Notes in the Margin Weblog

Last night the Mystery Writers of America announced the winners of the 2013 Edgar Allan Poe Awards.

And Publishers Weekly has the list of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association 2013 Christian Book Award winners.

Story Circle Network: 2012 Sarton Memoir Award Announced.

(Austin, TX. March 22, 2013)—The Story Circle Network (SCN) is pleased to announce that Monica Wood has been granted the Sarton Women’s Memoir Award for her book When We Were the Kennedys (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012). The book tells the story of Wood’s mill town childhood in Mexico, Maine, and her Catholic family’s struggles after the sudden death of her father in 1963. Her family’s overwhelming grief is tenderly, artfully woven into the whole nation’s grief for the death of President Kennedy, and with the healing that comes with the acceptance of loss. One of our judges wrote, “I absolutely loved this book, and loved every single moment of reading it. It was the best book I’ve read in years, and I read a lot of books!” And we agree.

The Women’s Memoir Award is named for May Sarton, distinguished American memoirist, poet, and novelist and is offered annually by the Story Circle Network, an international nonprofit association of women life-writers. For information about the 2013 award cycle, visit SCN’s website at storycircle.org/SartonMemoirAward.

SCN also sponsors the largest and longest-lived women’s book review site on the Internet; a program of online writing classes taught by and for women; an editorial service; and the bi-annual conference, “Stories From the Heart.” Membership in SCN is open to any woman who is interested in writing about her life experiences. For details: www.storycircle.org.

Hilary Mantel faces six newcomers in contest for women’s fiction prize | Books | The Guardian

Among the contenders for the leading prize for fiction written by women is a bestselling thriller and a how-to-live-your-life memoir so divisive it had some reviewers wanting to throw it across the room. Also in the running are novels by literary heavyweights Hilary Mantel, Zadie Smith and Barbara Kingsolver.

They are all longlisted for what was the Orange prize until the phone company withdrew last year to concentrate on cinema sponsorship.

Read the long list of 20 books nominated for this year’s prize.

The Booker prize and the battle for supremacy in a literary awards jungle | Books | guardian.co.uk.

Here’s something to help us keep all those literary prizes straight.

Ben Fountain Wins National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction – GalleyCat

The winners of the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Awards have been revealed. Ben Fountain won the fiction prize with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and Andrew Solomon took nonfiction with Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity.

Leanne Shapton won the autobiography award for Swimming Studies and Robert A. Caro took biography with The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson. D. A. Powell won the poetry award for Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys. Marina Warner took the criticism prize for Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights.

This post from GalleyCat includes links to free samples of all finalists for the awards.

Mantel Wins Costa Award

Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies has won another major literary award, taking home the Costa Book Award and its £30,000 prize. Late last year, the novel won the Booker Prize (as did the previous book in her series, Wolf Hall), making Bring Up the Bodies the only book to win the Booker and the Costa in the same year.

Applegate, Klassen, Lake Win Newbery, Caldecott, Printz

Katherine Applegate has won the 2013 Newbery Medal for The One and Only Ivan (Harper), a novel narrated by a silverback gorilla that lives in an ill-run roadside attraction with other performing animals; the book was edited by Anne Hoppe. Jon Klassen has won the 2013 Randolph Caldecott Medal for This Is Not My Hat (Candlewick), in which a small fish gleefully steals a hat belonging to a larger fish and tries to get away with it; it was edited by Liz Bicknell. And Nick Lake has won the 2013 Michael L. Printz Award for In Darkness (Bloomsbury), in which a 15-year-old boy is trapped in the rubble of a hospital following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti; it was edited by Sarah Odedina. The awards were announced this morning at the American Library Association’s midwinter conference in Seattle.

Edgar Nominees

Mystery Writers of America has announced the nominees for this year’s Edgar Awards.

I’m chagrined to see that I’ve read only one of all the works nominated. (But I do have another one on my reading list for the next few months.)

2012 National Book Critics Circle Finalists Announced

The 30 finalists in six categories for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Awards have been announced. Winners will be announced on Thursday, February 28 at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium