THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
The National Book Award was established in 1950. It recognizes and honors American fictional books of the highest literally merit. The promotion of reading and raising funds for literacy program are the main objective of this award. The books which have earned a place in world literature are as follows:-
1. The Echo Maker: A Novel
By Richard Powers.
2. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the
Great American Dust Bowl
By Timothy Egan.
3. Splay Anthem
By Nathaniel Mackey
THE PULITZER PRIZES
This award was endowed by Joseph Pulitzer, a famous American journalist. This award was established in 1917. This award aims at recognizing outstanding accomplishments in journalism, letters, music, and drama. This award have 21 different categories out of which 20 winners receive a prize money of $7500 and a certificate, while only one in the Public Service category of the Journalism competition receives a gold medal. Although an individual may be named in the citation, only a newspaper receives this prize and this prize cannot be awarded to an individual.
Some of the recipients of this prize are as follows:-
1. March: A Novel By Geraldine Brooks
2. Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya
By Caroline Elkins
3. Late Wife: Poems (Southern Messenger Poets) BY Claudia Emerson.
BOOKER PRIZE
Booker Prize was previously known as 'Booker'. This prize is administered by the National Book League and sponsored by Man Group in the United Kingdom. This prize is awarded to the best full-length novel writer who is a citizen of UK, the Commonwealth, Eire, Pakistan or South Africa. The entries for the award are accepted from 1st October of the previous year to 31st September of the year in which the prize is expected to be distributed. A nominee can submit only 2 work. In addition the judges can call for books to be submitted for the prize that have not been forthcoming from the publishers. The prize is awarded in late October. The novelists who have been short listed get a prize of 2,500 pounds.
Some of the winners of the Booker Prize are as follows:-
1. The Inheritance of Loss By Kiran Desai
2. The Sea By John Banville
3. The Line of Beauty By Alan Hollinghurst
4. VERNON GOD LITTLE By DBC Pierre
NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE
This award is awarded every year in recognition of outstanding achievement in the literary arts, by The Swedish Academy. This award is given to a writer for all the works completed by him and not for any one book written by him.
Some of the winners of this prize are as follows:-
1. 1990 Octavio Paz (Mexico)
2. 1991 Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)
3. 1992 Derek Walcott (Saint Lucia)
4. 1999 Gunter Grass (Germany)
5. 2001 Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (Trinidad)
6. 2004 Elfriede Jelinek (Austria)
7. 2005 Harold Pinter (United Kingdom)
8. 2006 Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)
NEWBERY MEDAL AWARD
Newbery Medal Award was established in 1922. It is given to the most distinguished American literature in a children’s book. It is a must for a person to be an American in order to be eligible to win this prize. Every year the winner is announced at the American Library Association Mid-winter meeting. That is around the month of January or February. Every mid-winter meeting the winner of last year is announced.
The list of some of the winners of Newbery Medal Award is as follows:-
1922 Hendrik Willem van Loon-The Story of Mankind
1923 Hugh Lofting-The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle
1924 Charles Hawes-The Dark Frigate
1925 Charles Finger-Tales from Silver Lands
2000 Christopher Paul Curtis-Bud, Not Buddy
2001 Richard Peck-A Year Down Yonder
2002 Linda Sue Park-A Single Shard
2006 Lynne Rae Perkins - Criss Cross.
PEN/FAULKNER AWARDS
This prize was established in 1980 by writers to honor their peers. The Pen/Faulkner Award is administered by the Folger Shakespeare Library. The judges of the award are themselves the writer of novels. Each of these judge reads about 250 novels and short story collections published during the calendar year before selecting five outstanding books. The author of the winner book receives a prize of $15,000 and the other nominees also receive a prize equivalent to $5,000.
The winners of this award are :-
2007. Everyman-By Roth, Philip
2006. The March-By Doctorow, E. L.
2005. War Trash -By Jin, Ha
2004. The Early Stories: 1953-1975 -By Updike, John
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD
The National Book Critics Circle Award is an award which is given out every year in order to promote the finest books and reviews published in English. This award is given out by National Book Critics Circle (NBCC).
There are basically six categories in this award, which are Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Memoir/Autobiography, Biography, and Criticism. No award is given out for previous issues and reprints.
