Among the nominations for the Grammy Awards, which will be held February 12, are some book-related ones. In the Best Spoken Word Album (which includes poetry, audiobooks & storytelling) category:
The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer (Simon & Schuster Audio)
In Such Good Company: Eleven Years of Laughter, Mayhem, and Fun in the Sandbox by Carol Burnett (Penguin Random House Audio)
M Train by Patti Smith (Penguin Random House Audio)
Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk by John Doe with Tom Desavia (various artists) (Penguin Random House Audio)
Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink by Elvis Costello (Penguin Random House Audio)
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The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter by Kia Corthron (Seven Stories Press) has won the $10,000 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.
The Center described the book this way: "On the eve of America's entry into World War II, in a tiny Alabama town, two brothers come of age in the shadow of the local chapter of the Klan, where Randall--a brilliant eighth-grader and the son of a sawmill worker--begins teaching sign language to his eighteen-year-old deaf and uneducated brother B.J. Simultaneously, in small-town Maryland, the sons of a Pullman Porter--gifted six-year-old Eliot and his artistic twelve-year-old brother Dwight--grow up navigating a world expanded both by a visit from civil and labor rights activist A. Philip Randolph and by the legacy of a lynched great-aunt. The four mature into men, directly confronting the fierce resistance to the early civil rights movement, and are all ultimately uprooted."
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The B.C. Achievement Foundation has named four finalists for the $40,000 (about U.S. $30,145) B.C. National Award for Canadian Nonfiction, Quillblog reported. The winner will be announced in Vancouver on January 26. The shortlisted titles, which receive a $5,000 prize, are:
Shanghai Grand: Forbidden Love and International Intrigue on the Eve of the Second World War by Taras Grescoe
A Good Death: Making the Most of Our Final Choices by Sandra Martin
On Trails: An Exploration by Robert Moor
Invisible North: The Search for Answers on a Troubled Reserve by Alexandra Shimo