awards

…last night Nikita Lalwani's Gifted, an ambitious and widely acclaimed debut novel about immigration and the perils of a precocious childhood…[carried]off the inaugural Desmond Elliott prize. But Lalwani will not be carrying home the £10,000 winner's cheque, and plans to donate it instead to human rights campaigners Liberty.

Spain has named writer Margaret Atwood winner of one of the country's most distinguished arts prizes, sometimes likened to the European country's version of the Nobel Prize. The Canadian literary icon was named winner Wednesday of the Prince of Asturias Prize for Letters.

It’s the supreme accolade for crime fiction and, at £20,000, the most lucrative crime-writing prize in the world. Natasha Cooper reveals the contenders for the Duncan Lawrie Dagger.

Two stories of neglected history have won this year's Commonwealth writers' prizes. African-Canadian novelist Lawrence Hill has won the headline prize for his novel The Book of Negroes… [while] the parallel prize for a first novel was presented to Tahmima Anam for A Golden Age.

A characteristically diverse group of books make the shortlist for this year's Royal Society science book of the year award. As well as maths, psychology, genetics, astronomy and ecology, there is also room for a spot of romance, shooting and what is claimed to be the first ever "molecular autobiography".

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.