BTW News Briefs

NAIBA Names Winner of Inaugural Carla Cohen Free Speech Award

The New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association has chosen the winner of the first Carla Cohen Free Speech Award, created in honor of the longtime co-owner of Politics & Prose. The first recipient of the prize is The Dreamer, a book about the poet and activist Pablo Neruda, written by Pam Munoz Ryan and illustrated by Peter Sis. A donation will be given to the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression in their names.

“The idea for this award came from a desire to not only honor an amazing bookseller and past president of NAIBA, but to honor Carla as would be most fitting,” said the association’s acting president, Lucy Kogler, of Talking Leaves. “The NAIBA Carla Cohen Free Speech Award will be awarded to a children’s book, as awareness of constitutional rights needs to begin at the beginning of true consciousness. Educating children about their rights by putting the books into their hands that will allow them to question, imagine, and dream is essential to the survival of independent bookstores and dare I say, humanity.”

Wolfe, Ganz Cooney to Be Honored by National Book Foundation

The National Book Foundation will award its 2010 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to Tom Wolfe at the National Book Awards dinner in New York City on November 17.

Joan Ganz Cooney, a founder of Sesame Workshop (formerly Children’s Television Workshop) and Sesame Street, will be honored with the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.

The 2010 National Book Award finalists will be announced by Pat Conroy on Wednesday, October 13, at Flannery O’Connor’s childhood home in Savannah, Georgia.

Academy of American Poets Recognizes Kinnell and Mattawa

The Academy of American Poets‘ Board of Chancellors has awarded its 2010 Wallace Stevens Award to Galway Kinnell. The $100,000 prize recognizes outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry. The Academy named Khaled Mattawa as the recipient of its 2010 Academy Fellowship, which recognizes “distinguished poetic achievement” and provides a stipend of $25,000.

Kinnell and Mattawa will be honored at the fourth annual Poets Forum, from October 28 - 30, in New York City.

Kinnell is the author of a number of books of poetry, including Body Rags (Houghton Mifflin), The Book of Nightmares (Mariner), and the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning Selected Poems.

Mattawa’s works include Ismailia Eclipse (Sheep Meadow), Tocqueville (New Issues), and Zodiac of Echoes and Amorisco (both Ausable). He has also translated many volumes of contemporary Arabic poetry and co-edited two anthologies of Arab American literature.

MPIBA Names Book Award Winners

The winners of the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association’s 2010 Regional Book Awards, to be presented at a trade show breakfast in Denver on Friday, September 24, are:

• Fiction: Below Zero: A Joe Pickett Novel by C.J. Box (Putnam)
• Nonfiction: The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt & the Fire That Saved America by Timothy Egan (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• The Arts: Tony Hillerman’s Landscape: On the Road With Chee and Leaphorn by Anne Hillerman; photographs by Don Strel (HarperCollins)
• The Arts/Poetry: Gingko Light by Arthur Sze (Copper Canyon Press)
• Children’s Chapter Book: Artsy-Fartsy by Karla Oceanak; illustrated by Kendra Spanjer (Bailiwick Press)

Ingram Publisher Services Adds Two 

Ingram Publisher Services Inc., an Ingram Content Group company, announced this week that it will provide comprehensive distribution services for the North American market for a wide range of products for both Insight Guides and Berlitz Publishing. Ingram Publisher Services will begin distributing both brands, which are owned by APA Publications, on September 19.

NRF: August Retail Sales Increase Reflects Cautious Consumer

The National Retail Federation said this week that the back-to-school shopping season finished on a positive note, helped in part by retailers’ aggressive promotions and state sales tax holidays. August retail industry sales (which exclude automobiles, gas stations, and restaurants) rose 0.5 percent seasonally adjusted over July and increased 3.0 percent unadjusted over last year.

August retail sales released on September 14 by the U.S. Commerce Department show total retail sales (which include non-general merchandise categories such as autos, gasoline stations, and restaurants) increased 0.4 percent seasonally adjusted over July and increased 3.5 percent unadjusted year-over-year. Clothing and clothing accessory stores sales increased 1.6 percent seasonally adjusted and a 3.0 percent unadjusted over last year. Sporting goods, hobby, book and music stores sales increased 0.9 percent seasonally adjusted over July and 4.2 percent unadjusted year-over-year.

“While the underlying trends remain positive, shoppers are still focused on getting their finances in order,” said NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz. “The challenge for retailers is to convince consumers that the recession is over and to buy accordingly.”