Matt Rasmussen has won the 2012 Walt Whitman Award, given by the Academy of American Poets and selected by poet Jane Hirshfield. The award is for a first collection by an American poet who has never published a book of poetry and includes a $5,000 cash prize and a one-month residency at the Vermont Studio Center.
Rasmussen's collection, Black Aperture, will be published next spring by Louisiana State University Press.
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The longlist has been announced for the £10,000 (US$16,121) Desmond Elliott Prize, which honors a first novel published in the U.K. A shortlist of three books will be named in May and the winner on June 28 June in London. This year's Desmond Elliott longlist:
Absolution by Patrick Flanery
Bed by David Whitehouse
Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson
The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood
Care of Wooden Floors by Will Wiles
The Land of Decoration by Grace McCleen
The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness
The Missing Shade of Blue by Jennie Erdal
The Spider King's Daughter by Chibundu Onuzo
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
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David Livingstone Smith won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction, which recognizes works "that have made important contributions to the understanding of racism and the appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures," for his book Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate.