The twenty-fifth Rea Award for the Short Story has gone to Charles Baxter. The prize recognizes a US or Canadian writer who has “made a significant contribution to the discipline of the short story as an art form.” Baxter’s works include six published collections of stories. The jurors wrote (in part), “Baxter’s stories have especially shown an acute feeling for the landscape of marriage, childhood, and art.”
Announcement
The new Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction announced the finalists for the two awards:
Nonfiction
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, by Robert K. Massie
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, by James Gleick
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by Manning Marable
Fiction
The Forgotten Waltz, by Anne Enright
Lost Memory of Skin, by Russell Banks
Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell
The inaugural winners will be named at ALA in Anaheim on June 24. Karen Russell just won the Young Lions’ Award and was a Pulitzer finalist (and tied for 11th on the Publishers Lunch Best of the Best of 2012 Fiction list).
Marable won the Pulitzer for history, was nominated for a National Book Award and a NBCC, and tied for fifth on the Publishers Lunch Best of the Best of 2012 Nonfiction list. Massie was tied for seventh on the PL compilation list, and an Indie Choice nominee, and Gleick was an NBCC nominee. Enright is also in contention for the Orange Prize, and Banks was a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist.