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!

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:

• Poems 1962-2012

• Faithful and Virtuous Night: Poems

• Averno: Poems

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.