G&A: The Contest Blog

The shortlist for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious annual awards for literary fiction, was announced today.

The finalists include: Tan Twan Eng for The Garden of Evening Mists (Myrmidon Books), Deborah Levy for Swimming Home (And Other Stories), Hilary Mantel for Bring up the Bodies (Fourth Estate), Alison Moore for The Lighthouse (Salt), Will Self for Umbrella (Bloomsbury), and Jeet Thayil for Narcopolis (Faber & Faber).

The six short-listed titles were culled from the original longlist of twelve, which were announced in July.

On the Man Booker website, Chair of Judges Peter Stothard said: “After re-reading an extraordinary longlist of twelve, it was the pure power of prose that settled most debates. We loved the shock of language shown in so many different ways and were exhilarated by the vigour and vividly defined values in the six books that we chose—and in the visible confidence of the novel's place in forming our words and ideas.”

The Man Booker Prize is given annually for a work of fiction published in the previous year by a writer from the United Kingdom, British Commonwealth, or Republic of Ireland. The winner of the 2012 prize will be announced at an awards ceremony in London on October 16. Each of the six short-listed writers is awarded £2,500. The winner receives an additional £50,000.

Hilary Mantel’s Bring up the Bodies is the follow-up to Wolf Hall, the first in a trilogy, which took the prize in 2009. Ladbrokes, the British betting firm who has recently set its sights on literary awards, projects Mantel to win the prize again this year. 

In the video below, Mantel introduces Bring up the Bodies, which was published this past May.

Last week, the British betting firm Ladbrokes announced that Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami had emerged as the favorite to win this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, coming in with 10/1 odds. As of yesterday, the international literary star has moved up in the rankings to 7/1—with none other than Bob Dylan, at 10/1, following tightly on his heels. Dutch novelist Cees Nooteboom and Chinese author Mo Yan are right behind them, at 12/1.

Last year, the eventual Nobel winner, Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, was given 9/2 odds. But he wasn’t expected to win: Syrian poet Adonis was the final favorite, coming in at 4/1 (this year, Adonis still makes the top twenty, but has fallen to 14/1). Dylan was also a close candidate last year, at one point late in the betting even coming in as the number-one pick, pulling ahead of Murakami (who was at the time 8/1), Adonis, and eventual winner Tranströmer.

In the past decade, North America hasn’t fared so well in the Nobel race. The last American to win the prestigious literary prize was Toni Morrison, who won in 1993. Aside from Dylan, the only United States authors to make it into the top twenty this year include Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, and Phillip Roth. Canada, who has never had a Nobel Laureate, tops the list with short story writer Alice Munro (whose newest collection, Dear Life, will be released by Knopf in November), at 20/1.  Other Canadians to make it into the betting pool this year include Margaret Atwood, at 50/1, and poet Anne Carson, at 100/1.

Also sitting in the 20/1 position is Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, whose forthcoming memoir, There Was a Country, will be released by Penguin in October. Hovering just above him in the line-up are Umberto Eco at 25/1, and Don DeLillo, Joyce Carol Oates, and E. L. Doctorow, all at 33/1. Joining Atwood at 50/1 are Ian McEwan, Maya Angelou, Chang-Rae Lee, and Peter Carey. And the list goes on and on, including such contemporary literary greats as Kazuo Ishiguro, Ursula Le Guin, David Malouf, Salman Rushdie, A. S. Byatt, Milan Kundera, Julian Barnes, and John Ashbery, all at 66/1; and Michael Ondaatje, Paul Auster, Louise Glück, and Jonathan Franzen coming in at 100/1. 

Candidates to win the Nobel Prize in Literature may be nominated by Swedish Academy members or esteemed international literary figures. Earlier this year, Peter Englund, the head of the Swedish Academy, revealed that 46 of the 210 nominated writers for this year's prize were first-time selections.

The 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced later this fall. For more information about the prize, visit the Nobel Prize website.

The Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine have announced the winners of the 2012 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowships. The prestigious $15,000 awards are given annually to five emerging United States poets between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one.

The 2012 fellows are: Reginald Dwayne Betts, the author of a poetry collection, Shahid Reads His Own Palm (Alice James Books, 2010), and a memoir, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (Avery, 2009); Nicholas Friedman, a lecturer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York; Richie Hofmann, who has received an Academy of American Poets Prize and the AWP Intro Journal Award for Poetry; Rickey Laurentiis, whose poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Callaloo, the Indiana Review, and jubilat; and Jacob Saenz, who received the Letras Latinas Residency Fellowship in 2011 and is currently an associate editor of the poetry magazine RHINO.

The editors of Poetry magazine chose the winning manuscripts from more than a thousand submissions. On the Poetry Foundation website, editor Christian Wiman said of the winners, “The history of Poetry is filled with some of the best-known names in American poetry; my guess is that these young poets will be among those we'll be talking about in the years to come.”

