BTW News Briefs

Eisenberg Wins Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction

Deborah Eisenberg’s The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (Picador) has been named the winner of the 2011 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The honored book was selected by panel of judges for the PEN/Faulkner Foundation from among 320 novels and short story collections by American authors published in the U.S. during the 2010 calendar year.

Eisenberg receives a prize of $15,000. Each of the four finalists – Jennifer Egan for A Visit From The Goon Squad (Knopf); Jaimy Gordon for Lord of Misrule (McPherson & Co.); Eric Puchner for Model Home (Scribner); and Brad Watson for Aliens in The Prime of Their Lives (W.W. Norton) – receives $5,000.

All five authors will be honored during the 31st anniversary PEN/Faulkner Award Ceremony at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, May 7.

Voting Opens for Children’s Choice Book Awards

Children and teens are now casting their votes to choose the winners of the 2011 Children’s Choice Book Awards, which are hosted by the Children’s Book Council (CBC) in association with Every Child A Reader, the CBC Foundation. The fourth annual awards program features 30 finalists in six categories, including Author and Illustrator of the Year.

Voting is underway at bookstores, school libraries, and at www.bookweekonline.com until April 29. The winners will be announced at the annual Children’s Choice Book Awards Gala on May 2 at The Lighthouse in New York City as part of Children’s Book Week (May 2 - 8, 2011).

Algonquin Book Club to Host Author Webcast From Bookstore

On January 1, Algonquin Books launched the Algonquin Book Club, a program highlighting 25 paperback titles, each including a reader’s guide with discussion points, author interviews, original essays, and tips for hosting a book club. Four of the selections are being featured at literary events at bookstores around the country that are being simultaneously webcast via the Algonquin Books blog. First up is Julia Alvarez (In the Time of the Butterflies) interviewed by Edwidge Danticat, author of Brother, I’m Dying,at Books & Books in Miami on March 21.

The full schedule of interviews is available on the Book Club webpage, along with reading group guides, wine and recipe pairings, and author essays and interviews for each of the 25 titles. In-store promotions include the Algonquin Book Club catalog, signage, newsletter co-op, shelf-talkers, and author call-ins to book clubs. Booksellers should contact their sales reps for terms.

Lambda Literary Award Finalists Announced

On Wednesday, March 16, the Lambda Literary Foundation announced the finalists for the 23^rd Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the Lammys. The 114 finalists include books from mainstream publishers, academic presses, long-established and brand-new LGBT publishers, as well as titles published with print-on-demand technologies.

The complete list of finalists for the awards, which recognize achievement in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) writing for books published in 2010, is available on the Lambda Literary website.

The winners will be announced at a May 26 ceremony at New York’s School of Visual Arts Theater (333 West 23rd Street), in conjunction with BookExpo America.

23rd Annual Triangle Awards to Be Presented April 28

The Publishing Triangle will host the 23rd annual Triangle Awards ceremony, honoring the best lesbian and gay fiction, nonfiction, and poetry published in 2010, on April 28, at the Tishman Auditorium of the New School (66 West 12th Street in New York City) at 7:00 p.m. The ceremony is free and open to the public, with a reception to follow.

Alan Hollinghurst is this year’s recipient of the Publishing Triangle’s Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, named in honor of the legendary editor of the 1970s and 1980s. Hollinghurst, a novelist, activist, and professor at University College in London, won the Man Booker prize for his fourth novel, The Line of Beauty, in 2004. The Bill Whitehead Award is given to a man in odd-numbered years and to a woman in even years, and the winner receives $3000.

The full list of the 22 finalists for the Triangle Awards can be found on The Publishing Triangle website.

Banned Books Return to Shelves in Tunisia and Egypt

The Guardian U.K. reported that a number of titles censored by the regimes of ousted Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak are returning to their respective country’s bookshop shelves.

Among the titles emerging in Tunisia are several that were critical of the former president and his family and journalistic works reporting on the regime’s political corruption and assassinations.

Alexis Krikorian, director of the Freedom to Publish program at the International Publishers Association, said the emergence of formerly banned books within Tunisia was “very good news,” and whether censorship still exists with regard to new titles was a separate issue … but it was likely that the legal submission procedure, which under the old regime had been misused to block books at their printers, “no longer applies,” as reported by the Guardian.

The newspaper also said that anecdotal reports are emerging of once suppressed titles appearing for sale on street corners and newspaper kiosks across Egypt, including books that were hidden for years in private basements.

Cairo is set to hold a book fair in Tahrir Square – the focus for the protests against Mubarak – at the end of March.