Costa Book Awards (2008-2013)

from Costa Book Awards accessed 1/7/14

The Costa Book Awards honour some of the most outstanding books of the year written by authors based in the UK and Ireland. There are five categories - First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book - with one of the five winners chosen as Book of the Year, announced at an awards ceremony in London every January.

Launched in 1971 as the Whitbread Literary Awards, they became the Whitbread Book Awards in 1985, with Costa taking over in 2006.
* * * * *
From the Telegraph, accessed 1/7/14
Winners have been named in the five Costa Book Awards categories, the Telegraph reported. Each author receives £5,000 (US$8,202) and is now eligible for the £30,000 Costa Book of the Year prize, which will be announced later this month.

2013 Costa category winners are:
Novel: Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
First novel: The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer
Biography: The Pike by Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Poetry: Drysalter by Michael Symmons Roberts
Children's: Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse by Chris Riddell
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2011-2012 from Wikipedia.com
2012 Costa Book Awards
First Novel Award — Francesca Segal, The Innocents
Novel Award — Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies dagger
Children's Book Award — Sally Gardner, Maggot Moon
Poetry Award — Kathleen Jamie, The Overhaul
Biography Award — Mary Talbot and Bryan Talbot, Dotter of Her Father's Eyes
Short Story Award — Avril Joy, "Millie and Bird"

2011 Costa Book Awards
First Novel Award — Christie Watson, Tiny Sunbirds Far Away
Novel Award — Andrew Miller, Pure dagger
Children's Book Award — Moira Young, Blood Red Road
Poetry Award — Carol Ann Duffy, The Bees
Biography Award — Matthew Hollis, Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas
* * * * *

Category winners for the 2010 Costa Book Awards, which honor books by writers in the U.K. and Ireland, include:

Novel: The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell
First novel: Witness the Night by Kishwar Desai
Biography: The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal
Poetry: Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott --Winner!
Children's book: Out of Shadows by Jason Wallace

2010 Shortlist
Costa First Novel Award
Witness the Night by Kishwar Desai
Coconut Unlimited by Nikesh Shukla
The Temple-Goers by Aatish Taseer
Not Quite White by Simon Thirsk

Costa Novel Award
Whatever You Love by Louise Doughty
The Blasphemer by Nigel Farndale
The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

Costa Biography Award
How to Live A Life of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell
My Father's Fortune by Michael Frayn
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal

Costa Poetry Award
Standard Midland by Roy Fisher
The Wrecking Light by Robin Robertson
Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott
New Light for the Old Dark by Sam Willetts

Costa Children's Book Award
Flyaway by Lucy Christopher
Annexed by Sharon Dogar
Bartimaeus: The Ring of Solomon by Jonathan Stroud
Out of Shadows by Jason Wallace

2009's shortlisted books
Costa First Novel Award
* The Finest Type of English Womanhood by Rachel Heath
* John the Revelator by Peter Murphy
* Beauty by Raphael Selbourne --Winner!
* The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw

Costa Novel Award
* Family Album by Penelope Lively

* Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

* The Elephant Keeper by Christopher Nicholson
* Brooklyn by Colm Toibin -- Winner!

Costa Biography Award
* The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius by Graham Farmelo --Winner!
* The Music Room by William Fiennes
* Coda by Simon Gray
* Dancing to the Precipice by Caroline Moorehead

Costa Poetry Award

* Angels Over Elsinore by Clive James
* One Eye'd Leigh by Katharine Kilalea
* Darwin: A Life in Poems by Ruth Padel
* A Scattering by Christopher Reid -- Winner, Costa Book of the Year

Costa Children's Award
* Solace of the Road by Siobhan Dowd
* Troubadour by Mary Hoffman
* The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness --Winner!
* Guantanamo Boy by Anna Perera


2008 Costa Shortlist:

Costa First Novel Award
* The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams
* The Outcast by Sadie Jones --Winner!
* Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
* Inside the Whale by Jennie Rooney

Costa Children's Award
* Ostrich Boys by Keith Gray
* The Carbon Diaries by Saci Lloyd
* Just Henry by Michelle Magorian --Winner!

* Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine

Costa Biography Award
* Somewhere Towards the End by Diana Athill --Winner!
* Bloomsbury Ballerina by Judith Mackrell
* If You Don't Know Me By Now: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton by Sathnam Sanghera
* Chagall by Jackie Wullschlager

Costa Novel Award

* The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry --Winner!
* The Other Hand by Chris Cleave
* A Partisan's Daughter by Louis de Bernieres
* Trauma by Patrick McGrath

Costa Poetry Award

* For All We Know by Ciaran Carson
* The Broken Word by Adam Foulds --Winner!
* Sunday at the Skin Launderette by Kathryn Simmonds
* Salvation Jane by Greta Stoddart

National Book Critics Circle Award (2009-10)

2010 Awards information from Critical Mass accessed 1/24/11

Fiction
Jennifer Egan, A Visit From The Goon Squad --Winner!
Jonathan Franzen. Freedom.
David Grossman, To The End Of The Land
Hans Keilson.Comedy In A Minor Key.
Paul Murray. Skippy Dies

Biography
Sarah Bakewell. How To Live, Or A Life Of Montaigne --Winner!
Selina Hastings. The Secret Lives Of Somerset Maugham: A Biography
Yunte Huang. Charlie Chan: The Untold Story Of The Honorable Detective And His Rendezvous With American History
Thomas Powers. The Killing Of Crazy Horse
Tom Segev. Simon Wiesenthal: The Lives And Legends.

Autobiography
Kai Bird, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978
David Dow, The Autobiography of an Execution,
Christopher Hitchens Hitch-22: A Memoir
Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Hiroshima in the Morning
Patti Smith, Just Kids
Darin Strauss, Half a Life  --Winner!

Criticism
Elif Batuman. The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
Terry Castle, The Professor and Other Writings
Clare Cavanagh. Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West
 --Winner!
Susie Linfield. The Cruel Radiance
Ander Monson. Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir

Nonfiction
Barbara Demick. Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
S.C. Gwynne. Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in America
Jennifer Homans. Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet
Siddhartha Mukherjee. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Isabel Wilkerson. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration --Winner!

Poetry
Anne Carson. Nox
Kathleen Graber. The Eternal City
Terrance Hayes. Lighthead
Kay Ryan. The Best of It
C.D. Wright. One with Others: [a little book of her days] --Winner!

The National Book Critics Circle, founded in 1974 at the Algonquin, is a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization consisting of some 600 active book reviewers who are interested in honoring quality writing and communicating with one another about common concerns. It is managed by a 24-member all-volunteer board of directors. For more information, go to www.bookcritics.org.


from Critical Mass the blog of the National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors accessed 1/25/10.

On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the National Book Critics Circle announced the finalists for its book awards for the publishing year 2009 at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in New York.

