Awards presented to Shapcott, Walcott, and book apps

There’s been a flurry of book award activity over the past few days (take that, Academy Awards). The awards in this roundup range from the time-honoured and prestigious to the trendy and cutting edge.

Costa Book of the Year Award
Costa Book Awards named Jo Shapcott’s poetry collection Of Mutability (Faber & Faber) its Book of the Year. The U.K. award culls its shortlist from winners across five categories: first novel, novel, biography, poetry, and children’s book. The 2010 shortlist also featured Witness the Night, a first novel by Kishwar Desai; The Hand That First Held Mine, a novel by Maggie O’Farrel; The Hare with Amber Eyes, a memoir by Edmund de Waal; and Out of Shadows, a children’s book by first-time author Jason Wallace. Shapcott receives £25,000; the winner in each category receives £5,000.

T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry
Also based out of the U.K., the Poetry Book Society awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize to Derek Walcott for White Egrets (Faber & Faber). Walcott, 81, is a Nobel laureate and currently serves as distinguished scholar in residence at the University of Alberta.

The £15,000 prize is given annually to the author of the best new poetry collection published in the U.K. or Ireland. Anne Stevenson, chair of the judging panel, described Walcott’s collection as a “moving, risk-taking and technically flawless book by a great poet.” Also included on the shortlist were Sam Willetts, Seamus Heaney, and Pascal Petit.

Publishing Innovation Awards
Digital Book World opened last night in New York City by handing out the first-ever Publishing Innovation Awards for e-books and apps. The winners are selected based on “their merits in the areas of origination, development, production, design, and marketing.”

The inaugural winners are:

Fiction:  DRACULA: The Official Stoker Family Edition (PadWorx Digital Media)
Non-fiction: Logos Bible Software (Logos Bible Software)
Children’s:  A Story Before Bed (Jackson Fish Market)
Reference:  Star Walk for iPad (Vito Technology)
Comics: Robot 13 (Robot Comics)

Faber & Faber to open Toronto writing school this fall

According to a report by The Globe and Mail‘s London-based columnist Leah McLaren, the independent British publishing house Faber & Faber is planning to launch a writing school in Toronto this fall. Set to open in October, the Faber Academy Toronto will employ at least one high-profile Canadian author: Miriam Toews, who is published by Faber in the U.K. and whom Academy head Patrick Keogh says will be “involved in an essential way” in the school.

From the Globe:

The Faber Academy, a successful offshoot of Faber’s core publishing business, was launched 18 months ago in Paris, with a course taught at the legendary English language bookstore Shakespeare and Company, by novelist Jeanette Winterson.

Since then, the school has expanded to included short and long courses in London, Dublin and Geneva, with an expansion to Edinburgh and Glasgow planned for later this year. Instructors have included Tracy Chevalier, Anne Enright, Paul Auster, Kazuo Ishiguro and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney.

McLaren speculates whether Toronto has a deep enough talent pool to match London’s, though from the sounds of things, the school’s administrators are aiming high:

After taking a series of meetings with writers including Margaret Atwood, Anne Michaels, Michael Redhill, Madeleine Thien, Michael Helm, Andrew Pyper and Ken Babstock, Keogh says he is so confident the Toronto school will be a success, Faber is already looking into plans to expand the model to Montreal and Vancouver.

Bookmarks: Want to buy a pink amublance? and more

• Pink ambulance for sale cheap: gently used by poet/performance artist Mingus Tourette
• Faber & Faber discovers the magic of customized book covers via POD (PostSpectacular)
• When book covers serve as visual metaphors for the contents (Design Observer)
• Co-author of 100 Things to Do Before You Die dies (AP via CBC.ca)
• Russell Smith recaps the Urquhart anthology/”Salon des Refusés” flap (The Globe and Mail)
• “Typo vigilantes” correct mistakes on public signs, get busted (CNN.com)

Booker shortlist announced

In a year that saw landmark books written by the big names of British fiction — Rushdie, Barnes, Coetzee, McEwan, and Ali and Zadie Smith to name a few — the big question preceding this year’s Man Booker shortlist announcement was as much “who will be left out?” as “who will be kept in?”

Among the ranks of longlisted books that didn’t make it are Nobel Prize-winner and two-time Booker-winner J.M. Coetzee’s Slow Man and books by two other past Booker Prize recipients, Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan.

There are few surprises among the shortlisted books. Each of them was written by an established novelist, with the possible exception of Sebastian Barry, better known as a playwright than as a long form fiction writer.

This year’s Booker shortlist includes John Banville’s The Sea (Picador); Julian Barnes’ Arthur & George (Jonathan Cape); Sebastian Barry’s A Long Long Way (Faber & Faber); Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (Faber & Faber); Ali Smith’s The Accidental (Hamish Hamilton); and Zadie Smith’s On Beauty (Hamish Hamilton). The bookmakers at William Hill favour the thrice-shortlisted Julian Barnes with 5/4 odds.

The winner will receive £50,000 with a guaranteed increase in sales and recognition worldwide. Each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, will receive £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their own book. The winner will be announced on October 10 in a televised ceremony.

Related links:
Click here for the official Man Booker website
Click here for commentary by Louise Jury of The Independent
Click here for commentary by John Ezard of The Guardian