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Inside the National Book Awards

Almost two weeks after the National Book Award winners were announced in New York City, one of the fiction judges, writer and English professor Marianne Wiggins, wrote a firsthand account of what the experience was like for the Los Angeles Times.

Wiggins covers all aspects of the awards, from their relatively low profile among greater American culture to the ins and outs of conference calls with her co-jurors.

Interestingly, Wiggins mentions some titles that were tentatively on the list before being cut, one of which is Peter Behrens’ The Law of Dreams. Wiggins neglects to mention the author’s name (a fact which is fairly irritating and somewhat self-defeating, given that she devotes more than one paragraph to lamenting that more authors aren’t household names). Quillblog is curious: does this mean that Behrens was very close to being a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Governor General’s Literary Award, the latter of which he ultimately won?

Related links:
Read Wiggins’ full account here

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