Autobiography:
Diana Athill, Somewhere Towards the End  -- Winner!
Debra Gwartney, Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love
Mary Karr, Lit
Kati Marton, Enemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America
Edmund White, City Boy

Biography:
Blake Bailey, Cheever: A Life  -- Winner!
Brad Gooch, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor
Benjamin Moser, Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector
Stanislao G. Pugliese, Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone
Martha A. Sandweiss, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line

Criticism:
Eula Biss, Notes From No Man's Land: American Essays  -- Winner!
Stephen Burt, Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry
Morris Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression
David Hajdu, Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture
Greg Milner, Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music

Fiction:
Bonnie Jo Campbell, American Salvage
Marlon James, The Book of Night Women
Michelle Huneven, Blame
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Holt) -- Winner!
Jayne Anne Phillips, Lark and Termite

Nonfiction:
Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternative History (Penguin Press)
Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City
Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science  -- Winner!
Tracy Kidder, Strength in What Remain
William T. Vollmann, Imperial

Poetry:
Rae Armantrout, Versed (Wesleyan) -- Winner!
Louise Glück, A Village Life
D.A. Powell, Chronic
Eleanor Ross Taylor, Captive Voices: New and Selected Poems, 1960–2008
Rachel Zucker, Museum of Accidents

Los Angeles Times Book Awards 1980-2009

2010 Finalists
2010 Robert Kirsch Award
Robert Kirsch, whose idea became the inspiration for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, was the newspaper’s book critic from 1952 until his death in 1980. In addition to writing criticism, Kirsch was a novelist, editor and teacher.

Winner Beverly Cleary

2010 Innovator’s Award
The Innovator’s Award recognizes the people and institutions that are doing cutting edge work to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future, whether in terms of new business models, new technologies or new applications of narrative art.

Winner
Powell’s Books, Portland, Oregon

Biography Finalists
Miranda Carter, George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I
Selina Hastings, The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham (Random House)
Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience & Redemption
Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir (TWELVE/Hachette Book Group)
Edmund Morris, Colonel Roosevelt (Random House)

Current Interest Finalists
Jonathan Alter, The Promise: President Obama, Year One (Simon & Schuster)
Sebastian Junger, War (TWELVE/Hachette Book Group)
Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (W. W. Norton & Company)
Joe Nocera & Bethany McLean, All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis
Patti Smith, Just Kids (Ecco/HarperCollins)

Fiction Finalists
Rick Bass, Nashville Chrome (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Richard Bausch, Something is Out There: Stories (Knopf)
Jennifer Egan, A Visit From the Goon Squad (Knopf)
Jonathan Franzen, Freedom (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Frederick Reiken, Day for Night (Reagan Arthur Books/Hachette Book Group)

Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction Finalists
Peter Bognanni, The House of Tomorrow (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam)
Leslie Jamison, The Gin Closet (Free Press/Simon & Schuster)
Michael Sledge, The More I Owe You (Counterpoint)
Christine Sneed, Portraits of a Few People I’ve Made Cry: Stories (University of Massachusetts Press)
Tatjana Soli, The Lotus Eaters (St. Martin’s Press)

Graphic Novel Finalists
Adam Hines, Duncan the Wonder Dog: Show One (Adhouse Books)
Dash Shaw, Bodyworld (Pantheon)
Karl Stevens, The Lodger (KSA Publishing)
C. Tyler, You’ll Never Know, Book Two: Collateral Damage (Fantagraphics)
Jim Woodring, Weathercraft (Fantagraphics)

History Finalists
Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (The Penguin Press)
John W. Dower, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq
Susan Dunn, Roosevelt’s Purge: How FDR Fought To Change the Democratic Party
Thomas Powers,The Killing of Crazy Horse (Knopf)
Steven Solomon,Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization (HarperCollins)

Mystery / Thriller Finalists
Tom Franklin, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter (William Morrow)
Tana French, Faithful Place (Viking)
Laura Lippman, I’d Know You Anywhere (William Morrow)
Stuart Neville, Collusion (SoHo Press)
Kelli Stanley, City of Dragons (Minotaur Books/A Thomas Dunne Book)

Poetry Finalists
Henri Cole, Pierce the Skin: Selected Poems, 1982-2007 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Maxine Kumin, Where I Live: New & Selected Poems 1990-2010
Yehoshua November, God’s Optimism (Main Street Rag)
Craig Santos Perez, From Unincorporated Territory {Saina}, (Omnidawn)
Ed Roberson, To See the Earth Before the End of the World, (Wesleyan University Press)

Science & Technology Finalists
Oren Harman, The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness (W. W. Norton & Company)
Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (Scribner)
Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (Bloomsbury USA)
Lauren Redniss, Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout (It Books/HarperCollins)
Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown)

Young Adult Literature Finalists
Marc Aronson & Marina Budhos, Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom and Science
Stephanie Hemphill, Wicked Girls: A Novel of the Salem Witch Trials
Jonathan Stroud, The Ring of Solomon 
Megan Whalen Turner, A Conspiracy of Kings (Greenwillow/HarperCollins)
Rick Yancey, The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist)

The winners of the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, including the first graphic novel award, are:

Biography: Linda Gordon for Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (Norton)
Current Interest: Dave Eggers for Zeitoun (McSweeney's)
Fiction: Rafael Yglesias, for A Happy Marriage (Scribner)
Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction: Philipp Meyer for American Rust
Graphic Novel: David Mazzucchelli for Asterios Polyp (Pantheon)
History: Kevin Starr for Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance 1950–1963
Mystery/Thriller: Stuart Neville for The Ghosts of Belfast (Soho Press)
Poetry: Brenda Hillman for Practical Water (Wesleyan University Press)
Science and Technology: Graham Farmelo for The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom
Young Adult Literature: Elizabeth Partridge for Marching for Freedom: Walk Together Children and Don't You Grow Weary

In addition, Evan S. Connell won the Robert Kirsch Award lifetime achievement award, and Dave Eggers won the first Innovator's Award.

The awards were announced during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, held this past weekend. For finalists and other information, go to latimesbookprizes.com.

Winners of the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Awards were named last Friday at "a scaled-down awards ceremony . . . with as much enthusiasm and humor as any of the more grandly produced affairs of recent years," the Times reported.

The winners included:

Biography: Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching by Paula J. Giddings
Current Interest: Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency by Barton Gellman
Fiction: Home: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson
Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction: Finding Nouf: A Novel by Zoe Ferraris
History: Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe by Mark Mazower
Mystery/Thriller--Envy the Night by Michael Koryta
Poetry: Watching the Spring Festival: Poems by Frank Bidart
Science and Technology: The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics by Leonard Susskind
Young Adult Literature: Nation by Terry Pratchett

Robert Kirsch Award Winner: Robert Alter (mostly biblical books, what is this award?)

