Fiction
Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country (Modern Library)
Nonfiction
Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello (W.W. Norton & Company)
Young People’s Literature
Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic)
Poetry
Mark Doty, Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems (HarperCollins).
We started sales tracking the winners online as soon as they were announced last night. (Amazon is the first column; BN.com the second):
Mathiessen
Start: 1,321 1,416
Now: 265 92
Gordon-Reed
Start: 1,100 1,282
Now: 317 167
Doty
Start: 51,418 38,416
Now: 3,391 40,790
Blundell
Start: 23,200 63,008
Now: 3,378 50,756
Some quotes from the coverage:
Gordon-Reed: “It’s sort of wonderful to have the book come out at this time. People ask me if I planned it this way; I didn’t. All of America — we’re on a great journey now and I look forward to the years to come.”
Matthiessen: “I’ve had a hard time over the years persuading people that fiction was my natural thing.”
NYT
“This book was quite a trial for everybody, including me,” Matthiessen said. “It took me 30 years to pull together.” He hadn’t prepared any remarks, he said, because he worried what he’d do with that “pathetic little speech” in his pocket if he didn’t win.
Washington Post
Matthiessen, the only winner not to mention Obama in his speech that evening, went along with the mood of renewal. “Years ago, I was nominated for the fiction award for a novel called At Play in the Fields of the Lord. ‘Oh, you’ll be back,’ people said. I want to tell those guys, I’m back, and [this year’s finalists] are going to be back, too. I just hope it doesn’t take 43 years, like me.”
Guardian
