Thursday, October 15, 2015

Booker Prize to Marlon James & National Book Award Finalists

Publishers Lunch

Marlon James won the Booker Prize for A Brief History In Seven Killings, which the judges called the "most exciting" book on the shortlist. Chair of the judges Michael Wood said they came to a unanimous decision -- not always the case for the Booker -- in a quick two hours. Currently living in Minneapolis, James is the first Jamaican author to win the award.

Wood notes further: "This book is startling in its range of voices and registers, running from the patois of the street posse to The Book of Revelation. It is a representation of political times and places, from the CIA intervention in Jamaica to the early years of crack gangs in New York and Miami."

Riverhead spokesperson Jynne Martin told us they plan a 75,000-copy reprint of the paperback (first issued last month). UK publisher Oneworld told the Bookseller that "40,000 copies would be available to order by bookstores within the next 24 hours" and they plan an overall reprint of 107,500 copies. Oneworld is also preparing a limited edition hardcover for Christmas, "featuring a platinum record, instead of black vinyl on the cover."

As we indicated earlier Tuesday, the favorite -- this year, Hanya Yanagihara -- almost never actually wins the Booker. For James's UK publisher Oneworld, this is their first Booker win. Riverhead is the publisher in the US.

The finalists for each of the four National Book Award categories were announced Wednesday morning on NPR's Morning Edition. The winners will be named on November 18. The fiction list gives Booker bettors'-favorite Hanya Yanagihara another chance at a major award, along with recently-named 5 Under 35 honoree Angela Flournoy.

Fiction
Karen E. Bender, Refund (Soft Skull)
Angela Flournoy, The Turner House (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies (Riverhead)
Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles (Random House)
Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life (Doubleday)

Nonfiction
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau)
Sally Mann, Hold Still (Little, Brown)
Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus (Atria)
Carla Power, If the Oceans Were Ink (Henry Holt)
Tracy K. Smith, Ordinary Light: A Memoir (Knopf)

Young People's Literature

The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin (Little, Brown Children's)
Bone Gap by Laura Ruby (Balzer + Bray)
Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War by Steve Sheinkin (Roaring Brook Press)
Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman (Harper Children's)
Nimona by Noelle Stevenson (HarperTeen)

Poetry
Ross Gay, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press )
Terrance Hayes, How to Be Drawn (Penguin)
Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus (Alfred A. Knopf)
Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions)
Patrick Phillips, Elegy for a Broken Machine (Alfred A. Knopf)

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