The Evanston Public Library (both the Main Library and Robert Crown Branch) will be closed this Thursday, April 25, for a Staff Development Day.
September 22, 2015
Each year the American Library Association awards one work of fiction and one work of nonfiction an Andrew Carnegie Medal. This year the longlists of both categories have been announced. Where are your gaps? Want to fill them? Then just click on the titles below and reserve your copies with EPL today! Continue reading “Andrew Carnegie Medals announced!”
September 14, 2015
As you may or may not know, this year the National Book Awards have paired with The New Yorker to exclusively reveal each of the ten book longlists in the categories of Young People’s Literature, Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction. The first of these, “Young People’s Literature” has been released and the surprise is seeing how many of the titles the five personal panel of judges selected are written not for children at all but young adults. With the sole exceptions of Ali Benjamin’s The Thing About Jellyfish and Gary Paulsen’s This Side of Wild, all the titles listed for young people are for readers between the ages of 12-18. Curious? Check out some of these titles from the Evanston Public Library system by following the links below: Continue reading “National Book Award 2015 Nominees: Young People's Literature”
August 29, 2014
Former poet laureate of the U.S. Robert Hass won the $100,000 Wallace Stevens Award. The prize given for “outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry” was awarded by the Academy of American Poets on Tuesday. Mr. Hass won a National Book Award in 2007 and a Pulitzer Prize in 2008. He will be honored along with six other recipients at a ceremony on October 17. You can read two of his poems here and see more about the award and other winners in this NYT article.
Laura
August 18, 2014
American author Ann Leckie is the recipient of this year’s Hugo Award, science fiction’s highest honor, for her debut novel Ancillary Justice. Ms. Leckie’s book, “narrated by the artificial consciousness of a starship”, has won other major sci-fi awards, including the Nebula and Arthur C Clarke awards and the British Science Fiction Association award. NPR’s Genevieve Valentine wrote: “Ancillary Justice is an absorbing thousand-year history, a poignant personal journey, and a welcome addition to the genre.” The Hugo award is named after Hugo Gernsback who founded the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories and coined the word science fiction. Other winners of this year’s award include Equoid by Charles Stross and The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere by John Chu. You can read more about this prestigious award and see the full list of winners here.
Laura
July 30, 2014
Winners of the 2014 PEN Literary Awards were announced today by the PEN/American Center. Among the winners are poet Frank Bidart for his collection Metaphysical Dog (also a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award); critic James Wolcott for Critical Mass (reviewed as “epic and epically rewarding”) and playwright David Rabe. Other winners include Linda Leavell for biography, Carl Hart for literary science and Ron Childress for socially engaged fiction (a prize founded by Barbara Kingsolver). The $25,000 award for Debut Fiction will be announced at the end of September. Read more about the awards in this NYT article.
Laura
July 23, 2014
This year is the first time the Man Booker Prize, United Kingdom’s most prestigious literary award is celebrating authors of literary fiction “whether from Chicago, Sheffield or Shanghai.” Four American authors and one Irish-American writer are among the 13 finalists: Joshua Ferris for To Rise Again at a Decent Hour; Karen Joy Fowler for We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves; Siri Hustvedt for The Blazing World; Richard Powers for Orfeo and Joseph O’Neill for The Dog. Other nominees include: Richard Flanagan (Australia), Howard Jacobson (Britain), Paul Kingsnorth (Britain), David Mitchell (Britain), Neel Mukherjee (Britain), David Nicholls (Britain), Ali Smith (Britain), Niall Williams (Ireland). The winner who will receive 50,000 pounds (about $85,000) will be announced in October. Read more in these articles from the NYT and NPR.
Laura
July 1, 2014
The Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction was awarded to Donna Tartt for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Goldfinch. The award for nonfiction went to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin for The Bully Pulpit. The medals were presented at the American Library Association’s annual meeting in Las Vegas on Saturday. Each winner receives a $5,000 cash prize. Commenting on the importance of libraries during her childhood, Ms. Tartt said: “you can really change someone’s life by giving them the right book at the right time. All writers are readers before we write a word, so there’s a kinship and it’s very deep.” Ms. Goodwin also has fond memories of borrowing books from her childhood library, recalling how “libraries have been second homes for her throughout her career.” Other finalists for the medal were Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and Edwige Danticat’s Claire of the Sea Light for fiction, and Nicholas A. Basbanes’ On Paper and Sherri Fink’s Five Days at Memorial for nonfiction. Read more in this Seattle Times article.
Laura
June 20, 2014
The 2014 PEN Pinter prize is being awarded to Salman Rushdie. Named in memory of playwright Harold Pinter, the award is given annually to a
British writer who has an “unflinching, unswerving” and “fierce intellectual determination…to define the real truth of our lives and our societies.” Head judge Maureen Freely said: This prize is English PEN”s way of thanking Salman Rushdie not just for his books and his many years of speaking out for freedom of expression, but also for his countless private acts of kindness. When he sees writers unjustly vilified, prosecuted or forced into exile, he takes a personal interest.” Read more in today’s Guardian and NPR articles. And check the EPL catalog for works by this author.
Laura
June 5, 2014
This prestigious prize honoring English-language works by women was awarded Wednesday in London to Irish author Eimear McBride for her debut novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing. Among 20 other nominated authors, including Donna Tartt for The Goldfinch and Eleanor Catton for The Luminaries, Ms. McBride wrote the book when she was 27 and spent almost 10 years trying to get it published. She described her writing style as an attempt to capture “the moment just before language becomes formatted thought.” Chairwoman of the judging panel Helen Fraser called her book “an amazing first novel that impressed the judges with its inventiveness and energy.” See more in the npr and NYTimes articles.
Laura
May 6, 2014
The 2014 Edgar awards were presented last week in New York to honor best mystery writing in fiction, nonfiction, and television. William Kent Krueger’s novel Ordinary Grace, “about a man’s look back at the summer of 1961 in Minnesota”, won the award for best fiction. Other winners include The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War by Daniel Stashower for best nonfiction; Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews for best first novel by an American author; Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood for best paperback original; and episode one of The Fall by Allan Cubitt for best television teleplay. Read the rest of the NYT article here. You can see a complete list of winners and nominees at theedgars.com.
Laura
