Book Awards


	3/24/2010 The beautiful brain of Sherman Alexie: War Dances wins 2010 Pen/Faulkner Award
Sherman Alexie has won the 2010 Pen/Faulkner Award for fiction for his book of short stories, essays and poems, War Dances. He is the first Native American author to win the prestigious prize. Are Indians pressured by the marketplace to write certain kinds of stories? It's the corn-pollen, four directions, eagle-feathers school of Native literature. People are more interested in our spirituality than anything else. Certainly, I've never received that kind of pressure because I never wrote that kind of stuff, but there are a lot of people out there selling their spirituality. What expectations do you encounter from readers? It's so funny -- because I'm a public Indian figure, people assume I have all these magical Indian powers, like I'm some sort of healer or shaman. That also extends to just being a writer in general -- I think people assume that just because somebody's good with metaphors, he's a better human being. It's not true. I'm just better with metaphors than 99 percent of the population, and that doesn't make me magical, it just makes me fairly smart. In your experience, do white Americans have a different sense of history -- both of events, and the significance of those events in contemporary culture -- than American Indians? White Americans have a short memory. This country really hasn't entered puberty yet -- white Americans' political thoughts are really young, and the culture is really young. The one general statement you can make about America is it's young, and wildly immature, and incredibly talented. Like some twelve-year-old kid who really pisses you off, because he's really good at everything and he knows it. What can be done to bring the U.S. from this immature point to maturity? I don't know. I'm one of those people who thinks that the world is getting better and better. I wouldn't want to be an Indian a hundred years ago -- somebody would be shooting at me. I wouldn't want to be a woman forty years ago, and I wouldn't want to be a black person twenty-five years ago. I think the world is getting better, and it's getting better because of liberal social policies. I don't think there has ever been a conservative social policy that helped anybody, except those who enacted it. I don't believe in any -ism particularly, I believe in fighting conservatism. Conservatives didn't want women to vote, didn't want Indians to become citizens. - an excerpt from an Atlantic Unbound interview with Jessica Chapel. WORLD PHONE CONVERSATION, 3 A.M. After I got home with yogurt and turkey dogs and Cinnamon Toast Crunch and my brother-in-law left, I watched George Romero’s “Diary of the Dead,” and laughed at myself for choosing a movie that featured dozens of zombies getting shot in the head. When the movie was over, I called my wife, nine hours ahead in Italy. “I should come home,” she said. “No, I’m O.K.,” I said. “Come on, you’re in Rome. What are you seeing today?” “The Vatican.” “You can’t leave now. You have to go and steal something. It will be revenge for every Indian. Or maybe you can plant an eagle feather and claim that you just discovered Italy.” “I’m worried.” “Yeah, Catholicism has always worried me.” “Stop being funny. I should see if I can get Mom and me on a flight tonight.” “No, no, listen, your mom is old. This might be her last adventure. It might be your last adventure with her. Stay there. Say hi to the Pope for me. Tell him I like his shoes.” That night, my sons climbed into bed with me. We all slept curled around one another like sled dogs in a snowstorm. I woke, hour by hour, and touched my head and neck to see if they had changed shape—to feel if antennae were growing. Some insects hear with their antennae. Maybe that was what was happening to me. EXIT INTERVIEW FOR MY FATHER · Did you, when drunk, ever get behind the tattered wheel of a ’76 Ford three-speed van and somehow drive your family a thousand miles on an empty tank of gas? · Is it true that the only literary term that has any real meaning in the Native American world is “road movie”? · How many times, during any of your road trips, did your children ask you, “Are we there yet?” · In twenty-five words or less, please define “there.” · Sir, in your thirty-nine years as a parent you broke your children’s hearts, collectively and individually, six hundred and twelve times, and you did this without ever striking any human being in anger. Does this absence of physical violence make you a better man than you might otherwise have been? · Without using the words “man” or “good,” can you please define what it means to be a good man? · Do you think you will see angels before you die? Do you think angels will come to escort you to Heaven? As the angels are carrying you to Heaven, how many times will you ask, “Are we there yet?” REUNION After she returned from Italy, my wife climbed into bed with me. I felt as if I hadn’t slept comfortably in years. I said, “There was a rumor that I’d grown a tumor, but I killed it with humor.” “How long have you been waiting to tell me that one?” she asked. “Oh, probably since the first time some doctor put his fingers in my brain.” We made love. We fell asleep. But, agitated by the steroids, I woke at 2, 3, 4, and 5 A.M. The bed was killing my back, so I lay flat on the floor. I wasn’t going to die anytime soon, at least not because of my little friend Tumor, but that didn’t make me feel any more comfortable or comforted. I felt distant from the world—from my wife and my sons, from my mother and my siblings, from all my friends. I felt closest to those who’d always had fingers in their brains. I didn’t feel any closer to the world six months later, when another MRI revealed that my meningioma had not grown in size or changed its shape. “You’re looking good,” my doctor said. “How’s your hearing?” “I think I’ve got about ninety per cent of it back.” “Well, then, the steroids worked. Good.” And I didn’t feel any more intimate with the world nine months after that, when one more MRI made my doctor hypothesize that my meningioma might only be more scar tissue from the hydrocephalus. “Frankly,” he said, “your brain is beautiful.” “Thank you,” I said, though it was the oddest compliment I’d ever received. I wanted to call my father and tell him that a white man thought my brain was beautiful. But I couldn’t tell him anything. He was dead. I told my wife and my sons that I was O.K. I told my mother and my siblings. I told my friends. But none of them laughed as hard about my beautiful brain as I knew my father—the drunk bastard—would have. - three snippets from War Dances by Sherman Alexie. permalink comments War Dances by Sherman Alexie Grove Press list Price: $14.00 our price: $8.41 View Details Library Cart Library Lookup Amazon.com


	3/13/2010 It's terrible to be possessed by brittle things: Elena Fanailova's The Russian Version wins the Best Translated Book Award for Poetry
"The Russian Version obliterates the stereotype of what Great Russian Poetry should sound like," wrote Idra Novey, Chair of the Best Translated Book Poetry Panel. "Fanailova has the candor and compassion of Akhmatova and a gift for striking metaphor that might bring Mandelstam to mind. She is also ruthlessly quick to fire 'from the hip,' as she says in the title poem, and her aim is impeccable." The Best Translated Book Award is administered by the University of Rochester's Three Percent, an organization that promotes international literature. Only about 3% of all books published in the United States are works in translation according to the Three Percent website. That figure includes all books in translation, for works of literary fiction and poetry, the number is closer to 0.7%. It’s terrible to be possessed by brittle things. How can you learn here who taught people to draw Stars between eyebrows, butterflies over the gristle Of throats, weeping eye between breasts. And anyway, who taught them to live with strange Chasms, with their nocturnal beasts, With this yawning, this singing, this delirium – unreachable Even with open palms outstretched: take them If you are not afraid of such embraces. If the faces floating up from an amalgam Of sploches, from the molding, black, silvery depths Don’t frighten you. - from The Russian Version by Elena Fanailova permalink comments The Russian Version: Selected Poems of Elena Fanailova (Eastern European Poets Series) (Russian Edition) by Elena Fanailova Zephyr Press list Price: $15.00 our price: $6.18 View Details Library Cart Library Lookup Amazon.com


	2/28/2010 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award to D. A. Powell
D. A. Powell has won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for fourth collection of poetry, Chronic, published by Graywolf Press. The Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award is given annually by Claremont Graduate University to honor work by a midcareer poet. The panel of final judges for the 2010 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Awards were Ted Genoways, Linda Gregerson, Paul Muldoon, Carl Phillips, and Charles Harper Webb. "D. A. Powell is one of the major poets of our time, and it’s wonderful to have the Kingsley Tufts Award recognize that", announced Graywolf Press senior editor Jeffrey Shotts. "Considering that Powell was selected by such a diverse committee of esteemed poets, that makes it all the sweeter." [dogs and boys can treat you like trash. and dogs do love trash] dogs and boys can treat you like trash. and dogs do love trash to nuzzle their muzzles. they slather with tongues that smell like their nuts but the boys are fickle when they lick you. they stick you with twigs and roll you over like roaches. then off with another: those sluts with their asses so tight you couldn't get them to budge for a turd so unlike the dogs: who will turn in a circle showing & showing their butts a dog on a leash: a friend in the world. he'll crawl into bed on all fours and curl up at your toes. he'll give you his nose. he'll slobber on cuts a dog is not fragile; he's fixed. but a boy: cannot give you his love he closes his eyes to your kisses. he hisses. a boy is a putz with a sponge for a brain. and a mop for a heart: he'll soak up your love if you let him and leave you as dry as a cork. he'll punch out your guts when a boy goes away: to another boy's arms. what else can you do but lie down with the dogs. with the hounds with the curs. with the mutts - a poem by D. A. Powell published in the Boston Review. permalink comments Chronic: Poems by D. A. Powell Graywolf Press list Price: $20.00 our price: $11.36 View Details Library Cart Library Lookup Amazon.com


	2/5/2010 Of course, I’d forgotten she’d died: An extract from A Scattering by Christopher Reid, the 2009 Costa Book of the Year
"My old, obscure life has gone. I am sort of famous. Radios have been broadcasting, and newspapers have retailed, in their different styles, the story of my book: a set of elegies on the death from cancer of my wife in 2005. What began as an intimate expression of love and grief has become a public parade. Bewildering. How did Douglas Dunn, whose Elegies, poems about the death of his first wife, in 1985 won the first Whitbread Book of the Year — the Whitbread preceded and developed into the Costa — cope with this? Ted Hughes’s Birthday Letters, also and perhaps not coincidentally about his dead wife, Sylvia Plath, was a later winner. Hughes had died by the time of his award: the ultimate evasive action. No local radio interviews for him!" - from Christopher Reid on winning the Costa Award. Late home one night, I found she was not yet home herself. So I got into bed and waited under my blanket mound, until I heard her come in and hurry upstairs. My back was to the door. Without turning round, I greeted her, but my voice made only a hollow, parched-throated k-, k-, k- sound, which I could not convert into words and which, anyway, lacked the force to carry. Nonplussed, but not distraught, I listened to her undress, then sidle along the far side of our bed and lift the covers. Of course, I’d forgotten she’d died. Adjusting my arm for the usual cuddle and caress, I felt mattress and bedboards welcome her weight as she rolled and settled towards me, but, before I caught her, it was already too late and she’d wisped clean away. from A Scattering, by Christopher Reid. permalink comments A Scattering by Christopher Reid Arete list Price: Not Listed our price: $12.13 View Details Library Cart Library Lookup Amazon.com


	12/19/2009 The wedding guests look upon the cracked, pink lips of Rosie's bridegroom - an extract from Petina Gappah's An Elegy for Easterly, the 2009 Guardian First Book Award winning book
A "rising star of Zimbabwean literature" according noble laureate to J. M. Coetzee, Petina Gappah writes (in her own words) "about ordinary people living in a situation rendered extraordinary because of politics. I hope the stories tell you something about the Zimbabwean character", she says, "the resilience, the tenacity, the humour. The desire to survive." An excerpt from An Elegy for Easterly, the 2009 Guardian First Book Award winning book by Petina Gappah. The wedding guests look upon the cracked, pink lips of Rosie's bridegroom. They look at Rosie's own lips that owe their reddish pinkness to artifice, they think, and not disease. Can Rosie see what they see, they wonder, that her newly made husband's sickness screams out its presence from every pore? Disease flourishes in the slipperiness of his tufted hair, it is alive in the darkening skin, in the whites of the eyes whiter than nature intended, in the violently pink-red lips, the blood beneath fighting to erupt through the broken skin. He smiles often, Rosie's bridegroom. He smiles when a drunken aunt entertains the guests with a dance that, oustide this celebration of sanctioned fornication, could be called obscene. He smiles when an uncle based in Manchester, England, calls on the mobile telephone of his son and sends his congratulations across nine thousand kilometres shortened by Vodafone on his end and Econet on the other. His smile broadens as the son tells the master of ceremonies that the uncle pledges two hundred pounds as a wedding gift; the smile becomes broader still when the master of ceremonies announces that the gift is worth two hundred million dollars on Harare's parallel market. He smiles and smiles and smiles and his smile reveals the heightened colour of his gums.. - from An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah permalink comments An Elegy for Easterly: Stories by Petina Gappah Faber & Faber list Price: $23.00 our price: $4.55 View Details Library Cart Library Lookup Amazon.com