The five Ruth Lilly Fellows will have their work featured in the November issue of Poetry and on the Poetry Foundation website.

Established in 1989 by philanthropist Ruth Lilly to “encourage the further writing and study of poetry,” the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship program gives $75,000 in fellowship prizes each year. The program is operated by the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation, which also publishes Poetry magazine.

Founded by poet, editor, and literary scholar Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry is the oldest monthly magazine dedicated to the form. The magazine has published the work of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and Carl Sandburg, among many other distinguished poets, as well as numerous emerging writers. The Poetry Foundation is a literary organization that “exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience.”

The 2012 Ruth Lilly Prize in Poetry, an annual award of $100,000 given by the Poetry Foundation to a living United States poet, was awarded to poet W. S. Di Piero this past spring.

The New York City-based PEN American Center recently announced the winners of the 2012 PEN Literary Awards. For over fifty years, PEN has given awards to the most promising and distinguished voices in the literary community. This year, eighteen grants, awards, and fellowships have been given to emerging and established writers from all over the country. The following are just a few of this year's winners.

Susan Nussbaum received the inaugural PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction for her manuscript, Good Kings Bad Kings. Founded by author Barbara Kingsolver, the $25,000 prize is given biennially to an author for an unpublished novel that addresses issues of social justice. The prize also includes a publishing contract with Algonquin Books. Rosellen Brown, Margot Livesey, and Kathy Pories judged.

Vanessa Veselka won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for her novel, Zazen (Red Lemonade, 2011). The $25,000 award is given to a fiction writer whose debut work, published in the previous year, “represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise.” Lauren Groff, Dinaw Mengestu, and Nami Mun judged.

Fiction writer E. L. Doctorow won the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction. The $25,000 prize is given to a writer “whose body of work places him or her in the highest rank of American literature.” Don DeLillo, Jennifer Egan, and George Saunders judged.

James Gleick won the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award for The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (Pantheon Books, 2011). The $10,000 prize is given for a book of literary nonfiction on the subject of physical or biological sciences published in the previous year. Elizabeth Kolbert, Charles Mann, and Dava Sobel judged.

The late Christopher Hitchens received the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay for his essay collection Arguably (Twelve, 2011). The $5,000 award is given for a book of essays published in the previous year that “exemplifies the dignity and esteem of the essay form.” Robert Boyers, Janet Malcolm, and Ruth Reichl judged.

Robert K. Massie won the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography for Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (Random House, 2011). The $5,000 award is given for a biography published in the previous year. Blake Bailey, Daphne Merkin, and Honor Moore judged.

Fiction and nonfiction writer Siddhartha Deb won the PEN Open Book Award for his memoir, The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India (Faber & Faber, 2011). The $5,000 prize is given for a book by an author of color published in 2011. Alexander Chee, Mat Johnson, and Natasha Trethewey judged.

Poet Toi Derricotte won the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. The $5,000 prize is given to a poet whose “distinguished and growing body of work represents a notable presence in American literature.” Dan Chiasson, Aracelis Girmay, and A. Van Jordan judged.

Jen Hofer won the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for her translation of Negro Marfil/Ivory Black by Myriam Moscona (Les Figues Press, 2011). The $3,000 award is given for a book-length translation of poetry into English published in the previous year. Christian Hawkey judged.

Bill Johnston won the PEN Translation Prize for his translation of Stone Upon Stone by Wiesław Myśliwski (Archipelago Books, 2011). The $3,000 prize is given for a book-length translation of prose into English published in the previous year. Aron Aji, Donald Breckenridge, and Minna Proctor judged.

Margaret Sayers Peden received the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, which is given to a translator “whose career has demonstrated a commitment to excellence through the body of his or her work.”

The winners and finalists of this year's awards will be honored at the 2012 Literary Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, October 23 in New York City. PEN will begin accepting submissions for its 2013 Literary Awards on October 1. For a comprehensive list of this year’s winners and finalists, and for information and guidelines for the 2013 prizes, visit the PEN American Center website.

Author Rick Moody will serve as the judge for the Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review’s inaugural Gertrude Stein Award for Fiction. The winner will receive $500 and publication in the Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review.

Eckleburg, the literary journal housed by the Johns Hopkins University M.A. Program in writing, launched the first annual competition, which is currently open for submissions, this past July. Writers, editors, publishers, and agents may submit short stories of up to 5,000 words, along with a $10 entry fee, by January 1, 2013. Second- and third-place winners will also receive publication in the journal.

