The winners of the National Book Critics Circle Awards, presented Friday evening:
The NBCC also gave the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award to Bill Henderson, founder of the Pushcart Press, editor of the annual Pushcart Prize anthology and trumpet player extraordinaire.
The Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing went to Wyatt Mason, a contributor to Harper's, the New Yorker and the New Republic.
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The Lambda Literary Foundation has chosen finalists for the 18th Annual Lambda Literary Awards, celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) books published in 2005. The awards are in the categories of anthology, belles lettres, biography, children's/YA, erotica, gay men's fiction, gay men's mystery, gay men's poetry, humor, lesbian debut fiction, lesbian fiction, lesbian mystery, lesbian poetry, LGBT studies, nonfiction, romance, SF/fantasy/horror, spirituality and transgender/gender queer. Winners will be announced at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, May 18, on the eve of the BookExpo America. For more information, go to the Lambda Literary Foundation's Web site.
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Here's an odd distinction: the Bookseller, the U.K. book trade magazine, has "honored" a Red Wheel/Weiser title with the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year. The winner is People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It by Gary Leon Hill (Weiser Books, $16.95, 1578632978).
Hoping that this prize just might be third only to the Booker and the Whitbread in prestige and fame, Michael Kerber, president of Red Wheel/Weiser, said that People Who Don't Know They're Dead is "actually quite a serious book about the paranormal." In it, Hill, a playwright, tells "the story of how his Uncle Wally and Aunt Ruth came to counsel dead spirits who had taken up residence in bodies that didn't belong to them." Hill writes that "being dead is so much like being alive that many people who die suddenly or violently don't know they're dead. In many ways this book examines the theory, research, and practice that informs such television shows as Ghost Whisperer and such movies as The Sixth Sense."
For his part, Bookseller deputy editor Joel Rickett called the book "a lively practical guide to dealing with the undead. Its triumph draws attention to the oft-neglected field of occult and paranormal publishing."
Booksellers who want to know more about People Who Don't Know They're Dead should go to Weiser Books's Web site.
- Fiction: The March by E.L. Doctorow (Random House). (Doctorow also won an NBCC Prize in 1989 for Billy Bathgate. The March has won the PEN/Faulkner fiction award and was shortlisted for the National Book Award.)
- General Nonfiction: Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich (Dalkey Archive Press)
- Biography: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin (Knopf)
- Autobiography: Them: A Memoir of Parents by Francine du Plessix Gray (Penguin Press). (This is a new category for the NBCC awards.)
- Poetry: Refusing Heaven by Jack Gilbert (Knopf)
- Criticism: The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin by William Logan (Columbia University Press)
The NBCC also gave the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award to Bill Henderson, founder of the Pushcart Press, editor of the annual Pushcart Prize anthology and trumpet player extraordinaire.
The Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing went to Wyatt Mason, a contributor to Harper's, the New Yorker and the New Republic.
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The Lambda Literary Foundation has chosen finalists for the 18th Annual Lambda Literary Awards, celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) books published in 2005. The awards are in the categories of anthology, belles lettres, biography, children's/YA, erotica, gay men's fiction, gay men's mystery, gay men's poetry, humor, lesbian debut fiction, lesbian fiction, lesbian mystery, lesbian poetry, LGBT studies, nonfiction, romance, SF/fantasy/horror, spirituality and transgender/gender queer. Winners will be announced at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, May 18, on the eve of the BookExpo America. For more information, go to the Lambda Literary Foundation's Web site.
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Here's an odd distinction: the Bookseller, the U.K. book trade magazine, has "honored" a Red Wheel/Weiser title with the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year. The winner is People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It by Gary Leon Hill (Weiser Books, $16.95, 1578632978).
Hoping that this prize just might be third only to the Booker and the Whitbread in prestige and fame, Michael Kerber, president of Red Wheel/Weiser, said that People Who Don't Know They're Dead is "actually quite a serious book about the paranormal." In it, Hill, a playwright, tells "the story of how his Uncle Wally and Aunt Ruth came to counsel dead spirits who had taken up residence in bodies that didn't belong to them." Hill writes that "being dead is so much like being alive that many people who die suddenly or violently don't know they're dead. In many ways this book examines the theory, research, and practice that informs such television shows as Ghost Whisperer and such movies as The Sixth Sense."
For his part, Bookseller deputy editor Joel Rickett called the book "a lively practical guide to dealing with the undead. Its triumph draws attention to the oft-neglected field of occult and paranormal publishing."
Booksellers who want to know more about People Who Don't Know They're Dead should go to Weiser Books's Web site.