2008 Shortlist:
Biography:
H.W. Brands, "A Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt"
Ernest Freeberg, "Democracy's Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent"
Paula J. Giddings, "Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching"
Jon Meacham, "American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House"
Jackie Wullschlager, "Chagall: A Biography"

Current Interest:
Steve Coll, "The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century"
Dexter Filkins, "The Forever War"
Barton Gellman, "Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency"
Jane Mayer, "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals"
Jill Bolte Taylor, "My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey"

Fiction:
Sebastian Barry, "The Secret Scripture"
Richard Price, "Lush Life"

Marilynne Robinson, "Home"

Joan Silber, "The Size of the World"

Marisa Silver, "The God of War"

Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction:
Uwem Akpan, "Say You're One of Them"
Zoe Ferraris, "Finding Nouf"
Sadie Jones, "The Outcast"
Roma Tearne, "Mosquito"

David Wroblewski, "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle"

History:
Michael Dobbs, "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War"
Drew Gilpin Faust, "This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War"
Mark Mazower, "Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe"
Thomas J. Sugrue, "Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North"
Rick Wartzman, "Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath"

Mystery/Thriller:
Colin Harrison, "The Finder"
Michael Koryta, "Envy the Night"
Simon Lewis, "Bad Traffic: An Inspector Jian Novel"
Nina Revoyr, "The Age of Dreaming"

Tom Rob Smith, "Child 44"

Poetry
Frank Bidart, "Watching the Spring Festival: Poems"
Jorie Graham, "Sea Change: Poems"
Marie Howe, "The Kingdom of Ordinary Time: Poems"
Cole Swensen, "Ours"
Connie Voisine, "Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream"

Science & Technology:
Avery Gilbert, "What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life"
Kenneth R. Miller, "Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul"
Martin J.S. Rudwick, "Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform"
Leonard Susskind, "The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics"
Carl Zimmer, "Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life"

Young Adult Literature:
Candace Fleming, "The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary"

Neil Gaiman, "The Graveyard Book"

Oscar Hijuelos, "Dark Dude"

Nate Powell, "Swallow Me Whole"

Terry Pratchett, "Nation"

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Since 1980, the Los Angeles Times has awarded a set of annual book prizes. The Prizes "currently have nine single-title categories: biography, current interest, fiction, first fiction (the Art Seidenbaum Award added in 1991), history, mystery/thriller (category added in 2000), poetry, science and technology (category added in 1989), and young adult fiction (category added in 1998). In addition, the Robert Kirsch Award is presented annually to a living author with a substantial connection to the American West whose contribution to American letters deserves special recognition".

The Book Prize program was founded by the late Art Seidenbaum, a Los Angeles Times book editor from 1978 to 1985; an award named after him was added a year after his death in 1990. The Robert Kirsch Award is named after the longtime Times book critic who died in 1980. Works are eligible during the year of their first US publication in English, though English does not have to be the original language of the work. The author of each winning book and the Kirsch Award recipient receives a citation and $1,000.


Previous Winners:

Biography

2007: Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore
2006: Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler
2005: Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse, the Conquest of Colour, 1909-1954 by Hilary Spurling
2004: de Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan
2003: American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization by Neil Smith
2002: Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 3 by Robert A. Caro
2001: Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris
2000: Jefferson Davis, American by William J. Cooper, Jr.
1999: Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
1998: Lindbergh by A. Scott Berg
1997: Whittaker Chambers: A Biography by Sam Tanenhaus

1996: Angela's Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt

1995: Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949 by Doris Lessing
1994: Shot in the Heart by Mikal Gilmore
1993; Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer by John Mack Faragher
1992: Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume One 1884-1993 by Blanche Wiesen Cook
1991: Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1874-1952 by T.H. Watkins
1990: A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt by Geoffrey C. Ward
1989: This Boy's Life: A Memoir by Tobias Wolff
1988: Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom by Brenda Maddox
1987: Hemingway by Kenneth S. Lynn
1986: Alexander Pope: A Life by Maynard Mack
1985: Solzhenitsyn by Michael Scammell
1984: The Nightmare of Reason by Ernst Pawel
1983: The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House by Seymour Hersh
1982: Waldo Emerson: A Biography by Gay Wilson Allen
1981: Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough
1980: (Biography award concurrent with this year's History award)


Current interest

2007: Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point by Elizabeth D. Samet
2006: Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance by Ian Buruma
2005: Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War, by Anthony Shadid
2004: Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War by Evan Wright
2003: The New Chinese Empire -- And What It Means for the United States by Ross Terrill
2002: Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex by Judith Levine
2001: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
2000: Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War by Frances FitzGerald
1999: Sidewalk (with Photographs by Ovie Carter) by Mitchell Duneier
1998: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch
1997: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman
1996: Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War by Peter Maass
1995: Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black by Gregory Howard Williams
1994: Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger
1993: Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority by Peter Skerry
1992: The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama
1991: Why Americans Hate Politics: The Death of the Democratic Process by E.J. Dionne, Jr.
1990: Disappearing through the Skylight: Culture and Technology in the Twentieth Century by O.B. Hardison, Jr.
1989: Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963 by Taylor Branch
1988: Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country by William Greider
1987: The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins
1986: Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White by Joseph Lelyveld
1985: Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life by Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M. Tipton
1984: Cities and the Wealth of Nations by Jane Jacobs
1983: Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy
1982: The Fate of the Earth by Jonathan Schell
1981: Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number by Jacobo Timerman
1980: Without Fear or Favor by Harrison Salisbury [Winner of the General Award--no Current Interest Award this year]


Fiction

2008: Home by Marilynne Robinson

2007: Be Near Me by Andrew O'Hagan
2006: A Woman in Jerusalem by A. B. Yehoshua
2005: Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel García Márquez
2004: The Master by Colm Tóibín
2003: Train: A Novel by Pete Dexter
2002: Atonement: A Novel by Ian McEwan
2001: Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison
2000: Assorted Fire Events: Stories by David Means
1999: Freedom Song: Three Novels by Amit Chaudhuri
1998: The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald
1997: In the Rogue Blood by James Carlos Blake
1996: A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
1995: The Blue Afternoon by William Boyd
1994: Remembering Babylon by David Malouf

1993: Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver

1992: Maus II, A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman
1991: White People by Allan Gurganus
1990: Lantern Slides by Edna O'Brien
1989: The Heart of the Country by Fay Weldon
1988: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Marquez
1987: Fools Crow by James Welch

1986: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

1985: Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

1984: The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
1983: Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally
1982: A Flag for Sunrise by Robert Stone
1981: The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas
1980: The Second Coming by Walker Percy


History

2008: Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe by Mark Mazower
2007: Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner
2006: The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
2005: Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves by Adam Hochschild
2004: Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism by Geoffrey R. Stone
2003: An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America by Henry Wiencek
2002: Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael B. Oren
2001: Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein
2000: The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach by Alice Kaplan
1999: Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower
1998: The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity by Roy Porter
1997: A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution by Orlando Figes
1996: Black Sea by Neal Ascherson
1995: Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America by Jackson Lears
1994: Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 by George Chauncey
1993: New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery by Anthony Grafton
1992: Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families under Fascism by Alexander Stille
1991: The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America by Nicholas Lemann
1990: The Quest for El Cid by Richard Fletcher
1989: An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood by Neal Gabler
1988: Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner
1987: [No award in 1987]
1986: The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within by Geoffrey Hosking
1985: Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn by Evan S. Connell
1984: The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History by Robert Darnton
1983: The Wheels of Commerce by Fernand Braudel
1982: The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution, 1895-1980 by Jonathan D. Spence
1981: Land of Savagery/Land of Promise by Ray Allen Billington
1980: Walter Lippmann and the American Century by Ronald Steel


Mystery/thriller

2008: Envy the Night by Michael Koryta
2007: The Indian Bride by Karin Fossum, translated by Charlotte Barslund
2006: Echo Park by Michael Connelly
2005: Legends by Robert Little
2004: Tijuana Straits by Kem Nunn
2003: Soul Circus by George P. Pelecanos
2002: Hell to Pay by George P. Pelecanos
2001: Silent Joe by T. Jefferson Parker
2000: A Place of Execution by Val McDermid
1999: [Award added in 2000]


Science and technology

2008: The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics by Leonard Susskind
2007: I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter
2006: In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind by Eric R. Kandel
2005: Before the Fallout: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima by Diana Preston
2004: The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change by Charles Wohlforth
2003: Protecting America’s Health: The FDA, Business, and One Hundred Years of Regulation by Philip J. Hilts
2002: Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA by Brenda Maddox
2001: The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies by Richard Hamblyn
2000: The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine by James Le Fanu, M.D.
1999: Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love by Dava Sobel
1998: Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce by Douglas Starr
1997: How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker
1996: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
1995: Naturalist by Edward O. Wilson
1994: The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner
1993: Fuzzy Logic: The Discovery of a Revolutionary Computer Technology -- and How It Is Changing Our World by Daniel McNeill and Paul Freiberger
1992: The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal by Jared Diamond
1991: The Truth about Chernobyl by Grigori Medvedev
1990: Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine by Jane S. Smith
1989: Peacemaking among Primates by Frans de Waal
1988: [Award added in 1989]


Poetry

* 2008: Watching the Spring Festival: Poems by Frank Bidart
* 2007: Old Heart: Poems by Stanley Plumly (W. W. Norton)
* 2006: Ooga-Booga by Frederick Seidel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
* 2005: Refusing Heaven: Poems by Jack Gilbert (Alfred A. Knopf)
* 2004: Inner Voices: Selected Poems, 1963-2003 by Richard Howard
* 2003: Collected Later Poems by Anthony Hecht (Alfred A. Knopf)
* 2002: The Watercourse: Poems by Cynthia Zarin (Alfred A. Knopf)
* 2001: The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos by Anne Carson
* 2000: The Throne of Labdacus by Gjertrud Schnackenberg (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
* 1999: Repair: Poems by C.K. Williams (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
* 1998: Mysteries of Small Houses by Alice Notley (Penguin Books)
* 1997: Black Zodiac by Charles Wright (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
* 1996: Mixed Company by Alan Shapiro (The University of Chicago Press)
* 1995: The Inferno of Dante by Robert Pinsky (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
* 1994: The Angel of History by Carolyn Forché (HarperCollins)
* 1993: My Alexandria by Mark Doty (University of Illinois Press)
* 1992: An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991 by Adrienne Rich
* 1991: What Work Is by Philip Levine (Alfred A. Knopf)
* 1990: The Color of Mesabi Bones by John Caddy (Milkweed)
* 1989: The One Day: A Poem in Three Parts by Donald Hall (Ticknor & Fields/
* 1988: New and Collected Poems by Richard Wilbur (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich)
* 1987: Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems by William Meredith (Alfred A.
* 1986: Collected Poems, 1948-1984 by Derek Walcott (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
* 1985: Cross Ties by X.J. Kennedy (University of Georgia Press)
* 1984: The Maximus Poems by Charles Olson (University of California Press)
* 1983: The Changing Light at Sandover by James Merrill (Atheneum)
* 1982: Plutonian Ode and Other Poems, 1977-1980 by Allen Ginsberg (City Lights)
* 1981: Three Pieces by Ntozake Shange (St. Martin's Press)
* 1980: Kill the Messenger by Robert Kelly (Black Sparrow)


Young adult fiction

* 2008: Nation by Terry Pratchett

* 2007: A Darkling Plain by Philip Reeve

* 2006: Tyrell by Coe Booth
* 2005: You and You and You by Per Nilsson, translated from the Swedish by Tara Chace
* 2004: Doing It by Melvin Burgess
* 2003: A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly
* 2002: Feed by M.T. Anderson
* 2001: The Land by Mildred D. Taylor
* 2000: Miracle's Boys by Jacqueline Woodson
* 1999: Frenchtown Summer by Robert Cormier

* 1998: Rules of the Road by Joan Bauer

* 1997: [Award added in 1998]


The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction

* 2008: Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris
* 2007: The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu
* 2006: White Ghost Girls by Alice Greenway
* 2005: Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala
* 2004: Harbor by Lorraine Adams
* 2003: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
* 2002: Prague by Arthur Phillips
* 2001: The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert
* 2000: The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra
* 1999: Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout
* 1998: Kalimantaan by C. S. Godshalk
* 1997: Don't Erase Me: Stories by Carolyn Ferrell
* 1996: The Smell of Apples by Mark Behr
* 1995: American Studies by Mark Merlis
* 1994: The Year of the Frog by Martin M. Šimecka
* 1993: Love by Paul Kafka
* 1992: High Cotton by Darryl Pinckney
* 1991: Pangs of Love by David Wong Louie
* 1990: (Award added in 1991)

The Robert Kirsch Award
* 2008 Robert Alter
* 2007 Maxine Hong Kingston
* 2006 William Kittredge
* 2005 Joan Didion
* 2004 Tony Hillerman
* 2003 Ishmael Reed
* 2002 Larry McMurtry
* 2001 Tillie Olsen
* 2000 Lawrence Ferlinghetti
* 1999 Ursula K. Le Guin
* 1998 John Sanford
* 1997 Ray Bradbury
* 1996 Gary Snyder
* 1995 Stephen J. Pyne
* 1994 Brian Moore
* 1993 Carolyn See
* 1992 Diane Johnson
* 1991 Ken Kesey
* 1990 Czeslaw Milosz
* 1989 Karl Shapiro
* 1988 Thom Gunn
* 1987 Paul Horgan
* 1986 Kay Boyle
* 1985 Janet Lewis
* 1984 Christopher Isherwood
* 1983 M.F.K. Fisher
* 1982 Ross Macdonald
* 1981 Wright Morris
* 1980 Wallace Stegner

PEN USA Literary Awards (2009-10)

From Pen Center USA accessed 9/20/10

Winner:
Victor Lodato: Mathilda Savitch (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)

Finalists:
Scott Blackwood: We Agreed to Meet Just Here (New Issues Poetry & Prose)
Robert Boswell: The Heydey of Insensitive Bastards (Graywolf Press)
Ryan Boudinot: Misconception (Grove/Atlantic)
Laird Hunt: Ray of the Star (Coffee House Press)

