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1. The shortlists for the renamed Whitbread Awards, the Costa Book Awards have been announced without a single woman novelist making the cut. William Boyd, Neil Griffiths, Mark Haddon and David Mitchell are all up for the £25,000 novel of the year award. Nominees for best debut novel of 2006 are Michael Cox, Marilyn Heward Mills, Stef Penny and James Scudamore.
2. Unforgivable Blackness, a biography of boxer Jack Johnson by Geoffrey C. Ward, has won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award. Johnson became the first black heavyweight champion of the world when he won the title in 1908. But he suffered severe racial prejudice and spent time in jail and seven years in exile. Winner Ward is set to receive £18,000 and a free £2,000 bet.
3. Iain Hollingshead has won the Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award 2006 with his first novel Twenty Something. Now in its 14th year, the award is given to the passage considered to be the most redundant in an otherwise excellent novel.
4. A debut novel set in London's theatreland in the 1790s, The Diamond of Drury Lane, has won this year's Nestle Children's Book prize. Written by former diplomat Julia Golding, the book has already been awarded the Ottakar's Children's Book prize. Other award winners included Mouse Noses on Toast by Daren King, illustrated by David Roberts and That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown by Cressida Cowell and Neal Layton.
The Nestle award is one of the most respected in the publishing industry, and included contributions from 37,000 children as part of its judging process. Previous winners of the award include children's laureates Anne Fine, Quentin Blake, Michael Morpurgo and Jacqueline Wilson; J. K. Rowling and Lauren Child.
The winners
9 to 11 age category
Gold: The Diamond of Drury Lane, Julia Golding (Egmont Press)
Silver: The Tide Knot, Helen Dunmore (HarperCollins Children's Books)
Bronze: The Pig Who Saved the World, Paul Shipton (Puffin)
6 to 8 age category
Gold: Mouse Noses on Toast, Daren King, illustrated by David Roberts (Faber and Faber)
Silver: Hugo Pepper, Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell (Doubleday)
Bronze: The Adventures of The Dish and The Spoon, Mini Grey (Jonathan Cape)
5 and under age category
Gold: That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown, Cressida Cowell & Neal Layton (Orchard Books)
Silver: The Emperor of Absurdia, Chris Riddell (Macmillan Children's Books)
Bronze: Wibbly Pig's Silly Big Bear, Mick Inkpen (Hodder Children's Books)
5. This month's New Writing theme is now live on the website. The focus theme for this month is Abroad. It is by exploring the world of others who may appear foreign and different that in some way we can explore our world and gain a better understanding of ourselves. In the work of this month's featured authors, all three - Hermione Lee, Sean O'Brien and C. D. Rose - examine some sense of themselves through different worlds.
Hermione Lee visited New York ostensibly to undertake a fellowship at the New York Public Library. What follows is 'Manhattan Days' an engaging and elegant account of her experiences in an alien environment as she meditates upon taxi-drivers, politics, the arts and the quiet, beautiful parts of the city she stumbles across.
Sean O'Brien's ironic poem 'Symposium at Port Louis' is about attending a symposium in Mauritius hints at unease as he plays the role of cultural ambassador to a country with its own traditions and experiences. It is a dignified and perceptive poem that offers personal insights into a complex and beautiful island.
'The Neva Star' is C. D. Rose's account of three sailors stranded on a rusting tanker ship in Naples. It is a poetic piece of writing that seems to contain little action; however, it is in fact a powerful examination of the lives of three men trapped by both personal circumstances and the complications of the wider world around them.
The website includes notes for teachers, notes for readers, author interviews and glossaries which we will be updating on a monthly basis, focusing on a wide selection of short stories, poems, novel extracts and essays.
6. The nominations for the 2007 Carnegie and Kate Greenaway medals - the UK's oldest and most prestigious children's literary and illustration awards - have been unveiled today. The two lists are nominated by members of Cilip, the professional body for librarians. Titles in the Carnegie longlist range from Jeanette Winterson's Tanglewreck, to Conn and Hal Iggulden's The Dangerous Book for Boys. Emily Gravett and Jane Ray both have two titles nominated in the Kate Greenaway longlist. The shortlists will be announced in mid-April and the winners in June.
Sir Howard Davies the Director of the London School of Economics has been announced as the Chair of Judges for next year’s Man Booker Prize for Fiction. The remaining four members of the judging panel will be announced in the New Year. The shortlist will be announced in September 2007, and the winner will be announced at an awards ceremony in October.
7. The £10,000 Forward Prize for Poetry has been won by Robin Robertson for his collection ’Swithering’. Robertson, an editor at Jonathan Cape, is the first poet to have won both the best collection prize and the best first collection prize. The first, ’A Painted Field,’ was a winner in 1997. Indian-born Tishani Doshi, 31, won the £5,000 best first collection prize for ’Countries of the Body’.
This week the 2006 Nestlé Children’s Book Prize shortlist was announced. Nominated writers include; Mick Inkpen; Julia Golding; Mini Grey; Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell. Riddell appears twice on the 2006 shortlist, both for his own book The Emperor of Absurdia and in collaboration with Paul Stewart on Hugo Pepper. The shortlist now goes to the children’s judging panel. Over 100 schools will take part in the judging process to decide the winners, who will be announced on 13 December at a ceremony at the British Library.
8. The Guardian Children’s Book Prize has been awarded to Philip Reeve for the Whitbread prize short-listed A Darkling Plain from his Hungry Cities quartet. The £1,500 award is his first literary prize. Reeve, a children’s book illustrator and author took six years to complete the project.
Blue Peter editor, Richard Marson, Jane Churchill, Director of the Cheltenham Literary Festival's programme for young people and illustrator Tony de Saulles, have chosen the shortlist for this year's Blue Peter Book Award. Ten young judges, selected through an on-line competition, will decide on the three category winners and overall winner next month. Those short-listed include Michael Morpurgo, Charlie Higson, Oliver Jeffers and Mini Grey.
9. The £2,500 Booktrust Teenage Prize short-list which recognises and celebrates the best contemporary teenage fiction has been announced. The judges include author Mal Peet, school student Helen Comerford and journalist Emma Hoddinott. The winner will be announced in December. The nominees are:
Siobhan Dowd A Swift Pure Cry (David Fickling Books)
Ally Kennen Beast (Scholastic Books British)
Paul Magrs Exchange (Simon and Schuster)
Anthony McGowan Henry Tumour (Doubleday)
Marcus Sedgwick The Foreshadowing (Orion Children’s Books)
John Singleton Angel Blood (Puffin British)
In other news, Harry Potter's arch enemy Lord Voldemort has been voted kids’ favourite literary villain of all time. The boy wizard’s evil nemesis in the Hogwarts books by J. K. Rowling came top in the BigBadRead poll organised by publishers Bloomsbury which drew more than 16,000 votes from British schoolchildren.
Finally the judges for this years' John Llewellyn Rhys prize have been announced. They are author (Chair) Courttia Newland, journalist Benedicte Page and poet Lemn Sissay. The prize is awarded retrospectively and the winner will receive £5,000, with the other short-listed authors receiving £500 each. The prize, founded 63 years ago in honour of the writer John Llewellyn Rhys, who was killed in action in the Second World War, is open to British and Commonwealth writers of fiction and non-fiction aged 35 or under.
10. The Guardian writer James Meek has been awarded his second £10,000 prize of the year for his novel set during the Russian civil war, The People's Act of Love. At a sell-out event during the Edinburgh book festival, he was presented with the Scottish Arts Council book of the year award.
In other news the Booktrust has announced the 2006 shortlist for the Early Years Awards. The short-listed books all exemplify the remarkable creativity in words, design and illustration necessary to encourage young children into reading. The short-listed books are by category; Baby Book Award; Pre-School Award and Best New Illustrator. Judges include Wendy Cooling, Ian Beck and Mariella Frostrup.
The annual £3,000 YoungMinds Book Award short-list has also been announced recently by the leading children's mental health charity. Sponsored by the acclaimed novelist Philip Pullman the award will be presented to the winning author in November. The award recognises a book, either fiction or non-fiction, that gives an insight into the lives, terrors and wonderings of children or young people. The short-list is as follows:
Shattered Lives by Camila Batmanghelidjh (Jessica Kingsley Publishers)
Herman by Lars Saabye Christensen (Arcadia)
Just Like Tomorrow by Faiza Guene (Chatto & Windus)
Sailor in the Wardrobe by Hugo Hamilton (Fourth Estate)
Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala (John Murray)
Londonstani by Gautam Malkani (Fourth Estate)
11. The early list of 10 competitors for this year's £10,000 Guardian First Book prize bestrides continents and centuries. It includes authors born in Libya, China and the Black Hills of Wales, an Australian woman born in Yorkshire and a Yorkshireman who has triumphantly published his first volume of poetry in his 61st year, to applause from established poets.
The prize was launched in 1999, replacing the Guardian Fiction Prize, which ran for 33 years. The award, for first-time authors, aims to recognise and reward new writing across fiction and non-fiction. It is unique in weighing views from readers' groups. This year the groups centre on eight Waterstone's stores across the country. For more details please click here.
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