	11/22/2009 Those who saw him hushed: Let the Great World Spin, the National Book Award winner by Colum McCann
"There's hardly a line in the novel about 9/11, but it's everywhere if the reader wants it to be", said Colum McCann speaking about Let the Great World Spin, the book which won the 2009 National Book Award for Fiction. Set around Philippe Petit's 1974 World Trade Center tightrope walk, Let the Great World Spin is an allegorical story inspired by 9/11, "a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s." A short excerpt: Those who saw him hushed. On Church Street. Liberty. Cortlandt. West Street. Fulton. Vesey. It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful. Some thought at first that it must have been a trick of the light, something to do with the weather, an accident of shadowfall. Others figured it might be the perfect city joke–stand around and point upward, until people gathered, tilted their heads, nodded, affirmed, until all were staring upward at nothing at all, like waiting for the end of a Lenny Bruce gag. But the longer they watched, the surer they were. He stood at the very edge of the building, shaped dark against the gray of the morning. A window washer maybe. Or a construction worker. Or a jumper. Up there, at the height of a hundred and ten stories, utterly still, a dark toy against the cloudy sky. He could only be seen at certain angles so that the watchers had to pause at street corners, find a gap between buildings, or meander from the shadows to get a view unobstructed by cornicework, gargoyles, balustrades, roof edges. None of them had yet made sense of the line strung at his feet from one tower to the other. Rather, it was the manshape that held them there, their necks craned, torn between the promise of doom and the disappointment of the ordinary. It was the dilemma of the watchers: they didn’t want to wait around for nothing at all, some idiot standing on the precipice of the towers, but they didn’t want to miss the moment either, if he slipped, or got arrested, or dove, arms stretched. - an excerpt from Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann permalink comments Let the Great World Spin: A Novel by Colum McCann Random House list Price: $25.00 our price: $13.45 View Details Library Cart Library Lookup Amazon.com