POETRY
Winner:
Amy Catanzano: Multiversal (Fordham University Press)
Finalists:
Dan Beachy-Quick: The Nest, Swift Passerine (Tupelo Press)
Douglas Kearney: The Black Automaton (Fence Books)
Rachel Loden: Dick of the Dead (Ahsahta Press)
Joseph Stroud: Of This World: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press)

CREATIVE NONFICTION
Winner:
Vicki Forman: This Lovely Life (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Finalists:
Charles Bowden: Some of the Dead are Still Breathing: Living in the
Future (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Stephen Elliott: The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism,
and Murder (Graywolf Press)
Jarvis Jay Masters: That Bird Has My Wings: The Autobiography of an
Innocent Man on Death Row (HarperOne)
Gregory Orfalea: Angeleno Days: An Arab American Writer on Family,
Place, and Politics (University of Arizona Press)

RESEARCH NONFICTION
Winner:
Minal Hajratwala: Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company)
Finalists:
Dan Baum: Nine Lives: Death and Live in New Orleans (Random House
Publishing Group)
Lesley Hazleton: After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni
Split in Islam (Doubleday Publishing)
Robin Kelley: Thelonious Monk (Free Press/Simon & Schuster)
Carol Sklenicka: Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life (Scribner/Simon & Schuster)

CHILDREN'S/YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
Winner:
Paul Fleischman: The Dunderheads (Candlewick Press)
Finalists:
Kate DiCamillo: The Magician's Elephant (Candlewick Press)
Benjamin Alire Saenz: Last Night I Sang to the Monster (Cinco Puntos Press)
Liz Garton Scanlon: All the World (Beach Lane Books)

JOURNALISM
Winner:
Mary Melton: Julius Shulman in 36 Exposures (Los Angeles Magazine)
Finalists:
Megan Feldman: Gimme Shelter (Dallas Observer)
Kristen Hinman: Vanishing Act (River Front Times)
Matthew Segal: Spokes People (Los Angeles Magazine)
Joe Wilkins: Out West: Growing Up Hard (Orion Magazine)

TRANSLATION
Winner:
Fady Joudah: Mahmoud Darwish's If I Were Another (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Finalists:
Sean Cotter: Liliana Ursu's Lightwall (Zephyr Press)
Stephen Kessler: Luis Cernuda's Desolation of the Chimera (White Pine Press)
Donald Revell: Arthur Rimbaud's The Illuminations (Omnidawn Publishing)
Edward Snow: The Poetry of Rilke

2009 AWARD RECIPIENTS
PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction ($25,000)
Cormac McCarthy

PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction ($10,000)
Steve Coll for The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century

Finalists:
Jeff Madrick for The Case for Big Government
Jane Mayer for The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals

The Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation: The PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation is given every three years and honors a translator whose career has demonstrated a commitment to excellence through the body of his or her work.
Michael Henry Heim

PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography ($10,000)
To Richard Brody for Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard

Finalists:
Jeffrey Meyers for Samuel Johnson: The Struggle
Stanley Plumly for Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography

PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers ($35,000)
Donald Ray Pollock for Knockemstiff

Finalists:
Rivka Galchen for Atmospheric Disturbances
Aravind Adiga for The White Tiger

Laura Pels Foundation Awards for Drama ($7,500)
Master: Sam Shepard
Mid-career: Nilo Cruz
PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry ($5,000)
Jeffrey Yang for An Aquarium

PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship ($5,000)
Carol Lynch Williams for A Glimpse Is All I Can Stand

PEN Award for Poetry in Translation ($3,000)
Marilyn Hacker for her translation of King of a Hundred Horsemen by Marie Étienne

Finalists:
Randall Couch for his translation of Madwomen by Gabriela Mistral
Forrest Gander for his translation of Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems by Coral Bracho

PEN Translation Prize ($3,000)
Natasha Wimmer for her translation of 2666 by Roberto Bolaño

Finalists:
Jordan Stump for his translation of The Waitress Was New by Dominique Fabre
Joel Rotenberg for his translation of The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig

PEN/Nora Magid Award ($2,500)
Hanna Tinti for One Story
New Yorker Critic Wins PEN/Bograd Weld Biography Prize

Richard Brody, a film critic and editor at the New Yorker, was selected for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, a $10,000 prize given to a distinguished biography possessing notable literary merit published in the United States during the previous calendar year.
Brody received the award for his first book, Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard (Metropolitan Books). Billy Collins hosted the ceremony, which was held in Elebash Recital Hall at the Graduate Center, CUNY, on May 19.
The award was established by Rodman L. Drake. This year's judges were Timothy Noah, René Steinke, and Judith Thurman.
The finalists were Jeffrey Meyers, for Samuel Johnson: The Struggle (Basic Books), and Stanley Plumly, for Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography (W. W. Norton & Co.).
For more information about the award, visit the PEN website.

Biographers' Club Prize (2010)

From Bio Newsletter accessed 9/3/10 and Biographers' Club Web Site.


The [London] Biographers' Club is renaming its annual prize the Tony Lothian Biographers' Club Prize after the late biographer. The £2,000 prize is awarded each year by the London-based organization to an uncommissioned first-time writer working on a biography.

The name change was prompted by a generous donation from the Lothian family. Antonella, Marchioness of Lothian, OBE (1922-2007)--always known as Tony--wrote a biography of her close friend Valentina Tereshkova (Valentina: The First Woman in Space). Lothian was also a current-affairs columnist on the Scottish Daily Express and a broadcaster and television presenter. In 1955, along with Odette Hallowes and Georgina Coleridge, she created the Woman of the Year Lunch, an event that continues to this day.

This year's judges will be Margaret Drabble, whose biographies include Arnold Bennett and Angus Wilson; Anne de Courcy, author of The Viceroy's Daughters and Snowdon: The Biography; and John Guy, whose books include Tudor England and My Heart Is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots.
The 2007 prize winner, Clare Mulley's The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb, was released by Oneworld on April 24. All the book's royalties will be donated to the Save the Children Fund.

Previous winners of the Biographers’ Club Prize (now the Tony Lothian Biographers’ Club Prize) include:

Lucy Jago – The Northern Lights (Hamish Hamilton)
Adrian Fort – Prof: The Life and Times of Frederick Lindemann (Cape)
Adrienne Gavin – Dark Horse: A Life of Anna Sewell (The History Press)
Helen Smith – Midwife of Genius: Edward Garnett (forthcoming Cape)
Clare Mullley – The Woman Who Saved the Children: Eglantyne Jebb (Oneworld)
Anna Swan - whose Statues without Shadows (Sceptre) was shortlisted for the J.R. Ackerley Prize.

Several short-listed writers also went on to be published, including
Jessie Childs for Henry VIII’s Last Victim, won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography;
John Higgs’ I Have America Surrounded: The Life of Timothy Leary (Barricade Books);
Matthew Dennison’s The Last Princess (Orion);
Pauline Halford’s Storm Warning (Sutton);
Philip Eade’s Sylvia: Queen of the Headhunters (Orion).

