The National Book Award Longlists have been announced! The books are broken out into five separate categories: Young People's Literature, Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Translated Literature. See how many of the books you can read from this list before the winners are announced on November 14. Many of these books on this list are in our library so come check one or two out!

                  

Pulitzer Prize Winners 2017

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year "for a smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the violence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to contemporary America." 

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond was the general nonfiction winner, recognized "for a deeply researched expose that showed how mass evictions after the 2008 economic crash were less a consequence than a cause of poverty."

The Pulitzer Prize website features the full list of winners including prizes for excellence in journalism, drama, history, poetry, and music.

Stop by the library to check out one of these award winning books or if you can't make it here, check out the ebook from home.

National Book Awards 2015

The National Book Award winners will be announced next week. The purpose of the National Book Awards is to recognize the best of American literature. In order to include more books, the National Book Foundation has recently changed the rules. First, ten books are compiled for the longlist, then that gets narrowed down to 5 finalists and finally one winner is chosen in each category. Familiarize yourself with the finalists before the announcement of the winners next week and feel free to check out one (or more!) of the titles we have in the library.

Fiction:


Nonfiction:


Poetry:


Young People's Literature:

Nobel Prize in Literature Goes to Canada's Alice Munro

The Swedish Academy has named short-story master Alice Munro this year's recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. You can learn more at NPR.org or on the New York Times site. Listen to one of Munro's stories, "Axis," read and discussed on the New Yorker Fiction podcast. We have her short-story collections Dear Life and Runaway in the library--come check them out!

The New National Book Awards

Last week, the first ever long lists for the National Book Awards were announced. Previously, five finalists would be announced and then a winner selected by the judges who were all writers.  This year, a longlist comprised of ten books will be announced first and the judges will now include literary critics, librarians, and booksellers.  There are still four awards given out in four different categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People's Literature.  Read more about these changes in Salon and stop by the library to read one of the books and decide for yourself what belongs on the final list.  

  
   

Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced

Pulitzer Prize winners were announced this week and the prize for fiction goes to The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson, following last year when no fiction title was deemed worthy of the award. The nonfiction winner is Gilbert King for his book Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America. Check out reviews of the two books in The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor. The New York Times was the big winner in journalism, taking home four awards.  A full list of Pulitzer Prize winners can be found here.  

National Book Award Winners

Nonfiction

Fiction

Young People's Literature

Poetry

The National Book Awards were announced this week on the National Book Foundation's website.  Stop by the library to check out one of these award winning titles.  If you can't make it in to check out a full book, The New Yorker has covered selected works by the winners and nominees.  

Award Winning Books Announced Today!

The American Library Association announced today the winners of several book awards including the Printz Award winner, Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley, given for a book with the highest literary merit in young adult literature, and the 10 winners of the Alex Award*, given to books that have strong appeal for teenagers despite being written for an adult audience.  Find additional award winners and honor books in the LA Times or stop by the library to check out some of these titles.

*Alex Award winners: Big Girl Small by Rachel DeWoskin, In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard, The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan, The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens by Brooke Hauser, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, Robopocalypse: A Novel by Daniel H. Wilson, Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward, The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt: A Novel in Pictures by Caroline Preston, The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo

National Book Award Winners Announced

The 2011 National Book Award winners were announced yesterday.  Read about the winners or come check one of them out of the library.

Fiction: Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward - Read an interview with Ward at PBS

Non-fiction: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt - Read a review in the New York Times

Poetry: Head Off & Split by Nikky Finney - Read an interview with Finney at Oxford American

Young People's Literature: Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai - Read a review in Publisher's Weekly

Controversy Over Man Booker International Prize Winner Philip Roth

Philip Roth was announced as the winner of the Man Booker International Prize today, but the decision to give him this prestigious award for fiction was not unanimous.  The Arts section of the New York Times tells the back story of Carmen Callil, one of the judges that felt so strongly that Roth was undeserving that she officially withdrew from the panel.

Look for her post in the Guardian this Saturday May 21 for an opinion piece detailing why she thinks Roth undeserving of this prize.

Do you think the prize is warranted?  The only way to decide is to read his work yourself.  Come check out one of the Philip Roth novels we have in the library!

American Pastoral
Goodbye Columbus
The Human Stain
I Married a Communist
The Plot Against America
Portnoy’s Complaint