The 2009 winners of the United Kingdom's Costa Book Awards, formerly the Whitbread Literary Awards, were revealed last night. In poetry, three-time Costa nominee Christopher Reid won for his collection A Scattering (Arete Books), also shortlisted for the soon-to-be-announced Forward Prize. Colm Tóibín won for his novel Brooklyn (Viking) and Raphael Selbourne received the first novel award for Beauty (Tindal Street Press). Each received five thousand pounds (approximately eight thousand dollars).
From among the genre honorees, this year's judges, Tom Bradby, Josephine Hart, Marie Helvin, Gary Kemp, Dervla Kirwan, and Caroline Quentin, will select an overall winner, to be announced on January 26. Competing against the poetry and fiction winners are children's book prize recipient Patrick Ness, honored for The Ask and the Answer (Walker Books), and biographer Graham Farmelo, who won for The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius (Faber and Faber). The author of the "Book of the Year" will receive twenty-five thousand pounds (approximately forty thousand dollars).
In the video below, Tóibín reads from his winning novel at the 2009 PEN World Voices Festival.