Thursday, September 04, 2014

Awards: Rona Jaffe; Samuel Johnson Nonfiction; CWA Daggers

Shelf Awareness

The Rona Jaffe Foundation announced winners of this year's Writers' Awards, which recognize six women writers who demonstrate excellence and promise in the early stages of their careers and award each of them $30,000. The 2014 winners are Olivia Clare (fiction), Karen Hays (nonfiction), Danielle Jones-Pruett (poetry), T.L. Khleif (fiction), Mara Naselli (nonfiction) and Solmaz Sharif (poetry). They will be honored at a private ceremony on September 18 in New York City.

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A longlist of 15 contenders for the £20,000 (US$33,225) Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction has been named. Chair of judges Claire Tomalin commented: "I was hoping for some surprises, and the biggest one is that my fellow judges and I have chosen more memoirs for our long list than any other type of book--six out of the total of 15--and just one biography: all human life is here.... the books on the longlist show that nonfiction is certainly stranger and wilder than fiction." This year's shortlist will be released October 9, and a winner announced November 4. You can see the complete Samuel Johnson Prize longlist here.

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The Crime Writers' Association announced finalists in three categories of the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards. Winners will be named October 24 in London. The book finalists are:

Goldsboro Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel
The First Rule of Survival by Paul Mendelson
How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny
Keep Your Friends Close by Paula Daly
This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash

John Creasey New Blood Dagger for Best First Novel
The Axeman's Jazz by Ray Celestin
The Devil in the Marshalsea by Antonia Hodgson
The Silent Wife by A.S.A Harrison
The Strangler Vine by M.J. Carter

Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller
Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty
An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris
I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes
Natchez Burning by Greg Iles

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