2010
Biographies on the short list for the Best First Biography:
What to Look for in Winter: A Memoir of Blindness, by Candia McWilliam (Jonathan Cape)
Lesley Blanch: Inner Landscapes, Wilder Shores, by Anne Boston (John Murray)
Storyteller: The Authorised Biography of Roald Dahl, by Donald Sturrock (HarperPress)
E. M. Forster: A New Life, by Wendy Moffat (Bloomsbury)
Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron, and Other Tangled Lives, by Daisy Hay (Bloomsbury)
The Alan Clarke Diaries: The Biography, by Ion Trewin (Wiedenfeld & Nicholson)

Ambassador Book Award (1986-2010)

From Ambassador Book Awards, and Wikipedia  accessed 8/14/10

The Ambassador Book Award is awarded annually by the English Speaking Union. It recognizes important literary works that contribute to the understanding and interpretation of American life and culture. Winners of the award are considered literary ambassadors who provide, in the best contemporary English, an important window on America to the rest of the world. A panel of judges, currently chaired by author Maureen Howard, selects books out of new works in the fields of fiction, biography, autobiography, current affairs, American studies and poetry.

The award was established in 1986. Since then, winners have included books by such notable authors as Tom Wolfe (1988), Joan Didion (1988), Raymond Carver (1989), Gore Vidal (1989), John Cheever (1992), John Updike (1997), Don Delillo (1998), Philip Roth (1999), and Annie Proulx (2000).

2010 Winners
American Studies: The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: History of the End of the Cold War ; James Mann
American Studies: Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression ; Morris Dickstein
Biography and Autobiography: Louis D. Brandeis: A Life by Melvin Urofsky (Pantheon)
Fiction: Let the Great World Spin; Colum McCann
Poetry: Mercury Dressing; J. D. McClatchy(Alfred A. Knopf)
SPECIAL DISTINCTION AWARD: Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original; Robin D.G. Kelley (Free Press)

The winners of the 2009 English-Speaking Union Ambassador Book Awards for works best depicting American life and culture are:

American Studies: Christopher Benfey -- A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade
Current Affairs: Jane Mayer -- The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals
Fiction: Steven Millhauser -- Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories
Poetry: Alan Shapiro, for Old War (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Biography and Autobiography: Donald Worster -- A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir
In addition, Toni Morrison won a special Ambassador Book Award for her books' "illumination of African-American experience."

2008
American Studies - Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics, by Rebecca Solnit
Autobiography - Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties, by Robert Stone
Biography - Edith Wharton, by Hermione Lee
Fiction - The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid
Poetry - Blackbird and Wolf, by Henri Cole
Lifetime Achievement - John Ashbery

2007
American Studies - The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, by Timothy Egan
Autobiography - The Afterlife: A Memoir, by Donald Antrim
Biography - The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, by Debby Applegate
Current Affairs - Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, by Thomas E. Ricks
Fiction - The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel, by Amy Hempel
Poetry - Averno, by Louise Glück
Lifetime Achievement - Garry Wills

2006
American Studies - A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, by Stacy Schiff
Biography & Autobiography - American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin
Fiction - Liberation: A Novel, by Joanna Scott
Poetry - Migration, by W.S. Merwin

2005
American Studies - Washington's Crossing, by David Hackett Fischer
Biography & Autobiography - De Kooning: An American Master, by Mark Stevens
Fiction - Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson
Poetry - Collected Poems, by Donald Justice

2004
American Studies - They Marched into Sunlight, by David Maraniss
Biography & Autobiography - Hawthorne , A Life, by Brenda Wineapple
Fiction - The Time of Our Singing, by Richard Powers
Poetry - Robert Lowell: Collected Poems, edited by Frank Bidart & David Gewanter
Distinguished Achievement Award - Robert A. Caro

2003
Fiction - Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
American Studies - In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692, by Mary Beth Norton
Biography & Autobiography - Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, by T. J. Stiles
Poetry - Springing, New and Selected Poems, by Marie Ponsot
Lifetime Achievement - Edmund S. Morgan

2002
American Studies - Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution, by Diane McWhorter
Biography & Autobiography - John Adams, by David McCullough
Lifetime Achievement - Hortense Calisher
Fiction - Empire Falls, by Richard Russo
Poetry - The Darkness and the Light, by Anthony Hecht

2001
American Studies - In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, by Nathaniel Philbrick
Biography & Autobiography - The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst, by David Nasaw
Lifetime Achievement - Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Fiction - Angel on the Roof: The Stories of Russell Banks, by Russell Banks
Poetry - American Poerty: The Twentieth Century, 2 vols., by Hass, Hollander, Kizer, Mackey, Perloff

2000
American Studies - Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, by David M. Kennedy
Biography & Autobiography - Morgan: American Financier, by Jean Strouse
Fiction - Close Range: Wyoming Stories, by Annie Proulx
Poetry - Vita Nova, by Louise Glück

1999
American Studies - Slaves in the Family, by Edward Ball
Biography & Autobiography - N.C. Wyeth, by David Michaelis
Fiction - I Married a Communist, by Philip Roth
Poetry - The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren, by John Burt

1998
American Studies - American Visions, by Robert Hughes
Autobiography - Burning the Days: Recollection, by James Salter
Biography - American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, by Joseph Ellis
Fiction - Underworld, by Don DeLillo
Poetry - Black Zodiac, by Charles Wright

1997
American Studies - Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West, by Stephen E. Ambrose
Biography & Autobiography - Taking on the World: Joseph and Stewart Alsop- Guardians of the American Century, by Robert W. Merry
Fiction - In the Beauty of the Lilies, by John Updike
Poetry - The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems, 1966 - 1996, by Robert Pinsky

1996
American Studies - Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs and Declarations of Independence, by John Hockenberry
Biography & Autobiography - Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography, by David S. Reynolds
Fiction - All the Days and Nights, by William Maxwell
Poetry - Atlantis, by Mark Doty

1995
American Studies - Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South, by John Egerton
Biography & Autobiography - No Ordinary Time Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Fiction - The Collected Stories, by Grace Paley
Poetry - Like Most Revelations, by Richard Howard

1994
American Studies - Around the Cragged Hill A Personal and Political Philosophy, by George F. Kennan
Biography & Autobiography - W.E.B. Du Bois Biography of Race 1868-1919, by David Levering Lewis
Fiction - The Oracle at Stoneleigh Court, by Peter Taylor
Poetry - Tesserae & Other Poems, by John Hollander

1993
American Arts & Letters - Up in the Old Hotel, by Joseph Mitchell
American Studies - Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Worlds That Remade America, by Gary Wills
Biography & Autobiography - Archibald MacLeish: An American Life, by Scott Donaldson
Fiction - Outerbridge Reach, by Robert Stone

1992
American Arts & Letters - The Journals of John Cheever, by John Cheever
American Studies - The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev : 1960 - 1963, by Michael S. Beschloss
Biography & Autobiography - Woodrow Wilson, by August Hecscher
Fiction - A Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley

1991
American Arts & Letters - The House of Barrymore, by Margot Peters
American Studies - A New York Life, by Brendan Gill
Biography & Autobiography - The House of Morgan, by Ron Chernow
Fiction - Killing Mr. Watson, by Peter Matthiessen

1990
American Arts & Letters - The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard
American Studies - Among Schoolchildren, by Tracy Kidder
Biography & Autobiography - This Boy's Life: A Memoir, by Tobias Wolff
Fiction - Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, by Allan Gurganus

1989
American Arts & Letters - At Home: Essays 1982-1988, by Gore Vidal
American Studies - A Bright Shining Lie John Paul Vann in Vietnam, by Neil Sheehan
Biography & Autobiography - Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963, by Taylor Branch
Fiction - Where I'm Calling From: New & Selected Stories, by Raymond Carver

1988
American Arts & Letters - Collected Prose, by Robert Lowell
American Studies - Miami, by Joan Didion
Biography & Autobiography - Many Masks: A Life of Frank Lloyd Wright, by Brendan Gill
Fiction - The Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe

1987
American Studies - Cities on a Hill: A Journey Through Contemporary American Cultures, by Frances FitzGerald
American Studies - The Cycles of American History, by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr
Biography & Autobiography - The Life of Langston Hughes, Volume I: 1902-1941: I, Too, Sing America, by Arnold Rampersad
Fiction - Roger's Version, by John Updike

1986
Fiction - Lake Wobegon Days, by Garrison Keillor
Fiction - The Accidental Tourist, by Anne Tyler

The Pulitzers (2009-10)

The 2010 Pulitzer Prize book winners:

Fiction: Tinkers by Paul Harding (Bellevue Literary Press), "a powerful celebration of life in which a New England father and son, through suffering and joy, transcend their imprisoning lives and offer new ways of perceiving the world and mortality."

Drama: Next to Normal by Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt (Theatre Communications Group), "a powerful rock musical that grapples with mental illness in a suburban family and expands the scope of subject matter for musicals."

History: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed (Penguin Press), "a compelling account of how four powerful bankers played crucial roles in triggering the Great Depression and ultimately transforming the United States into the world's financial leader."

Biography or Autobiography: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles (Knopf), "a penetrating portrait of a complex, self-made titan who revolutionized transportation, amassed vast wealth and shaped the economic world in ways still felt today."

Poetry: Versed by Rae Armantrout (Wesleyan University Press), "a penetrating portrait of a complex, self-made titan who revolutionized transportation, amassed vast wealth and shaped the economic world in ways still felt today."

General Nonfiction: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman (Doubleday), "a well documented narrative that examines the terrifying doomsday competition between two superpowers and how weapons of mass destruction still imperil humankind."

Book-related winners and finalists for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize were announced yesterday. The winners are:

Fiction: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Random House)
Drama: Ruined by Lynn Nottage (Theatre Communications Group; not yet published)
History: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed (Norton)
Biography: American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham (Random House)
Poetry: The Shadow of Sirius by W. S. Merwin (Copper Canyon Press)
General Nonfiction: Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon (Doubleday),

Finalists in each category included The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich and All Souls by Christine Schutt (fiction); Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo and In the Heights by Lin-Manuel Miranda & Quiara Alegría Hudes (drama); This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust and The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s by G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot (history); Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by H.W. Brands and The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century by Steve Coll (biography); Watching the Spring Festival by Frank Bidart and What Love Comes to: New and Selected Poems by Ruth Stone (poetry); Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age by Arthur Herman and The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe, 1945 by William I. Hitchcock (general nonfiction).

Lincoln Prize (1991-2009)

from Gettysburg College website accessed 2/24/10

Michael Burlingame will receive the $50,000 Lincoln Prize (2010) for his book, "Abraham Lincoln: A Life" (Johns Hopkins University Press), as well as a bronze replica of Augustus Saint-Gaudens life-size bust, "Lincoln the Man." Burlingame is the Chancellor Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair of Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. The prize, sponsored by Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, will be awarded April 27 at the Union League in New York.
The prize was co-founded in 1990 by businessmen and philanthropists Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman, Co-Chairmen of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York and co-creators of the Gilder Lehrman Collection - one of the largest private archives of documents and artifacts in the nation. The Institute is devoted to history education, supporting magnet schools, teacher training, digital archives, curriculum development, exhibitions and publications, as well as the national History Teacher of the Year program.

2009
First Place: James McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief and Craig Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Civil War
Honorable Mention: Jacqueline Jones, Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War. Fred Kaplan, Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer and William Lee Miller, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman.

2008
First Place: James Oakes, The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics (W. W. Norton)
Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters (Viking)
Honorable Mention: Chandra Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf)

2007
First Place: Douglas L. Wilson, Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words (Vintage)
Finalists: Martha Hodes, The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century (W. W. Norton); Harry S. Stout, Upon the Alter of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War (Viking Adult).

2006
First Place: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Simon & Schuster)
Finalists: Carol Bundy, The Nature of Sacrifice: A Biography of Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., 1835-1864 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); Margaret Creighton, The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg's Forgotten History - Immigrants, Women, and African Americans in the Civil War's Defining Battle (Basic Books); and Richard F. Miller, Harvard's Civil War: A History of the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (University Press of New England).

2005
First Place: Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (Simon & Schuster)
Second Place: Harold Holzer, Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President (Simon & Schuster)
Finalists: Jonathan D. Martin, Divided Mastery: Slave Hiring in the American South (Harvard University Press); Jane A. Schultz, Women at the Front: Hospital Workers in Civil War America (University of North Carolina Press).

2004
First Place: Richard J. Carwardine, Lincoln (Pearson Education Ltd.)
Special Achievement Award: John Y. Simon for editing 26 volumes--to date--of The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant (Southern Illinois University Press)
Finalist: Steven Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press)

2003
First Place: George C. Rable, Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! (University of North Carolina Press)
Second Place: John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (Harvard University Press)
Honorable Mention: Michael Fitzgerald, Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile, 1860-1890 (Louisiana State University Press)
E-Lincoln Prize: John Adler for HarpWeek Presents Lincoln and the Civil War.com (website)

2002
First Place: David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, (Harvard University Press).
Honorable Mention: Alice Fahs, The Imagined Civil War: Popular Literature of the North & South, 1861-1865 (University of North Carolina Press)
Honorable Mention: Kenneth J. Winkle, The Young Eagle: The Rise of Abraham Lincoln (Taylor Trade Publishing, Dallas).

2001
First Place: Russell F. Weigley, A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861-1865 (Indiana University Press).
Second Place: Leonard L. Richards, The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780-1860 (Louisiana State University Press).
Finalist: Mark L. Bradley, This Astounding Close Road to Bennett Place, (University of North Carolina Press)
E-Lincoln Prize Winner: Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, and William G. Thomas for Valley of the Shadow: The Eve of War (CD-ROM)
Second Place: Stephen Railton for Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture (web site).

2000
First Place: John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels in the Plantation (Oxford University Press) and Allen C. Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.).
Second Place: Michael Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (Oxford University Press).
Lifetime Achievement Award: Richard N. Current, University Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

1999
First Place: Douglas L. Wilson, Honor's Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln (Alfred A. Knopf).
Second Place: J. Tracy Power, Lee's Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia, from the Wilderness to Appomattox (Univ. of North Carolina Press).