	10/21/2009 Four Canadians tortured in the name of fighting Terror, Kerry Pither wins Ottawa Book Award for Dark Days
Dark Days tells the story of a Canadian national security investigation gone wrong through the eyes of four of its targets: Ahmad El Maati, Abdullah Almalki, Maher Arar and Muayyed Nureddin. The book chronicles how all four men were accused of terrorist links, detained overseas and subjected to brutal torture while being interrogated with questions from Canadian agencies. No evidence was ever produced to back the allegations against them and all were eventually released and returned to Canada. "Most Canadians know about Maher Arar, but few know the extent to which there was a pattern behind his case -- that what happened to him happened to at least three other Canadians too," said Pither. "All of these men are still working for justice, to clear their names and move on with their lives. For Arar, it's waiting for the Obama administration to accept responsibilty for its role and clear his name, and for El Maati, Almalki and Nureddin it's about waiting for an apology from the Canadian government for its role in their ordeals," said Pither. "And for all of us, it's about ensuring the changes are made to stop this from happening again." - from the Dark Days Book Launch The lock slid open and the door swung into the cell. Ahmad had to jump out of the way. The guard ordered him out and led him back upstairs into a room, where he tied a piece of rubber over his eyes. Then the interrogation started. Someone said they’d received information about him and read out the names and addresses of his family in Toronto, the make and colour of his car, and its licence plate number. They knew his address, the man said, and read it out to him. He had the wrong apartment number, so Ahmad corrected him. Then the beating started. Ahmad was punched in the face and kicked at. The men in the room screamed insults at him, his family, and his faith. One of the interrogators leaned in and told Ahmad that they were going to bring Rola, the woman he’d been going to Damascus to marry, in and rape her, there, in front of him. Ahmad was terrified — did they have Rola? He knew this kind of thing happened in Syria. He pleaded with them, saying that he had told them the truth. “No,” the man yelled. “We need to hear something new!” “I can’t invent something,” said Ahmad. “No,” the man replied. “You can invent something. Then things got worse. Ahmad was ordered to strip down to his shorts and lie on his stomach on the floor. In pain from the beating, he moved slowly. The men yelled at him to move faster as he struggled out of his shirt and pants. When Ahmad was lying down, the men grabbed his hands and handcuffed them behind his back, then lifted his feet up and tied his wrists to his ankles with a rope. He was like a sheep ready for slaughter, Ahmad says. Ice water was poured all over his body, then he was whipped on his feet, legs, knees, and back with a thick metal cable. The pain was sharp and fierce, but the first strokes were the worst. After a few lashings, Ahmad’s feet and legs went numb, but that was what the dousing with ice water was for – to bring the feeling back. He could see the interrogators’ shoes from under the blindfold. The ones without the cable kicked him in the face and his back and legs. Ahmad begged the men to stop, asking why they were doing this to him. They just laughed. “They were asking me to repeat my story, and I kept repeating what happened, and they said, ‘That’s not what we want to hear.’ They kept threatening me and mocking me and said they were going to inflict permanent injury – they said I wouldn’t be able to have kids later on.” Ahmad lost track of how often he was taken down to his cell and back up for more torture but remembers that eventually he couldn’t walk and had to be dragged up and down the stairs. In his cell, without the blindfold, he saw his legs were covered in blood. His feet were too swollen to fit into his shoes. “After I just couldn’t take it any more, I told them, ‘I’m willing to say whatever you want me to say,’” Ahmad recalls. The men asked him about people he knew in Canada – including Abdullah Almalki and Maher Arar. - excerpted from Dark Days: The Story of Four Canadians Tortured in the Name of Fighting Terror by Kerry Pither (read a longer excerpt at kerrypither.com). permalink comments Dark Days: The Story of Four Canadians Tortured in the Name of Fighting Terror by Kerry Pither Penguin Books Canada list Price: $35.00 our price: $35.00 View Details Library Cart Library Lookup Amazon.com


	10/10/2009 I've had to learn to live by writing, not the other way round. Herta Müller wins Nobel prize in literature
I've had to learn to live by writing, not the other way round. I wanted to live by the standards I dreamt of, it's as simple as that. And writing was a way for me to voice what I could not actually live. - Herta Müller speaking to an unidentified journalist. She is an excellent author with truly fantastic language, on the one hand. On the other she has the capacity of really giving you a sense of what it's like living in a dictatorship, also what it's like to be part of a minority in another country and what it's like to be an exile. She is talking about really big issues like that. - Peter Englund, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, speaking about Herta Müller following the announcement that she had won 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. The cemetery was made of rocks. There were boulders on the graves. When I looked down on the ground I noticed that the soles of my shoes were turned up. All that time, I had been walking on my shoelaces. Long and heavy, they were lying behind me, their ends curled up. Two staggering little men were lifting the coffin from the hearse and lowering it into the grave with two tattered ropes. The coffin was swinging. Their arms and their ropes got longer and longer. The grave was filled with water despite the drought. Your father killed a lot of people, one of the drunk little men said. I said: he was in the war. For every twenty-five killed he got a medal. He brought home several medals. He raped a woman in a turnip field, the little man said. Together with four other soldiers. Your father stuck a turnip between her legs. When we left she was bleeding. She was Russian. For weeks afterwards, we would call all weapons turnips. It was late fall, the little man said. The turnip leaves were black and folded over by frost. Then the little man put a big rock on the coffin. The other drunk little man continued: For the New Year, we went to the opera in a small German town. The singer's voice was as piercing as the Russian woman's screams. One after the other, we left the theater. Your father stayed till the end. For weeks afterwards, he called all songs turnips and all women turnips. - an excerpt from The Funeral Sermon, the first story in Herta Müller's first book, Nadirs (Niederungen, 1982). Click here to read The Funeral Sermon in its entirety. permalink comments Nadirs (European Women Writers) by Herta Müller Univ of Nebraska Pr list Price: $16.95 our price: $5.89 View Details Library Cart Library Lookup Amazon.com


