Spring 2011

Winners of the 2010 Agatha Awards were announced at Malice Domestic 23, a mystery convention for writers and readers held in Bethesda, Md. The award ceremony took place on April 30. Nominees are Donna Andrews, Stork Raving Mad, Best Novel and Katherine Hall Page, Have Faith in Your Kitchen, Best Nonfiction.

Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave, written by Laban Carrick Hill and illustrated by Bryan Collier, and Interrupting Chicken, written and illustrated by David Ezra Stein, were the two Honor Book winners for the 2011 Caldecott Medal, presented annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association.

The Hans Christian Andersen awards are presented biennially to an author and an illustrator whose body of work is judged to have made a significant and lasting contribution to children’s literature. Paul Fleisch­man is a nominee for the Author’s Award and Chris Raschka is a nominee for the Illustrator’s Award. The awards will be presented at the International Board on Books for Young People Congress in London in August 2012.

The 2010 New Mexico Book Awards were announced at a banquet on November 19 in Albuquerque. The winners included Rudolfo Anaya, The Essays, Anthol­ogy; Chris Eboch, The Knight in the Shadows, Juvenile Books; James McGrath Morris, Pulitzer: A Life in Poli­tics, Print, and Power, which received the award for Bi­ogra­phy and was named Best of Show; and Hana Samek Norton, The Sixth Surrender, Novel-Historical Fiction. The awards are sponsored by the New Mexico Book Co-Op, an organization of publishers and authors, and are judged by a panel of scholars and librarians.

The 2011 Pulitzer Prizes, honoring excellence in journalism and the arts, were presented at a ceremony on May 23 at Columbia University’s Low Library. The winners included Jennifer Egan, who received the Fiction prize for A Visit from the Goon Squad, and Ron Chernow, who received the Biography or Autobiogra­phy prize for Washington: A Life. Maurice Manning was a finalist for the Poetry prize for The Common Man.

The Western Writers of America announced the winners and finalists of their 2011 Spur Awards for distinguished writing about the American West. Lucia St. Clair Robson will receive the Best Western Long Novel award for Last Train from Cuernavaca. Red Shuttleworth will receive the Best Western Poem award for "Roadside Attractions," first published in The Basement. John Duncklee was a finalist in that category, for "No More Corridos," first published in Rope and Wire. Dotti Enderle was a finalist in the Best Western Juvenile Fiction category for Crosswire, and Lois V. Harris, with illustrator Charles Russell, was a Storyteller Award finalist for Charlie Russell: Tale-Telling Cowboy Artist. The awards were presented at a ceremony in Bismarck, N.D. on June 25.

Elisabeth Tova Bailey received the John Burroughs Medal Award for 2011 for The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating. The Burroughs Medal, first given in 1926, is sponsored by the John Burroughs Association, which recognizes outstanding natural history publications. The award was presented at the Association’s annual meeting at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, on April 4.

Marlin Bree received third place in the Adventure category of the Boating Writers International (BWI) Writing Awards for his article "Island of Doom Adven­ture," originally published in The Ensign and developed from a chapter of Wake of the Green Storm: A Survivor’s Tale. The awards recognize the winners of the BWI’s annual writing contest, now in its 18th year, and are presented at the Miami International Boat Show in February.

Jared Brown, with coauthor and wife Anistatia Miller, received the 2011 International Wine & Spirits Compe­tition Communicator of the Year Award. The award was presented at the International Wine & Spirits Competition’s annual Vinitaly Gala Dinner on April 6 in Verona, Italy. This is the first time in the award’s 42-year history that the award was given to experts in spirits.

The Society of American Baseball Research presented a 2011 Larry Ritter Award to Kate Buford for Native American Son: The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe. The award is presented annually to the best book about the Dead Ball Era in baseball.

Wayne Caldwell‘s Requiem by Fire received the 2010 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Award for outstanding literary achievement. The award is presented by the Western North Carolina Historical Association.

Jamie Cat Callan received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Arts Grant, Fiction, in 2010.

Linda Dahl received the 2010 Writers in the Sky Award for the Best Creative Writing of the Year, for her novel, Gringa in a Strange Land. Writers in the Sky Creative Writing Services is an alliance of ghostwriters, editors and proofreaders.

Murder in Italy: The Shocking Slaying of a British Student, the Accused American Girl, and an International Scandal, by Candace Dempsey, was named winner of the 2010 Best True Crime Editor’s Choice and Reader’s Choice awards. Murder in Italy was also a Library Journal Best Seller in December 2010.

Coach Tommy Thompson and the Boys of Sequoyah, by Patti Dickinson, was a finalist in the 2010 Oklahoma Book Awards, in the nonfiction category. The awards are sponsored by the Oklahoma Department of Li­braries’ Oklahoma Center for the Book.

The Power of Sustainable Thinking: How to Create a Posi­tive Future, by Bob Doppelt, was named one of the Top 40 Books of 2010 by the Cambridge Programme for Sustainabilty Leadership at the University of Cam­bridge (UK).

Patrick Durantou received the Premier Prix from the Académie des Jeux Floraux, based in Toulouse, France. The award was presented on May 3 at the academy’s annual Fête des Fleurs.

Crosswire, by Dotti Enderle, received the Texas Insti­tute of Letters Award for Young Adult Fiction. The book was also a finalist for a Spur Award (see the full Spur Award listing above).

Howard Gardner received a 2011 Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences, in honor of his research in the area of human cognition. The awards are sponsored by the Prince of Asturias Foundation, founded in 1980 by the Prince of Asturias, heir to the throne of Spain, to encourage and promote scientific, cultural, and humanistic values. Winners receive a diploma, a Joan Miró sculpture, and a cash prize of 50,000 euros.

Beatrice Gormley‘s First Ladies: Women Who Called the White House Home was selected as the book to be read aloud and distributed to schools across Texas in 2011 by the Reading Discovery Distance Learning Program & Videoconference, featuring Barbara Bush’s Story Time.

Susan Carol Hauser received an Artists Initiative Grant of $10,000 from the Minnesota State Arts Board. She will be writing essays based on outings in northern Minnesota’s woods and wetlands, including their botanical and cultural history.

Lisa Mannetti was nominated for two Bram Stoker Awards: the Bram Stoker Award for superior achievement in short fiction, for "1925: A Fall River Hallo­ween," originally published in Shroud Magazine

, and the Bram Stoker Award for superior achievement in long fiction, for "Dissolution," published in Death­watch, a collection of two novellas.

Robert McParland received the Bela Kornitzer Book Award for Charles Dickens’s American Audience. The awards recognize outstanding nonfiction books and are sponsored by the Kornitzer Prize Endowment. The award was presented at the 2011 biennial Library Gala at Drew University, in New Jersey, on January 29.

The Gendarme, by Mark Mustian, received the Gold Florida Book Award for general fiction. The Florida Book Awards are coordinated by the Florida State University Library and cosponsored by several organizations.

Days of Little Texas, by R. A. Nelson, was placed on the Maine State Library 2010 Cream of the Crop List.

Christine A. Padesky received a Book of Merit Award from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies for Mind Over Mood: Change How You Feel by Changing the Way You Think.

Sara N. Paretsky received the Distinguished Arts Award, part of the Governor’s Arts Awards sponsored by the Kansas Arts Commission.

Iron River, by T. Jefferson Parker, has been nominated for a Hammett Prize. The prize is sponsored by the North American Branch of the International Associ­ation of Crime Writers to honor a work of literary excellence in the field of crime writing by a U.S. or Canadian author. The winner will be announced on September 20 in Atlantic City during the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association Fall Conference.

Margaret Willey received the 2011 Gwen Frostic Award from the Michigan Reading Association. The award honors outstanding contributions to literacy in the state of Michigan.

The National Women’s History Project, founded in 1980 to broadcast women’s historical achievements, honored Sylvia Hoehns Wright for her memoir, A Path Worn Smooth, as part of their 2011 campaign, Our History Is Our Strength. While the organization traditionally highlights national figures, the 2011 campaign encourages individuals to discover stories about the women in their own families and communities.

Once Upon a Decade: Tales of the Fifties, by Clark Zlotchew, was a finalist in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.