Taking its name from Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, the online quarterly publishes original fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and translation from emerging and established writers. In addition to work by Rick Moody, the journal has also featured original writing by Stephen Dixon, Moira Egan, and David Wagoner. The journal looks for character-driven storytelling that is eclectic and experimental; it welcomes magical realism, surrealism, metarealism, and offbeat realism, and "humor that explores the gritty realities of the world and human experiences.

“It is Eckleburg‘s intention to represent writers, artists, musicians, and comedians as a contemporary and noninvasive collective, each work evidence of its own artistry, not as a reflection of an editor’s vision of what an issue 'should' be," the journal’s website states. “It is our intention to create an experience in which readers and viewers can think artistically, intellectually, socially, and independently. We welcome brave, honest voices.”

Rick Moody is the author of five novels, including Garden State, which won the Pushcart Press Editors’ Book Award in 1992, as well as four short story collections and a memoir. He has received a PEN/Martha Albrand Award, an Addison Metcalf Award, the Paris Review’s Aga Khan Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

For more information on the Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review or the Gertrude Stein Award, visit the website. 

The Center for Fiction and the American Booksellers Association have announced the short list for the 2012 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. Of the seven finalists for the prize, the winner—to be announced in December—will receive $10,000.

The seven short-listed titles include: Absolution (Riverhead Books) by Patrick Flanery; Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ecco) by Ben Fountain; The Dog Stars (Knopf) by Peter Heller; Girlchild (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Tupelo Hassman; The Snow Child (Reagan Arthur Books) by Eowyn Ivey; Seating Arrangements (Knopf) by Maggie Shipstead; and Alif the Unseen (Grove/Atlantic) by G. Willow Wilson. Each of the finalists will receive $1,000.

Established in 2005 as the John Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize, the Flaherty-Dunnan Prize is given annually for a debut novel published in the previous year. Author and Center for Fiction board member Nancy Dunnan, who has supported the award since 2010, renamed it for her father, the journalist Ray W. Flaherty. 

In order to help promote the seven short-listed titles, the New York City-based Center for Fiction announced a new partnership with the American Booksellers Association this past January. The ABA will select 450 United States bookstores to receive displays, posters, and other promotional materials for the seven books. Additionally, sixty-five independent booksellers from across the country were asked to serve as first-round readers for the 2012 prize.

“We believe that there are no better readers than the people who continue against all seeming odds to own and operate independent bookstores,” Center for Fiction executive director Noreen Tomassi said in a press release. Once the first round of readers recommended a long list, a panel of judges comprised of distinguished American writers then selected the seven finalists.

The winner will be announced at the Center for Fiction’s annual benefit and awards dinner on December 11 in New York City.

Past winners of the prize include The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead Books) by Junot Díaz; Lamb (Other Press) by Bonnie Nadzam; Matterhorn (Grove/Atlantic) by Karl Marlantes; Woodsburner (Nan A. Talese) by John Pipkin; The Good Thief (The Dial Press) by Hannah Tinti; and Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Viking) by Marisha Pessl.

Willow Books is currently accepting submissions for its first annual Literature Awards. A prize of $2,000 will be given for a book-length work of literary prose, and a prize of $1,000 will be given for a full-length collection of poetry. The two winning manuscripts will be published in spring 2013 by Willow Books.

The Willow Books Literature Awards are given to United States writers from culturally diverse backgrounds. “Our mission is to develop, publish, and promote writers typically underrepresented in the market,” the press’s website states. Ten finalists will be announced on January 21, 2013, and the winners will be announced at an awards ceremony and reading in Chicago later in the spring. The remaining eight finalists will have selections of their work published in an e-book anthology. All finalists for the awards are expected to attend the ceremony and assist in future online publicity for the press.

Judges for the poetry prize include poets John Murillo, Ching-in Chen, and Naomi Ayala; judges for the prize in literary prose include fiction and nonfiction writers Pauline Kaldas, Latha Viswanathan, and Ana-Maurine Lara.

“We are excited about our new competition and the caliber of our judges,” says Randall Horton, editor of Willow Books. “We are also planning to host workshops during the awards weekend, so watch for updates.”

Poets may submit three copies of a collection between 50 and 125 pages, along with a $25 entry fee; prose writers may submit three copies of a novel, short story collection, memoir, or essay collection (totaling no more than 100,000 words), along with a $30 entry fee. The deadline for submissions is October 1. Submissions are accepted via postal mail only.

Willow Books, established in 2007 as an imprint of the Detroit-based Aquarius Books, publishes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Some of the press’s recent authors include Tara Betts, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Krista Franklin, and Tony Medina.

Willow also partners with the Cave Canem Foundation to publish the biennial Cave Canem Anthology, a collection of poetry by Cave Canem faculty and fellows.   

For the required entry form and complete submissions guidelines for the Literary Awards, and for more information about Willow Books, visit their website.