I knew I had no hope of winning: Simon Van Booy wins Frank O'Connor Short Story Award for Love Begins in Winter

book awards progressive books book notes book lists obituaries small press university press all press translators photographers illustrators cart contact library lookup

	Look up in you local library any book featured on any lovethebook.com page: Click here

find author, title or keywords

subscribe to lovethebook.com news

Book Awards News

Books

Book Awards by Year

Book Awards by Years Awarded

3/24/2010
The beautiful brain of Sherman Alexie: War Dances wins 2010 Pen/Faulkner Award

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

2/28/2010
Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award to D. A. Powell

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

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

11/22/2009
Those who saw him hushed: Let the Great World Spin, the National Book Award winner by Colum McCann

10/21/2009
Four Canadians tortured in the name of fighting Terror, Kerry Pither wins Ottawa Book Award for Dark Days

10/10/2009
I've had to learn to live by writing, not the other way round. Herta Müller wins Nobel prize in literature

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

9/15/2009
I saw my soul become flesh: Jean Valentine wins Wallace Stevens Award

7/5/2009
Philip Hoare wins 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize for Leviathan

6/24/2009
R. Bruce Elder wins 2009 Robert Motherwell Book Award

5/12/2009
Jane Mayer wins 2009 Helen Bernstein Award for The Dark Side

5/7/2009
Cormac McCarthy wins lifetime achievement, PEN/Saul Bellow Award

4/26/2009
Louise Erdrich's 2009 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award winning book: The Plague of Doves

4/15/2009
Climatologist David Archer wins 2009 Walter P. Kistler Book Award for The Long Thaw

3/26/2009
Avi Sharon wins Harold Morton Landon Translation Award for C. P. Cavafy's Selected Poems

3/22/2009
Thomas G. Andrews wins 2009 Bancroft Prize for Killing for Coal

2/27/2009
2009 PEN/Faulkner Award to Joseph O'Neill for Netherland

2/21/2009
Stephanie E. Smallwood wins Frederick Douglass Book Prize for Saltwater Slavery

1/28/2009
2008 Costa Book of the Year Award to Sebastian Barry for The Secret Scripture

1/11/2009
MLA Awards First Book Prize to Dana Luciano for Arranging Grief: Sacred Time and the Body in Nineteenth-Century America

1/6/2009
Costa Book Award to Diana Athill, aged 91

12/9/2008
Guardian First Book Award for The Rest Is Noise

11/27/2008
National Book Award winner Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello

11/3/2008
Mohammed Hanif on Guardian First Book Award for A Case of Exploding Mangoes

10/18/2008
Indian writer, Aravind Adiga, wins 2008 Man Booker Prize

10/10/2008
French novelist J. M. G. Le Clezio wins Nobel Prize for Literature

9/3/2008
Edward Alwood wins Tankard Book Award for Dark Days in the Newsroom

8/24/2008
Britian's oldest book prize to Rosalind Belben for Our Horses in Egypt

8/10/2008
Michelle De Kretser wins New South Wales Premier's Book of the Year Award for The Lost Dog

7/30/2008
Kay Ryan announced as new Poet Laureate

7/16/2008
Salman Rushdie knighted as Best of the Booker Prize winners

7/4/2008
No consolation prize for Tom Bullough whose book, The Claude Glass, was mistakenly announced as the 2008 Wales Book of the Year

7/2/2008
Wales Book of the Year to Dannie Abse for The Presence

6/28/2008
Margaret Atwood wins Prince of Asturias Award for Letters

6/19/2008
Royal Society Prize for Science Books goes to Mark Lynas for Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

6/13/2008
Rawi Hage wins wins the €100,000 Impac Dublin literary award for debut novel De Niro's Game

6/9/2008
Rose Tremain captures Orange Broadband Prize

6/2/2008
Red House Children's Book Award to Derek Landy for Skulduggery Pleasant

5/5/2008
Graham Robb wins 2008 Ondaatje Prize

5/2/2008
Raja Shehadeh wins Orwell Prize for Palestinian Walks

4/22/2008
2008 Krasnza-Krausz Book Awards announced

4/12/2008
Francis Parkman Prize to Jean Edward Smith for FDR

4/3/2008
Michael Billington wins Theatre Book Prize for The State of the Nation

4/1/2008
Marcus Rediker wins the 2008 Merle Curti Award for The Slave Ship

3/27/2008
Indra Sinha wins the South East Asia and South Pacific regional Commonwealth Writers' Best Book Prize for Animal's People

3/8/2008
2008 National Book Critics Circle Award to Harriet A. Washington for Medical Apartheid

3/5/2008
2008 Lionel Gelber Prize to Paul Collier for The Bottom Billion

3/1/2008
Robert Kirsch Award to Maxine Hong Kingston

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

Love Begins in Winter
Simon Van Booy
View Details Library Cart Library Lookup Amazon.com

The Secret Lives of People in Love
Simon Van Booy
View Details Library Cart Library Lookup Amazon.com

subscribe to lovethebook.com news