The results of the National Book Critics Circle Award are as follows:-
Nonfiction
Patrick Cockburn, The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq (Verso)
Anne Fessler, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who
Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe V. Wade
(Penguin Press)
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
(Penguin Press)
Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the
American Revolution (Ecco)
Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle
East (Bloomsbury)
Fiction
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun (Knopf)
Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (Grove/Atlantic)
Dave Eggers, What is the What (McSweeney's)
Richard Ford, The Lay of the Land (Knopf)
Cormac McCarthy, The Road (Knopf)
Memoir/ Autobiography
Donald Antrim, The Afterlife (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home (Houghton Mifflin)
Alexander Masters, Stuart: A Life Backwards (Delacorte)
Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
(HarperCollins)
Teri Jentz, Strange Piece of Paradise (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Poetry
Daisy Fried, My Brother is Getting Arrested Again (University of Pittsburgh
Press)
Troy Jollimore, Tom Thomson in Purgatory (Margie/Intuit House
Miltos Sachtouris, Poems (1945-1971) (Archipelego Books)
Frederick Seidel, Ooga-Booga (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Not for Specialists: New and Selected Poems (BOA Editions)
Criticism
Bruce Bawer, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West From Within (Doubleday)
Frederick Crews, Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays (Shoemaker & Hoard)
Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion As A Natural Phenomenon(Viking)
Lia Purpura, On Looking: Essays (Sarabande Books)
Lawrence Weschler, Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences
(McSweeney's)
Biography
Debby Applegate, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry
Ward Beecher (Doubleday)
Taylor Branch, At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968
(Simon& Schuster)
Frederick Brown, Flaubert: A Biography (Little, Brown)
Julie Phillips, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon
(St.Martin's Press)
Jason Roberts, A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's
Greatest Traveler (HarperCollins)
The Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
Winner: Steven G. Kellman
The Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement
John Leonard
CALDECOTT MEDAL
This award was named in the honor of English illustrator Randolph Caldecott of the nineteenth century. This award is given to the winner every year by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association. This award is awarded to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.
Some of the winners of this award are as follows:-
1940: Abraham Lincoln by Ingri & Edgar Parin d'Aulaire (Doubleday)
1939: Mei Li by Thomas Handforth (Doubleday)
1938: Animals of the Bible, A Picture Book, illustrated by Dorothy P. Lathrop; text: selected by Helen Dean Fish (Lippincott)
2007: Flotsam by David Wiesner (Clarion)
2006: The Hello, Goodbye Window Illustrated by Chris Raschka, written by Norton Juster (Michael di Capua/Hyperion)
2005: Kitten's First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes (Greenwillow Books/HarperCollinsPublishers)
HAMMETT AWARD
This award is given by the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers. It is awarded annually to the winner of the prize. This award was named after Dashiell Hammett. This award consists of a bronze trophy, designed by West Coast sculptor, Peter Boiger, whose falcon-headed thin man symbolizes Dashielll Hammett's literary spirit.
The receiptants of this prize for some of the years are;-
2002
Best Novel: Kingdom of Shadows, by Alan Furst (2001).
2001
Best Novel: The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood (2000).
1993
Best Novel: Turtle Moon, by Alice Hoffman (1992).
1992
Best Novel: Maximum Bob, by Elmore Leonard (1991).
RITA AWARD
It is the highest award of excellence in the genre of romance fiction. It is presented to the winner by the Romance Writers of America. About 1000 romance novels and stories are sent in for the nomination for this award. This prize is awarded to the romance novels that received the highest scores from panels of romance-author judges. In total 13 Rita awards are handed out in 13 different categories.
The winners of the Rita awards for the year 2005 are:-
Best Traditional Romance
CHRISTMAS EVE MARRIAGE by Jessica Hart (Harlequin)
Best Short Contemporary Series
MISS PRUITT'S PRIVATE LIFE by Barbara McCauley (Silhouette)
Best Long Contemporary Series
JOHN RILEY'S GIRL by Inglath Cooper (Harlequin)
Best Paranormal Romance
BLUE MOON by Lori Handeland (St. Martin's Press)
Best Inspirational Romance
GROUNDS TO BELIEVE by Shelley Bates (Steeple Hill)
Best Romantic Novella
"Her Best Enemy" in NIGHT'S EDGE by Maggie Shayne (Harlequin)
Best First Book
TIME OFF FOR GOOD BEHAVIOR by Lani Diane Rich (Warner)
Best Regency Romance
A PASSIONATE ENDEAVOR by Sophie Nash (Signet)
Best Short Historical Romance
A WANTED MAN by Susan Kay Law (Avon)
Best Long Historical Romance
SHADOWHEART by Laura Kinsale (Berkley)
Best Romantic Suspense
I'M WATCHING YOU by Karen Rose (Warner)
Best Contemporary Single Title
BET ME by Jennifer Crusie (St. Martin's Press)
Novel with Strong Romantic Elements
A.K.A. GODDESS by Evelyn Vaughn (Silhouette).
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