	9/23/2009 I knew I had no hope of winning: Simon Van Booy wins Frank O'Connor Short Story Award for Love Begins in Winter
"I was very nervous coming to Cork for the Frank O'Connor Festival," Simon Van Booy said in his awards ceremony acceptance speech at Cork last week. "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." Nevertheless, the 34 year old London born author took home the €35,000 prize, the richest in the world for a short story collection. "Simon Van Booy's stories in Love Begins in Winter are as immediate and elusive as the dreams they resemble. Marked by an intense inwardness, their characters' lives intersect and evolve in constantly surprising ways, carried forward by a prose as melodious and continuous as one of the Bach Cello Suites played by the narrator of the title story." -- John Koethe, author of Ninety-Fifth Street and Sally's Hair I wait in the shadows. My cello is already on stage. It was carved in 1723 on a Sicilian hillside where the sea is very quiet. The strings vibrate when the bow is near, as though anticipating their lover. My name is Bruno Bonnet. The curtain I stand behind is the color of a plum. The velvet is heavy. My life is on the other side. Sometimes I wish it would continue on without me. The stage lights here in Quebec City are too bright. Stars of dust circle the scroll and the pegs as I am introduced in French-Canadian. The cello belonged to my grandfather who was accidentally killed in World War II. My grandfather's kitchen chair is also on stage. I can only put weight on three legs. The wicker at the center of the seat is ripped. One day it's going to collapse. When the chair arrives at the concert hall a day or so before a performance, a frantic music director will call with bad news: 'my chair has been utterly ruined in transit.' An eruption of applause and I take the stage. Who are all these people? One day I will play without my instrument. I will sit up straight and not move. I will close my eyes and imagine life taking place in the houses outside the concert hall: steaming pots stirred by women in slippers; teenagers in their rooms wearing headphones; somebody's son looking for his keys; a divorcee brushing her teeth as her cat stares; a family watching television—the youngest is asleep but will not remember his dream. When I clasp my bow, the audience is suddenly very quiet. I look out at their faces a moment before I begin. So many people and yet not one single person who knows anything about me. - from Love Begins in Winter by Simon Van Booy permalink comments Love Begins in Winter: Five Stories (P.S.) by Simon Van Booy Harper Perennial list Price: $13.99 our price: $3.75 View Details Library Cart Library Lookup Amazon.com


	9/15/2009 I saw my soul become flesh: Jean Valentine wins Wallace Stevens Award
I saw my soul become flesh breaking open the linseed oil breaking over the paper running down pouring no one to catch it my life breaking open no one to contain it my pelvis thinning out into God - Annunciation by Jean Valentine from Door in the Mountain. The Academy of American Poets has selected Jean Valentine as the 2009 recipient Wallace Stevens Award. The $100,000 prize recognizes "outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry". Looking into a Jean Valentine poem is like looking into a lake: you can see your own outline, and the shapes of the upper world, reflected among rocks, underwater life, glint of lost bottles, drifted leaves. The known and familiar become one with the mysterious and half-wild, at the place where consciousness and the subliminal meet. This is a poetry of the highest order, because it lets us into spaces and meanings we couldn't approach in any other way. - Adrienne Rich Red cloth I lie on the ground otherwise nothing could hold I put my hand on the ground the membrane is gone and nothing does hold your place in the ground is all of it and it is breathing - Red cloth by Jean Valentine.Originally published in The Nation. permalink comments Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003 (Wesleyan Poetry) by Jean Valentine Wesleyan list Price: $22.95 our price: $14.82 View Details Library Cart Library Lookup Amazon.com

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