Love Begins in Winter by Simon Van Booy won the £30,000 (US$49,120) Frank O'Connor Award, the world's richest short story prize. The Irish Examiner reported that in his acceptance speech at the award ceremony, Van Booy said he was surprised and "very, very grateful" to be chosen.
"I was very nervous coming to Cork for the Frank O'Connor Festival," he said. "But I stopped being nervous when I read the other short-listed books. I was shocked by the quality of the work, and I knew I had no hope of winning."
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The Langum Charitable Trust named Bruce Barcott, author of The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird, the first winner of its biannual Gene E. & Adele R. Malott Prize for Recording Community Activism. The author receives $1,500, and $1,000 is donated to the underlying project of community activism.
"Barcott's book exemplifies the journalistic values which Gene and Adele Malott wanted to encourage and recognize," said David J. Langum, Sr., founder of the Langum Trust. "The book gives the reader a deeper understanding of the spirit of the activist, and the dedication it takes to fight for a cause."