Minnesota Book Awards Finalists- Very Tasty

The dedicated Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library, have issued the finalists list for this years Minnesota Book Awards. For those of you from outside the USA, Minnesota is the 12th biggest state in the country with a population of about 5 million. The capital is St. Paul. The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library is a private, nonprofit, membership organization established in 1945 to support the Saint Paul Public Library. Today, The Friends boasts a membership of close to 3,000 individuals. Their noble aims:

• To increase the use of the Library through public awareness and cultural programming;
• To advocate for strong public funding of the Library; and
• To provide private funding to enhance Library services.

A thousand roses and sweet music to them- such support for the marvellous public library system throughout the world is a wonderful thing. Started over 20 years ago the award is open to books created by writers, illustrators or book artists who are Minnesotans are eligible for Minnesota Book Awards. The Awards are given each year for books published in the previous year. In the early running for this years award is a book that is certainly a chance in Tragic's best book title of the year competition, how can anyone go past a book entitled: The Compassionate Carnivore: Or, How to Keep Animals Happy, Save Old MacDonald’s Farm, Reduce Your Hoofprint, and Still Eat Meat (Da Capo Press/Perseus Books Group) by Catherine Friend Gorgeous. Stalking Susan (Doubleday/The Doubleday Publishing Group) by Julie Kramer, is garnering a bit of attention around the traps. It is a finalist in the Fiction category and has also been a nominated for the The Simon and Schuster- Mary Higgins Clarke Award, part of the Edgar mystery awards. A strong chance in the Children's Literature category must by the recently announced Caldecott winner, The House in the Night (Houghton Mifflin Company) by Susan Marie Swanson, Illustrated by Beth Krommes. Ms. Swanson is the Minnesotan, but no doubt they will make the New Hampshire-based Beth Krommes a honory State citizen should it win. Coverage of the award has commenced on BookAwardsOnline.com- but in truth you will glean more detail at the Friends Minnesota Book Award pages which are very fine and one of the most coherent of the zillions of book award sites that Tragic has encountered- very 'tasty' as they say in the East End of London. The winners will be announced at a Gala dinner on 25th April for a bargain $40 a seat - first in best dressed. Good luck to all the finalists. Talented bunch these Minnesotans. Children’s Literature: - My Friend, the Starfinder (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division) by George Ella Lyon, Illustrated by Stephen Gammel - Henry’s Amazing Imagination (Viking/Penguin Group) by Nancy Carlson - The House in the Night (Houghton Mifflin Company) by Susan Marie Swanson, Illustrated by Beth Krommes - Monkey with a Tool Belt (Carolrhoda Books/Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.) by Chris Monroe General Nonfiction: - The Compassionate Carnivore: Or, How to Keep Animals Happy, Save Old MacDonald’s Farm, Reduce Your Hoofprint, and Still Eat Meat (Da Capo Press/Perseus Books Group) by Catherine Friend - A Hard-Water World: Ice Fishing and Why We Do It (Minnesota Historical Society Press) by Greg Breining, Photography by Layne Kennedy - Potluck Paradise: Favorite Fare from Church and Community Cookbooks (Minnesota Historical Society Press) by Rae Katherine Eighmey and Debbie Miller - “You Have Been Kind Enough to Assist Me”: Herman Stern and the Jewish Refugee Crisis (North Dakota State University Institute for Regional Studies) by Terry Shoptaugh Genre Fiction: - A Carrion Death (Harper/HarperCollins Publishers) by Michael Stanley - Phantom Prey (G. P. Putnam’s Sons/Penguin Group) by John Sandford - Red Knife (Atria Books/Simon & Schuster, Inc.) by William Kent Krueger - Stalking Susan (Doubleday/The Doubleday Publishing Group) by Julie Kramer Memoir & Creative Nonfiction: - The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir (Coffee House Press) by Kao Kalia Yang - Madness: A Bipolar Life (Houghton Mifflin Company) by Marya Hornbacher - Renaming the Earth: Personal Essays (The University of Arizona Press) by Ray Gonzalez - Swallow the Ocean (Counterpoint) by Laura M. Flynn Minnesota: - Crossing the Canal: An Illustrated History of Duluth’s Aerial Bridge (X-communication) by Tony Dierckins - Hard Work and a Good Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps in Minnesota (Minnesota Historical Society Press) by Barbara W. Sommer - Landscapes of Minnesota: A Geography (Minnesota Historical Society Press) by John Fraser Hart and Susy Svatek Ziegler - Minnesota on the Map: A Historical Atlas (Minnesota Historical Society Press) by David A. Lanegran Novel & Short Story: - Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire (Coffee House Press) by David Mura - The Plague of Doves (HarperCollins Publishers) by Louise Erdrich - Shelter Half (Holy Cow! Press) by Carol Bly - The Soul Thief (Pantheon Books/Random House, Inc.) by Charles Baxter Poetry: - Milk and Tides (Nodin Press) by Margaret Hasse - National Monuments (Michigan State University Press) by Heid E. Erdrich - The Sound of It (New Rivers Press) by Tim Nolan - Yellowrocket (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.) by Todd Boss Young People’s Literature: - Black Box (Delacorte Press/Random House Children’s Books) by Julie Schumacher - Julia Gillian (and the Art of Knowing) (Scholastic Press/Scholastic Inc.) by Alison McGhee - Saturday Night Dirt: A Motor Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Will Weaver - Twelve Long Months (Scholastic Press/Scholastic Inc.) by Brian Malloy

Split it in Two? Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature

The Jewish Book Council, administrator of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, has announced the selection of five finalists for the 2009 Sami Rohr Prize. In 2006, in celebration of Sami Rohr’s 80th birthday, his children and grandchildren inaugurated the Sami Rohr Prize to honor his lifelong love of Jewish literature and set aside a cool $100,000 (USD) a year for the winning author. Obviously a man held in great affection by his family. Lovely. The Sami Rohr Prize considers fiction and non-fiction in alternating years, honoring an emerging author in the field of Jewish literature who has written a book of exceptional literary merit that stimulates an interest in themes of Jewish concern. This year it's the turn of the fiction writers. Split it in Two Why Don't You? Whilst it may be a wee bit more work for the judging panel it wouldn't be a bad idea to split the $100,000 into two and award a fiction and a non-fiction prize each year. It would serve to give the prize a wider relevance in a very competitive book award field as well as give authors of the marvellous non-fiction genre more publicity. It would also help prevent the possibility of titles making the short lists that had been around for a while. Whilst a splendid book, Anya Ulinich's Petropolis , was named as a (USA) National Book Award "5 Under 35" title in 2007 - arguably Ms. Ulinich can be said to have already emerged at this stage. At least Sana Krasikov's , One More Year: Stories is a little more contemporary, having made the 2008 "5 Under 35" list. The finalists are: Elisa Albert for The Book of Dahlia: A Novel (Free Press) Sana Krasikov for One More Year: Stories (Spiegel & Grau) Anne Landsman for The Rowing Lesson (Soho Press) Dalia Sofer for The Septembers of Shiraz: A Novel (P.S.) (Ecco) Anya Ulinich for Petropolis (Viking Penguin) Previous winners of the Sami Rohr Prize are Lucette Lagnado in 2008 for her non-fiction work The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World (Ecco) and Tamar Yellin in 2007 for her work of fiction, The Genizah at the House of Shepher (Toby Press) The 2009 inner will be named in the spring and a gala awards ceremony will be held in May, 2009 at The Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan.