The Malaysian Insider :: Books
The Malaysian Insider :: Books |
| Novelist Lauren Myracle out of award race after error Posted: 17 Oct 2011 08:32 PM PDT
Myracle, author of teen best-sellers "ttyl" and ttfn" and other novels about disenfranchised young people, said in a statement she was "over the moon last week after receiving the call telling me that 'Shine' was a finalist for the award." Myracle said she was later told that "Shine" had been included in error but would remain on the list "based on its merits." The novel is the tale of the hate crime murder of a young gay teen in a small US town. But on Friday, the National Book Foundation asked her to withdraw, "to preserve the integrity of the award and the judges' work, and I have agreed to do so," she said. Myracle added that she continued to support the remaining authors on the short-list for the young people's literature prize. Her publisher at Amulet Books, Susan Van Meter, added; "We strongly encourage the NBF to review their procedures for transmitting award information between the judges and the staff and to authors and the public so that a painful error like this doesn't happen again." Myracle suggested that NBF make a donation to the Matthew Shepard Foundation "so that something positive might come of this error." Shepard, 21, was attacked and killed in Wyoming in 1998, apparently because he was gay. The National Book Awards will be presented at a gala ceremony in New York on November 16. — Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| Julian Barnes backed for Booker amid literary spat Posted: 17 Oct 2011 07:46 PM PDT  Man Booker Prize-nominated British author Julian Barnes holds his book 'Arthur and George' in London. — Reuters pic The annual award to a writer in English from the Commonwealth, Ireland or Zimbabwe is a major event in the publishing calendar, significantly boosting publicity and sales for shortlisted and winning works. It is also an opportunity for Britain's "literati" to air their grievances about writers who have or have not been nominated and question the ability the judging panels to choose the right winner. That criticism has been unusually loud this year, prompting chair of judges Stella Rimington to hit back at critics who have accused the award of populism and launched a rival award, The Literature Prize. The board of the new prize, whose spokesman is literary agent Andrew Kidd, said in a statement that the Booker "now prioritises a notion of 'readability' over artistic achievement." Leo Robson, critic for the New Statesman magazine, recently wrote: "If things continue as they are, it isn't hard to imagine a time when the (Man Booker) prize will be seen as a way not of celebrating novels, just of selling them." Rimington, a former British spy chief who turned to novel writing, put up a robust defence of this year's judges in a recent newspaper interview. "As somebody interested in literary criticism, it's pathetic that so-called literary critics are abusing my judges and me," she told the Guardian newspaper. "They live in such an insular world they can't stand their domain being intruded upon." "Sour grapes"? Ion Trewin, administrator of the Man Booker Prize, weighed into the debate yesterday with an article in the Daily Telegraph. He said that who ever wins the coveted prize at a glitzy dinner in London today, will have passed "the severest of critical tests." Trewin also brushed off the sniping surrounding this year's award as a minor distraction. "Do I detect sour grapes in some of those who support the possibility of a new literary prize, said to be a rival to the Man Booker?" If the winner is Barnes, as bookmakers predict, he may have mixed feelings. A Man Booker Prize means a cheque for £50,000 (RM245,000), a flurry of media attention and, perhaps most importantly, a major boost in sales. But he has been critical of the award in the past, likening it to "posh bingo" and berating judges for being "inflated by their brief celebrity". Before 2011, he was shortlisted in 1984 ("Flaubert's Parrot"), 1998 ("England, England") and 2005 ("Arthur and George"). This year's contender, The Sense of an Ending, is sufficiently short to be described in one review as a "novella", and tells the story of Tony in a meditation on memory and regret. It is up against Carol Birch for "Jamrach's Menagerie", Canadian authors Patrick deWitt and Esi Edugyan for "The Sisters Brothers" and "Half Blood Blues" respectively, and debut British novelists Stephen Kelman ("Pigeon English") and A.D. Miller ("Snowdrops"). — Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
NEW YORK, Oct 18 — Young adult novelist Lauren Myracle said yesterday she had withdrawn her latest novel "Shine" from the 2011 National Book Awards after being told it had been short-listed by mistake.| You are subscribed to email updates from The Malaysian Insider :: Books To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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