book awards

The CILIP Carnegie Medal and Kate Greenway Medal winners for 2013 have just been announced. The Carnegie Medal was won by Dyslexic author Sally Gardner with 'Maggot Moon' (published by Hot Key Books). In this tale, when his best friend Hector is suddenly taken away, Standish Treadwell realises that it is up to him, his grandfather and a small band of rebels to confront and defeat the ever-present oppressive forces of The Motherland.

The shortlist also included award-winning Irish author Roddy Doyle's 'A Greyhound of a Girl'. Read about the shortlist on previous blog post.

The Kate Greenway Medal was won by illustrator Levi Pinfold for only his second picture book, 'Black Dog' (published by Templar Publishing). Read more »

'The winner of the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize is 'The Detour' by Dutch author Gerbrand Bakker, translated by David Colmer. 'The Detour' is only his second novel.

Bakker is a previous winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (2010) for his first novel 'The Twin'.

What is particularly noteworthy about this award is that, like the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and maybe too the Man Booker international Prize (the winner to be announced today in fact!), it puts the spotlight on books in translation and exposes the reader to so much fine world literature only accessible due to the marvellous work of that unsung hero, the translator.  Read more »

The shortlist for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction was announced this morning. Launched in 1996, and formerly the Orange Prize, the Women's Prize for Fiction is awarded to a female author who, in the opinion of the judges, has written the best, eligible full-length novel in English. The prize is the UK’s only annual book award for fiction written by a woman.

Right: Shortlist titles. Click image to view larger version.

Women fiction writers have been getting a lot of good press these past two days, which is good to see. Today's announcement follows fast on the heels of yesterday's by literary magazine Granta of its once-in-a-decade list of the 20 Best of Young British Novelists(aged under 40), a list dominated for the first time by women. Read Granta list of top young novelists is female-dominated and international (Guardian) Read more »

10 novels have been shortlisted for the International IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award. The list includes City of Bohane by Irish author, Kevin Barry, five novels in translation from Japan, Iceland, Norway, The Netherlands and France, 1 British and 3 American novels.

The Award is worth €100,000 to the winner and is the world’s most valuable annual literary award for a single work of fiction published in English.

The shortlisted titles, announced by The Lord Mayor of Dublin Cllr. Naoise ÓMuirí, Patron of the Award, in Dublin today are (with links to catalogue entries): Read more »

The CILIP Carnegie Medal and Kate Greenway Medal shortlists for 2013 have just been announced and the former includes award winning Irish writer of both adult and children's books, Roddy Doyle. 

The Carnegie Medal, awarded annually, was established in 1936 in memory of the Scottish-born philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835 - 1919). Carnegie set up more than 2,800 libraries across the English speaking world. The Award is the oldest accolade for children's writing in the UK.

The Carnegie Medal shortlist is as follows (with links to library catalogue where title is in stock): Read more »

Update (29 Jan): Hilary Mantel announced as overall winner! (see comment below) 

For the first time ever, a female winner features in every category of the 2012 Costa Book Awards. The category winners were announced today, Thursday, 3rd January.

The winners in the different categories are as follows:-

Hilary Mantel wins the Novel Award with 'Bring up the Bodies', the book that won her the Man Booker prize back in October. She therefore becomes the first author to win both the Costa Novel Award and the Booker Prize in the same year. 'Bring up the Bodies' is the sequel to 'Wolf Hall' and part of a trilogy, and in it Mantel explores one of the most mystifying and frightening episodes in English history: the destruction of Anne Boleyn. Read more »