Category: Awards

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Science Fiction Awards Held in China Under Fire for Excluding Authors

A prestigious literary award for science fiction, which was hosted in China for the first time, has come under fire for excluding several authors from the 2023 awards, raising concerns about interference or censorship in the awards process. The New York Times bestseller Babel by RF Kuang, an episode of the Netflix drama The Sandman and the author Xiran Jay Zhao were among the works and authors excluded from the 2023 Hugo awards, which were administered by the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) in Chengdu in October. Read more

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Dave Eggers Wins Newbery, Vashti Harrison Wins Caldecott

The top awards for children’s literature in 2024 were announced Monday at the American Library Association’s annual Youth Media Awards. Author Dave Eggers won the John Newbery Medal, which is given to the most distinguished American children’s book published the previous year, for his middle grade book The Eyes and the Impossible, which was illustrated by Shawn Harris. Author and illustrator Vashti Harrison won the Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children, for her book Big. Read more

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Jamaican Poet Jason Allen-Paisant’s ‘Self-Portrait as Othello’ Wins TS Eliot Prize

In Self-Portrait As Othello, Allen-Paisant draws a connection between Shakespeare’s Othello, a Moorish general who is often treated as an outsider in Venice, and the experiences of Black immigrants today. His poems move between Jamaica, Prague, Paris and Oxford among other places, and he weaves in lines of French, Jamaican patois, Italian and German. Read more

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Tania Branigan’s ‘Red Memory’ Wins 2023 Cundill History Prize

Judge and writer Adam Gopnik said that Red Memory is a “haunting” read. “Haunting for the memories, many of them horrible, that it evokes; haunting because so much of that memory has been suppressed or repressed by the Chinese Communist party in the years since; and haunting because of how violent ruptures in social fabric can often seem to heal themselves while leaving a scar behind.” Read more

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Jean-Baptiste Andrea Wins Goncourt Prize With Sprawling Novel

Jean-Baptiste Andrea received the Goncourt Prize, France’s most prestigious literary award, on Tuesday for his novel “Watching Over Her.” The novel, published by L’Iconoclaste, is a sprawling fresco that follows Michelangelo “Mimo” Vitaliani, a dwarf and skilled sculptor who at the end of his life is said to be “watching over” his masterpiece, a mysteriously powerful sculpture. Read more