment, or moral centeredness.’ – from Orion Magazine Website

2010 Newbery Medal and Caldecott Medal

2010 Newbery Medal

The Newbery Medal is “awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.”

When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead is the 2010 Newbery Medal winner.  2010 Honor Books:  Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, by Phillip Hoose; The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, by Jacqueline Kelly; Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin; and The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg, by Rodman Philbrick.

2010 Caldecott Medal

The Caldecott Medal is “awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.”

The Lion and the Mouse, illustrated and written by Jerry Pinkney, is the 2010 Caldecott Medal winner.  2010 Honor Books:  All the World, illustrated by Marla Frazee, written by Liz Garton Scanlon; and Red Sings from Treetops: a Year in Colors, illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski, written by Joyce Sidman.

T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize

Philip Gross has won the T. S. Eliot poetry prize for The Water Table, “lyrical meditations on the ever-changing waters of the Severn estuary.”

2009 Costa Book Awards Winners

Novel
Brooklyn, by Colm Toibín

First Novel
Beauty, by Raphael Selbourne

Biography
The Strangest Man, by Graham Farmelo

Poetry
A Scattering, by Christopher Reid

Children’s Book
The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, Book Two), by Patrick Ness

2009 National Book Awards

The 2009 National Book Awards Finalists have been announced.

FICTION

American Salvage, by Bonnie Jo Campbell   
Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, by Daniyal Mueenuddin
Lark and Termite, by Jayne Anne Phillips
Far North, by Marcel Theroux

NONFICTION

Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook, by David M. Carroll
Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species, by Sean B. Carroll
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City, by Greg Grandin
The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy, by Adrienne Mayor
The First Tycoon: the Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, by T. J. Stiles

POETRY

Versed, by Rae Armantrout
Or to Begin Again, by Ann Lauterbach
Speak Low, by Carl Phillips
Open Interval, by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon
Transcendental Studies: a Trilogy, by Keith Waldrop

YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE

Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith, by Deborah Heiligman
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, by Phillip Hoose
Stitches, by David Small
Lips Touch: Three Times, by Laini Taylor
Jumped, by Rita Williams-Garcia

DISTINGUISHED CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICAN LETTERS
Gore Vidal

LITERARIAN AWARD
Dave Eggers

The winner will be announced on November 18th.  For additional information, visit the National Book Awards Website.

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2009

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Herta Müller.

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature goes to Herta Müller ‘who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed’. – Nobel Prize Website

Man Booker 2009 Winner

Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall has won the 2009 Man Booker Prize for fiction.

Man Booker Prize 2009

The Man Booker Prize 2009 shortlist has been announced.  They include:

The Children’s Book, by A. S. Byatt

Summertime, by J. M. Coetzee

The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel

The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer

The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters

We're thrilled to be able to announce such a strong shortlist, so enticing that it will certainly give us a headache when we come to select the winner. The choice will be a difficult one. There is thundering narrative, great inventiveness, poetry and sharp human insight in abundance. – Chair James Naughtie, Man Booker Prize 2009