BTW News Briefs

Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize Winner Announced

Ben Fountain has won the 2012 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction for his novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. The award was presented at a ceremony in New York Tuesday night that also honored New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman with the organization’s Maxwell E. Perkins Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Field of Fiction.

The Flaherty-Dunnan prize carries a $10,000 cash award for the winner, and $1,000 award for each of the short-listed finalists.

Fifty ABA member booksellers across the country acted as first-tier readers for the prize.

Fountain’s first novel, which is published by Ecco/HarperCollins, was also a finalist for the 2012 National Book Awards and a May Indie Next List Next Great Read.

$1.5 Million Gift Will Support Literacy

On December 6, at the first International Summit of the Book, hosted by the Library of Congress, David Rubenstein, a co-founder of the Carlyle Group and a major donor to the Library of Congress, announced he is contributing $1.5 million to fund three new Library of Congress annual literacy awards over five years.

The annual awards will include the David M. Rubenstein Prize for a groundbreaking contribution to the sustained advancement of literacy by any individual or entity worldwide; the American Prize, honoring a project developed and deployed in the U.S. during the preceding decade with special emphasis on combating aliteracy; and the International Prize, which would honor the outstanding work of an individual, a nation or a non-governmental organization working in a specific country or region.

The literacy awards program will be managed by the Library of Congress Center for the Book. Final selection of prize winners will be made by the Librarian of Congress, who will solicit recommendations from literacy experts on a National Advisory Board to be established for the program. Criteria for the prizes include innovation, replicability, sustainability, measurable impact and demonstration of reliance on existing professional literature and applied practice.

The first winners will be announced in 2013 at the second annual International Summit of the Book, which will be held in Singapore on August 16, 2013.