Awards

To fuel some rights sales, the shortlist was named this morning in London: Scottsboro, by Ellen FeldmanThe Wilderness, Samantha HarveyThe Invention of Everything Else, by Samantha HuntMolly Fox’s Birthday, Deirdre MaddenHome, by Marilynne RobinsonBurnt Shadows, Kamila Shamsie

The Pulitzer Prizes for books included a repeat win for NBA winner Annette Gordon-Reed. Sales as tracked by Nielsen BookScan show relative parity among three of the four winners to date in the outlets tracked by the service. The fiction winner sold close to 12,000 copies in hardcover and almost 44,000 in paperback so far; The Hemingses of Monticello is up to just over 45,000 hardcovers after the NBA win; and Slavery by Another Name has sold approximately 22,000 hardcovers and 4,000 trade paperbacks. American Lion is in a completely different class, with registered sales of close to 360,000 copies, […]

Somebody did like Andrew Davidson’s novel THE GARGOYLE: Book-of-the-Month Club has named the book the 2008 winner of their First Fiction Award.

The ABA has announced the 2009 Indie Choice Award winners: Best Indie Buzz Book (Fiction)The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (The Dial Press) Best Conversation Starter (Nonfiction)The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell (Riverhead) Best Author DiscoveryThe Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Ecco) Best Indie Young Adult Buzz Book (Fiction)The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins) Best New Picture BookBats at the Library, by Brian Lies (Houghton Mifflin) Most Engaging AuthorSherman Alexie ABA

Fanny Howe, 68, has been awarded the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, worth $100,000, given to a “living US poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition.” Her poetry collections include Gone (University of California Press, 2003), Selected Poems (UC Press, 2000), On the Ground (Graywolf Press, 2004), and The Lyrics (Graywolf, 2007). She has also written 5 novels and two collections of essays. In other people news, Ron Charles has been promoted to deputy editor of the Washington Post’s Book World. Via Twitter yesterday he reported that the American Academy of Arts and Letters is giving their Academy Awards in […]

Sandra Dallas’s eighth novel PRAYERS FOR SALE is Barnes & Noble’s 13th chainwide recommendation.