book awards

The shortlist for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction was announced this morning. Launched in 1996, and formerly the Orange Prize, the Women's Prize for Fiction is awarded to a female author who, in the opinion of the judges, has written the best, eligible full-length novel in English. The prize is the UK’s only annual book award for fiction written by a woman.

Right: Shortlist titles. Click image to view larger version.

Women fiction writers have been getting a lot of good press these past two days, which is good to see. Today's announcement follows fast on the heels of yesterday's by literary magazine Granta of its once-in-a-decade list of the 20 Best of Young British Novelists(aged under 40), a list dominated for the first time by women. Read Granta list of top young novelists is female-dominated and international (Guardian) Read more »

10 novels have been shortlisted for the International IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award. The list includes City of Bohane by Irish author, Kevin Barry, five novels in translation from Japan, Iceland, Norway, The Netherlands and France, 1 British and 3 American novels.

The Award is worth €100,000 to the winner and is the world’s most valuable annual literary award for a single work of fiction published in English.

The shortlisted titles, announced by The Lord Mayor of Dublin Cllr. Naoise ÓMuirí, Patron of the Award, in Dublin today are (with links to catalogue entries): Read more »

The CILIP Carnegie Medal and Kate Greenway Medal shortlists for 2013 have just been announced and the former includes award winning Irish writer of both adult and children's books, Roddy Doyle. 

The Carnegie Medal, awarded annually, was established in 1936 in memory of the Scottish-born philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835 - 1919). Carnegie set up more than 2,800 libraries across the English speaking world. The Award is the oldest accolade for children's writing in the UK.

The Carnegie Medal shortlist is as follows (with links to library catalogue where title is in stock): Read more »

Update (29 Jan): Hilary Mantel announced as overall winner! (see comment below) 

For the first time ever, a female winner features in every category of the 2012 Costa Book Awards. The category winners were announced today, Thursday, 3rd January.

The winners in the different categories are as follows:-

Hilary Mantel wins the Novel Award with 'Bring up the Bodies', the book that won her the Man Booker prize back in October. She therefore becomes the first author to win both the Costa Novel Award and the Booker Prize in the same year. 'Bring up the Bodies' is the sequel to 'Wolf Hall' and part of a trilogy, and in it Mantel explores one of the most mystifying and frightening episodes in English history: the destruction of Anne Boleyn. Read more »

The winners of the seventh Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards were announced last night in the RDS in Dublin. It was wonderful to see the late Maeve Binchy win the Popular Fiction prize for her last book, 'A Week in Winter', which she had just finished writing a matter of weeks before her sad passing in late July. Her husband Gordon Snell was on hand to receive her award.

Other winners were:- Read more »

The longlist of books nominated for the 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award was announced today, Monday, 12th November. With 154 books, nominated by libraries in 120 cities, in 44 countries, in 19 languages, it's the most international of literary awards.

Right: Dublin City Librarian, Margaret Hayes, and the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Cllr Naoise Ó Muirí, Patron of the Award (click to view larger image).

Eight novels by Irish authors are among the 154 books that have been nominated. Nominations also include 43 American, 22 British and 12 Canadian novels, as well as 42 books translated into English. Read more »