18 November 2021

Shortlists have been announced for the Crime Fiction Lover Awards 2021. Ian Rankin is nominated twice: he is shortlisted for the Crime Author of the Year Award and his prequel to William McIlvanney's Laidlaw trilogy, The Dark Remains (Canongate), is shortlisted for the Best Crime Novel of the Year. On the Best Debut Crime Novel of the Year shortlist is Sarah Sultoon's The Source (Orenda Books), which follows the story of a young TV journalist who is forced to revisit her harrowing past when she’s thrust into a sex-trafficking investigation in her hometown. 

The Crime Fiction Lover is holding its first ever awards this year, to recognise and celebrate the best books and authors in the genre published over the past year. Final round voting is now open across all six categories.

Click here to vote. 

17 November 2021

The 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards nominees have been announced and among them are Kazuo Ishiguro, Richard Powers, Alex Michaelides, Leonnig and Holly Jackson. Their books are featured across a wide range of categories, including Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun for the Best Science Fiction, Richard Power's Bewilderment for Best Fiction, Holly Jackson's As Good As Dead for the Best YA Fantasy & Science Fiction and Carol Leonnig's Zero Fail for the Best Non-Fiction. 

Decided by voting open to all members of Goodreads, the Goodreads Choice Awards are one of the few major book awards chosen by readers. Voting in 20 categories happens in November, and the winners are announced in December. Goodreads analyzes statistics from the hundreds of millions of books added, rated, and reviewed on the site to select 15 worthy nominees in 20 categories. 

Click here to vote. 

15 November 2021

Mayflies by Andrew O'Hagan (Faber) has won Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year 2021. The novel tells of the friendship between James and Tully, ranging from boyhood in a small Scottish town in the 1980s to middle-age, when Tully is diagnosed with terminal illness. The story was inspired by the close and enduring bonds formed in the author’s youth and the soundtrack that accompanied them. The Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year specifically champions books by authors based in Scotland, or that have a strong Scottish setting.

Andrew O'Hagan said: “I am truly delighted that Mayflies has been selected by Waterstones as its Scottish Book of the Year. For an author, one of the great joys is to see a book being taken up by individual shops and individual booksellers, making every effort to put it into the hands of customers. This novel is so personal to me and the reaction of readers has been overwhelming. I feel a huge sense of gratitude to all Waterstones booksellers in Scotland.”

Mayflies has been a firm bookseller favourite since its publication and was Waterstones Scottish Book Of The Month in June 2021. Rebekah Carruthers, of Waterstones Dunf...

12 November 2021

Hannah Gold is among six authors shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Awards in the Best Story category. Both absorbing animal adventure and subtle commentary on climate change and the plight of endangered species, The Last Bear (HarperCollins, illustrated by Levi Pinfold), revolves around April, the daughter of an Arctic researcher, and her chance encounter with a lone polar bear. Judges said, "This beautifully written story - featuring captivating illustrations from Levi Pinfold - is a moving tale that children will fall in love with."

The Blue Peter Book Awards have been recognising and celebrating the greatest reads for children since 2002. The final winners will be chosen by more than 300 schoolchildren across the country from 12 different schools. In spring 2022, the winning authors and illustrators will appear on a special awards episode of the show.

Click here for more. 

11 November 2021

For the second year in a row writer Yan Ge is on the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation shortlist, this year with Strange Beasts of China, translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang (Tilted Axis Press). Part detective story, part metaphysical enquiry, the book engages existential questions of identity, humanity, love and morality with whimsy and stylistic verve. It follows an amateur cryptozoologist commissioned to uncover the stories of beasts living alongside humans in near-inconspicuousness - save their greenish skin, serrated earlobes, and strange birthmarks. 

08 November 2021

Nominations have been announced for the 2022 CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals for writing and illustration. Hannah Gold's The Last Bear (HarperCollins, illustrated by Levi Pinfold), Ross Montgomery's The Chime Seekers (Walker) and Frank Cottrell-Boyce's Noah's Gold (Macmillan) are nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal, and Zadie Smith and Nick Laird's debut picture book Weirdo (Penguin) illustrated by Magenta Fox is nominated for the  CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal 2022.

The CILIP Carnegie Medal is awarded by children’s librarians for an outstanding book written in English for children and young people. The Medals are awarded annually by CILIP, the library and information association and the Youth Libraries Group with longlists announced in February, shortlists in March and the winners announced at a ceremony in June.

Click here to discover more.

03 November 2021

Christienna Fryar and Diarmuid Hester are among the six writers shortlisted for the 2022 Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer’s Award. Christienna Fryar is selected for Entangled Lands: A Caribbean History of Britain (Allen Lane), a history of Britain told through its centuries-long relationship with the region of the Caribbean, and Diarmuid Hester for Nothing Ever Just Disappears (Allen Lane), a new history of seven queer lives and the places that made them.

The Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer's Award is a highly prestigious annual literary award of £20,000 for a current writing project exploring the Americas. Two winners will be announced on 30 November 2021.

Click here for more. 

29 October 2021

Yan Ge, Olga Ravn and Adania Shibli are among the seventeen authors longlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2021. Yan Ge makes the longlist for her novel Strange Beasts of China translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang (Tilted Axis Press), about an amateur cryptozoologist who is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts living alongside humans in near-inconspicuousness; Olga Rav for her International Booker Prize shortlisted novel The Employees translated from Danish by Martin Aitken (Lolli Editions), which is a science-fiction satire on the late-capitalist workplace and what it means to be human; and Adania Shibli for her National Book Award shortlisted novel Minor Detail translated from Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette (Fitzcarraldo), which follows an investigation by a woman from Ramallah into an incident in August 1949 when an Israeli army unit raped and murdered an Arab girl. 

The £1000 prize was established by the University of Warwick in 2017 to address the gender imbalance in translated literature and to increase the number of international women’s voices accessible by a British and Irish readership. The shor...

28 October 2021

Kazuo Ishiguro and Charlotte Higgins are among the authors shortlisted for the Waterstones Book of the Year 2021. Kazuo Ishiguro is picked for his Booker-longlisted Klara and the Sun (Faber) which explores the implications of AI for human relationships and the question of what it means to love. Waterstones described it as "a stunning feat of world-building which delivers a powerful emotional gut-punch." In non-fiction, Charlotte Higgins is shortlisted for Greek Myths, illustrated by Chris Ofili (Jonathan Cape), which Waterstones described as "a tremendously enjoyable reimagining" which places female characters in the centre of the frame.

The 13-strong shortlist has been drawn up by Waterstones booksellers, who each nominate a book they think is outstanding and would recommend to readers. The Waterstones Book of the Year 2021 will be chosen by a Waterstones panel and announced on 2nd December.

Click here for more.

27 October 2021

The Blue Peter Book Awards 2022 longlists have been revealed and featured are Hannah Gold and Katie & Kevin Tsang. Hannah Gold is longlisted for her middle-grade debut The Last Bear (HarperCollins, illustrated by Levi Pinfold), which tells the story of a young girl who accompanies her scientist father to the Arctic, where she finds herself on a quest to save their island’s last surviving polar bear. Katie and Kevin Tsang are longlisted for the first book in their Dragon Realm series, Dragon Mountain (Simon & Schuster), a ROARsome fantasy, magic, adventure that follows a group of children on an epic quest to free a quartet of fire-breathing beasts.

The Blue Peter Book Awards have been recognising and celebrating the greatest reads for children since 2002. Shortlists for the Best Story Award and Best Book with Facts Award will be announced on 11 November, before over 200 children from selected schools around the country pick their two winners in March 2022.

Click ...

26 October 2021

Colm Tóibín, Una Mannion, Fintan O'Toole, Diarmaid Ferriter and Bernard MacLaverty have made this year's An Irish Post Book Awards shortlists. Colm Tóibín's novel The Magician (Viking) is shortlisted for the Eason Novel of the Year 2021, Una Mannion's debut A Crooked Tree (Faber & Faber) is nominated for the Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year 2021 and Fintan O'Toole's We Don't Know Ourselves (Head of Zeus) and Diarmaid Ferriter's Between Two Hells (Profile Books) for the Odgers Berndtson Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2021. In the Writing.ie Short Story of the Year 2021 category is 'Blackthorns' by Bernard MacLaverty, which is taken from his latest story collection Blank Pages (Jonathan Cape).

First awarded in 2006, the An Post Irish Book Awards showcase a mix of exceptional writing from new and established writers across sixteen categories. The public is now invited to vote for a winning title from each shortlist until by 5pm on November 15th, with the winners being announced 23rd November at an in person awards ceremony. The event will also be live-streamed for those who are unable to attend.

Click ...

25 October 2021

Luke Kennard has won the Forward prize for best collection for his "anarchic" response to Shakespeare’s sonnets, Notes on the Sonnets (Penned in the Margins). Judges praised the way it captures "uncomfortable elements of human interaction and the changing nature of love."

Luke Kennard said: "I wrote the opening piece ‘Sonnet 66’ at a party. Then I got hooked on writing reactions to all 154, generally just reading the original a few times and getting some thoughts down. Then it turned into this strange, dreamlike narrative set at the same house party. I’ve written plenty of prose poems before but this was the most sustained sequence. I got shortlisted for my second collection in 2007, so it feels kind of extraordinary to be here again 14 years later, as a… former child star. It means a lot. You try to balance your ego against a sense of community. It’s still really lovely when something you’ve written makes an impact on someone else."

Click ...

20 October 2021

Lucy Caldwell has won the BBC national short story award for  'All the People Were Mean and Bad,' in which the mother of a young child takes a transatlantic flight after the death of a relative. Exploring parenthood, marriage, kindness and the glimpse of an alternative life, the story was praised by judges for its "masterful storytelling", "deep truthfulness" and "deft precision". It draws its title from the Noah’s Ark picture book that Caldwell’s protagonist is reading to her 21-month-old daughter as she flies back to London from Toronto after her cousin’s funeral. The story is available to listen to on BBC Sounds.   

Lucy Caldwell said, "I wanted to write about the distance between where we come from and where we end up; between who we think we are and who we turn out to be. Between what we dream, and what we do." 'All the People Were Mean and Bad' is taken from the collection Intimacies (Faber & Faber), and marks the third time the Northern Irish writer, who is also the author of four novels as well as stage plays and radio dramas, has been shortlisted for the ...

15 October 2021

The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2021 shortlist has been revealed, and featured is Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell by John Preston. The Sunday Times bestseller is published by Penguin in the UK and details the media tycoon Robert Maxwell’s bullying, lies and looting of pension funds in an absorbing profile of the war hero turned rogue. Working Title have optioned the rights for a limited television series. 

This year's Baillie Gifford winner will be announced at an event at the Science Museum on 16th November.

Click here for more.

11 October 2021

Seán Hewitt and Sean Borodale have been named the winners of this year's Laurel Prize. In first place is Seán Hewitt's debut poetry collection Tongues of Fire (Jonathan Cape), which probes weighty themes such as nature, morality, sexuality, relationships, and the body. Sean Borodale's Inmates (Jonathan Cape) is the third prize winner: his poems stage encounters with insects at sites and moments of their refuge, torpor, hatching or fighting, of traversing a floor in the night or climbing a wall, of their death and decay - all in and around the house of the writer, with whom they are sharing time, as fellow inmates. 

Run by the Poetry School, the annual award is funded by Simon Armitage’s Laureate’s honorarium, which he receives annually from the Queen. It is awarded to the best collection of environmental or nature poetry published each year.

Click here for more.

11 October 2021

The HWA Crown Award 2021 shortlists have been revealed, and featured are Lissa Evans and Linda Colley. Lissa Evans' V for Victory (Doubleday), which is the final book in a loose trilogy, though it can be read as a stand-alone, is shortlisted for the Gold Crown Award 2021. Shortlisted for the Non-Fiction Crown Award is Linda Colley's The Gun, The Ship, and The Pen (Profile Books), which is a virtuoso global study of how nations were formed and constitutions written upends the familiar narrative at every turn.

The Gold Crown is for the best historical novel of the year, and the Non-Fiction Crown is for the best work of historical non-fiction. The Awards ceremony and HWA Crown Award winners will be announced on 24 November, 2021. 

Click here for more.

07 October 2021

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2021 has been awarded to the novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”. He follows fellow RCW authors Kazuo Ishiguro and Olga Tokarczuk who are the recipients of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature and 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature respectively. 

Abdulrazak Gurnah, who grew up on one of the islands of Zanzibar and arrived in England as a refugee in the 1960s, has published ten novels as well as a number of short stories. Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel committee, said that the Tanzanian writer’s novels, from his debut Memory of Departure, about a failed uprising, to his most recent, the “magnificent”, Afterlives, “recoil from stereotypical descriptions and open our gaze to a culturally diversified East Africa unfamiliar to many in other parts of the world”.

Click here for more.