04.01.12 | Charlotte Williams - The Bookseller

Poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy has won the Costa Poetry Award for The Bees (Picador), and debut biographer Matthew Hollis has scooped the Costa Biography Award, with both now entering the final race alongside three other category winners to be named the overall £30,000 Costa Book of the Year 2011.
Hollis' Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas (Faber) won the Biography Award, with Andrew Miller taking the Costa Novel Award for his sixth novel, Pure (Sceptre), chosen over other contenders including Booker winner Julian Barnes' The Sense of An Ending (Harvill Secker).
Christie Watson, a former Great Ormond Street nurse, has won the Costa First Novel Award for her book, Tiny Sunbirds Far Away (Quercus), which is set in the Niger Delta. Former opera singer and debut children's writer, Moira Young, has won the Costa Children's Book Award for Blood Red Road (Marion Lloyd Books).
The category prize winners each win £5,000, and were chosen by separate panels of three judges. Each category winner now competes to be named the overall Costa Book of the Year, which will be chosen by another panel, chaired by London Evening Standard editor Geordie Greig, and announced on 24th January.
Costa managing director John Derkach said: "The Costa Book Awards have an excellent track record of recognising and celebrating some of the very best current British writing, and books that can be enjoyed by everyone. We're very proud to be announcing such a terrific collection of books which we know people will enjoy reading."

Guardian report here.