awards

Some of the 20th century’s top writers didn’t make the shortlist—announced today—for the Best of the Booker awards, among them Iris Murdoch, William Golding and Kingsley Amis. In the running are Sir Salman Rushdie—headlining as favorite for Midnight’s Children—Pat Barker, Peter Carey, J. M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer and J. G. Farrell.

Polling opens today to the public.

The Shirley Jackson Awards finalists have just been announced and PS Publishing and Tor take top spots with four nominations each. The awards, established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic will be presented on Sunday, July 20th 2008.

Discussion on why we need another award and the list of nominees are found here.

The Michael Chabon express passed this station.

Just to end off National Poetry Month…

Gary Snyder, a poet known for his verse about nature and spirituality, has won the United States' richest poetry prize, the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. The jury called him "a deeply learned and meditative artist, an impassioned ecologist, and a poet of great scope.

The Orwell Prize, Britain's most prestigious award for political writing, has named its winners for 2008. Raja Shehadeh won the Orwell Prize for Books with Palestinian Walks. The book describes, through a series of six walks over 26 years - the destruction of the Palestinian landscape, and how it mirrors the destruction of Palestinian identity and culture.

Winners of this year's Nebula Awards, presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, were announced this evening, Saturday April 26, 2008. Best novel: Michael Chabon - The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Click through to see short story and cinema winners.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) will be handing out the Nebula Awards Saturday evening, 26 April 2008, at a ceremony in Austin, Texas. SFScope is not in Texas, but SFWA has announced that there will be a live feed of the ceremony available on line.

For the first time, a self-published author has made it onto the shortlist for the prestigious PEN/Ackerley prize for memoir and autobiography. Jane Haynes's Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am? is an unflinching journal of her life a psychotherapist.

A London-based Canadian financier and investment manager is establishing the world's largest prize for non-fiction historical literature, and he's getting his alma mater, Montreal's McGill University, to administer it.

The Cundill International Prize in History is worth $75.000 and will be presented annually, with the inaugural prize awarded on November 25th.

ONE of the six authors shortlisted for the women-only Orange Prize yesterday backed calls for a new literary award – for men. Sadie Jones was speaking after critics of the 12-year-old prize complained loudly of sex discrimination. A men's prize could help get more boys reading, she said.