Awards: Stella; Man Booker International; Griffin Poetry; Colby

Alexis Wright won the AU$50,000 (about US$38,780) Stella Prize, which recognizes and celebrates Australian women writers' contribution to literature, for her collective memoir Tracker. Chair of judges Fiona Stager, owner of the Avid Reader in Brisbane, said the "winner of this year's Stella Prize in a strange way chose itself. The winning book is unique in the history of Australian letters and it artfully fulfils all the Stella Prize's criteria: it is excellent, engaging and original. We invite all readers to immerse themselves in a history, a landscape, a time and a story that is heartbreaking, poignant and humorous.

"In awarding the 2018 Stella Prize to Alexis Wright for Tracker the judges wish to acknowledge the craft of the author and pay tribute to the richness of the memories shared by the many people she interviewed. This book will enrich and change the understanding of readers. A man like Tracker Tilmouth could change our world. It takes a writer like Alexis Wright to change the world of Australian letters."

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Finalists have been announced for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize, which "celebrates the finest works of translated fiction from around the world." The £50,000 (about $71,140) prize is divided equally between author and translator of the winning entry. This year's winner will be named May 22 in London. The shortlisted titles are:

Vernon Subutex 1 by Virginie Despentes (France), translated by Frank Wynne   
The White Book by Han Kang (South Korea), translated by Deborah Smith
The World Goes On by László Krasznahorkai (Hungary), translated by John Batki, Ottilie Mulzet and George Szirtes
Like a Fading Shadow by Antonio Muñoz Molina (Spain), translated by Camilo A. Ramirez
Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi (Iraq), translated by Jonathan Wright
Flights by Olga Tokarczuk (Poland), translated by Jennifer Croft

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This year's international and Canadian shortlists have been announced for the Griffin Poetry Prize. The seven finalists are invited to read in Toronto on June 6 and will each be awarded C$10,000 (about US$7,945) for their participation in the Shortlist Readings. The two winners, who will be named June 7, each receive C$65,000 (about US$ 51,650). The shortlisted Griffin titles are:

International
Heaven Is All Goodbyes by Tongo Eisen-Martin
Debths by Susan Howe
Whereas by Layli Long Soldier
Hard Child by Natalie Shapero

Canadian
This Wound Is a World by Billy-Ray Belcourt
I have to live. by Aisha Sasha John
Same Diff by Donato Mancini

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Steven E. Sodergren has won the 2018 William E. Colby Award for The Army of the Potomac in the Overland & Petersburg Campaigns (LSU Press). The award is given by Norwich University, Northfield, Vt., to "a first solo work of fiction or non-fiction that has made a major contribution to the understanding of military history, intelligence operations or international affairs."
Carlo D’Este, Colby Symposium co-founder, commented: "Steven E. Sodergren's elegantly written, superbly researched and often gut-wrenching account of what the Union soldiers of the Army of the Potomac endured in 1864-1865 in Virginia has earned the author a place among the finest writers of the Civil War."

Associate professor of history at Norwich University, Sodergren is the first Norwich University author to receive the award. He is program coordinator of the Studies in War and Peace degree program at Norwich and serves on the advisory board for Norwich's Peace and War Center.

He will receive a $5,000 author honorarium funded by the Pritzker Military Foundation.

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