1998
First Place: Jim McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (Oxford University Press)
Second Place: William C. Harris, With Charity For All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union (University Press of Kentucky)
Honorable Mention: Gary Gallagher, The Confederate War: How Popular Will, Nationalism, and Military Strategy Could Not Stave off Defeat (Harvard University Press).
Honorable Mention: James Robertson, Jr., Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (MacMillan Publishing Co).

1997
First Place: Don FehrenbacherDred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (Stanford University Press).

1996
First Place: David Donald, Lincoln (Touchstone Books).
Second Place: Mark Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians 1861-1865 (Cambridge University Press).
Finalist: Michael Fellman, Citizen Sherman: A Life of William Tecumseh Sherman (Random House).

1995
First Place: Phillip Shaw Paludan, The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln (University Press of Kansas).
Second Place: William Marvel, Andersonville: The Last Depot (University of North Carolina Press).
Finalist: Charles B. Dew, Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge (W.W. Norton & Company).

1994
First Place: (co-winners) Ira Berlin, Barbara Fields, Steven Miller, Joseph Reidy, Leslie Rowland, eds., Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War (New Press).
Second Place: Reid Mitchell, The Vacant Chair: The Northern Soldier Leaves Home (Oxford University Press).
Finalist: Winthrop D. Jordan, Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Inquiry into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy (Louisiana State University Press).
Finalist: John Evangelist Walsh, The Shadows Rise: Abraham Lincoln and the Anne Rutledge Legend (University of Illinois Press).

1993
First Place: Kenneth Stampp, Lifetime Achievement with special recognition of The Peculiar Institution (Vintage Books).
Second Place: Albert Castel, Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (University Press of Kansas).
Finalist: John F. Marszalek, Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order (Vintage Books).
Finalist: Craig L. Symonds Joseph E. Johnston, A Civil War Biography (W.W. Norton & Company).

1992
First Place (split equally): William S. McFeely, Frederick Douglass (W.W. Norton & Company) and Charles Royster, The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans (Vintage Books).
Finalist: Ira Berlin, et al., Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation 1861-1867: Series I, Volume III, The Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Lower South (New Press)

1991
First Place: Ken Burns, The Civil War (Howell Press)
Finalist: Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (Oxford University Press).
Finalist: Warren Wilkinson, Mother May You Never See The Sights I Have Seen: The Fifty-Seventh Massachusetts Veteran Volunteers in the Last Year of the Civil War (HarperCollins).

Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence (1993,2000,2005,2010)

from Saint Nicholas Society’s web site, accessed 2/1/10, which does NOT have a list of all the winners.

The Saint Nicholas Society celebrates New York and the people that make it dynamic and exciting. It achieves this in several ways:

1) Honoring artists and scholars who have distinguished themselves through their work with the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence, an award established in 1985. Recipients include: Louis Auchincloss, Simon Schama, David McCullough, Christopher Buckley, Russell Shorto and Charles Gehring (jointly), and Ron Chernow.

As their most literary of founders, then, Irving’s name appears on their Medal for Literary Excellence — but  writing about Irving is not a requirement for the award! David McCullough won it for Truman in 1993, Ron Chernow received it for Alexander Hamilton in 2005, while Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace got it in 2000 for Gotham.

2010 Award -- One of the more distinguished New York City literary prizes was awarded to Brian Jay Jones, author of Washington Irving: An American Original. The Associated Press called the book "authoritative" and the Washington Post's Michael Dirda praised it as "engaging, clearly written, and well researched."

The NY Times Book Review's Top Ten (2005,2009)

The New York Times named its 10 best books of 2009, noting that "after so many years, and so many lists, you might think the task of choosing the 10 Best Books would get easier. If only. The sublime story collections alone created agonies of indecision. So did the superb literary biographies we read--and deeply admired. But in the end the decisions had to be made."
2009's top 10:

Fiction

Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy (short stories)
Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (Knopf)
Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel by Jeannette Walls (Scribner)
A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert (Scribner)

Nonfiction

The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
The Good Soldiers by David Finkel
Lit: A Memoir by Mary Karr
Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed
Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life by Carol Sklenicka

The New York Times Book Review yesterday listed its top 10 titles for 2005:

* Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (Knopf, $25.95, 1400043662). "This graceful and dreamily cerebral novel, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel, tells two stories--that of a boy fleeing an Oedipal prophecy, and that of a witless old man who can talk to cats."
* On Beauty by Zadie Smith (Penguin Press, $25.95, 1594200637). Smith shows "a crisp intellect, a lovely wit and enormous sympathy for the men, women and children who populate her story. "
* Prep: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld (Random House, $13.95, 081297235X). "This calm and memorably incisive first novel, about a scholarship girl who heads east to attend an elite prep school, casts an unshakable spell and has plenty to say about class, sex and character."
* Saturday by Ian McEwan (Talese/Doubleday, $26, 0385511809). "As bracing and as carefully constructed as anything McEwan has written."
* Veronica: A Novel by Mary Gaitskill (Pantheon, $23, 0375421459). A "mesmerizingly dark novel . . . narrated by a former Paris model."
* The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer (FSG, $26, 0374299633). "A comprehensive look at the largest foreign policy gamble in a generation."
* de Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan (Knopf, $35, 1400041759). "A sweeping biography, impressively researched and absorbingly written."
* The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr (Random House, $24.95, 0375508015). A "gripping narrative, populated by a beguiling cast of scholars, historians, art restorers and aging nobles, records the search for Caravaggio's Taking of Christ, painted in 1602 and rediscovered in 1990."
* Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt (Penguin Press, $39.95, 1594200653). "Massive, learned, beautifully detailed."
* The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (Knopf, $23.95, 140004314X). "A prose master's harrowing yet exhilarating memoir."

2005 Whitbread Book Awards

Awards: The Whitbread Five

The winners of the five categories of the Whitbread Awards (the last to be sponsored by Whitbread) were announced January 4, 2005:

Best novel: The Accidental by Ali Smith
First Novel: The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw
Poetry Collection: Cold Calls by Christopher Logue
Biography: Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse: The Conquest of Colour: 1909-1954 by Hilary Spurling
Children's Book: The New Policeman by Kate Thompson

The five authors each receive £5,000 and compete for the Whitbread Book of the Year, which will be announced at a ceremony in London on January 24.

1/24: The £25,000 Whitbread Book of the Year award has gone to Matisse the Master by Hilary Spurling (Knopf, $40, 0679434291), which had won the best biography Whitbread award earlier this month (Shelf Awareness, January 4).

The chair of the judging panel said Spurling "has opened our eyes to great art, and done it in an extraordinary way." For her part, Spurling told the BBC that she was "gobsmacked."

Whitbread, since 1971 the main sponsor of the awards, which are open to residents of the Britain and Ireland, has announced that it will no longer be involved in the awards. A search is on for what next year may be the non-Whitbread.