And the Award Goes to...
Happy New Year from Old Town Books! We hope that our wonderful book community had a safe and happy holiday season. Thank you for all of your orders and your constant support! Many of us are already making plans for our 2021 TBR piles, from reading challenges to book journals and more. If you’d like to get a jumpstart on your 2021 reading goals, the 2020 award winners below are a great place to start!
Source: Danil Aksenov
American Book Awards
Administered by the Before Columbus Foundation, the American Book Awards are given yearly to U.S.-published books to “recognize outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community.” Some of 2020’s winners include:
Sabrina & Corina: Stories by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
In West Mills by De'Shawn Charles Winslow
International Booker Prize
Formerly known as the Man Booker International Prize, the Booker Prize is rewarded annually to a single book, translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland. The 2020 winner is The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld (Dutch-Netherlands), translated by Michele Hutchison, and published by Faber & Faber.
National Book Awards
Each year, a variety of genres are honored at the National Book Awards, hosted by the National Book Foundation. “The Foundation's mission is to celebrate the best literature in America, expand its audience, and ensure that books have a prominent place in American culture.”
Fiction
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
Non-fiction
The Dead are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by Tamara Payne and Les Payne
Poetry
DMZ Colony by Don Mee Choi
Young People’s Literature
King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callendar
Newbery Medal
“The Newbery Medal was named for eighteenth-century British bookseller John Newbery. It is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.” (Source) The 2020 Medal winner was New Kid, written and illustrated by Jerry Craft.
Nobel Prize in Literature
The Nobel Prize in Literature is a Swedish literature prize, awarded annually since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction". The 2020 Nobel Prize winner was poet Louise Glück.
Some of her notable works include:
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Established in 1917 through the will of publishing magnate Joseph Pulitzer and awarded by Columbia University, the Pulitzer Prize honors several categories of media within the journalism and publishing industries. The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is awarded “for distinguished fiction published in book form during the year by an American author, preferably dealing with American life.” The 2020 winner, originally published in 2019, was The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead.
Stonewall Book Awards
The Stonewall Book awards are a trio of literary prizes that annually honor “English language books that have exceptional merit relating to the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender experience.”
Fiction:
Barbara Gittings Literature Award: Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis
Non-fiction:
Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award: How We Fight for Our Lives: A Memoir by Saeed Jones
Children’s/Young Adult Fiction
Mike Morgan & Larry Romans Children's & Young Adult Literature Award: When Aidan Became a Brother by Kyle Lukoff and The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta
Blog contribution and additional photos by Shannon McCarthy.