Winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2013: LYDIA DAVIS

Just today the winner of the Man Booker International Prize for 2013, the fifth such award, was announced.

Lydia Davis took home not only the honour of winning the prestigious prize but was also awarded £60,000.

From the official description of the Prize:
"I was recently denied a writing prize because they said I was lazy." runs one of Lydia Davis's two-sentence short stories. Well not any more. Davis has just been awarded the fifth Man Booker International Prize at an award ceremony at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Her inventive, carefully-crafted and hard to categorise works saw off the challenge from nine other contenders from around the world.

Congratulations to Lydia Davis! You can read all about the Prize and its winner by clicking here.

Shortlist announced for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award

Recently the finalists for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award were unveiled. The Award -- named after Danuta Gleed, a writer whose short fiction won several awards before her death in 1996 -- recognizes the best first English-language collection of short fiction by a Canadian author published in 2012. The Award consists of cash prizes for the three best first collections, with a first prize of $10,000 and two additional prizes of $500.

The shortlist was narrowed down from 29 collections submitted, some by seasoned writers, others by authors being published for the first time. Here are the five finalists:

• Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and other stories, Hamish Hamilton Canada
• Paul Marlowe, Ether Frolics, Sybertooth Inc.
• Anton Piatigorsky, The Iron Bridge, Goose Lane Editions
• Yasuko Thanh, Floating Like the Dead, McClelland & Stewart
• John Vigna, Bull Head, Arsenal Pulp Press

The winners will be announced on June 11, 2013.

Commonwealth Book Prize 2013 Regional Winners

The Commonwealth Book Prize is awarded for the best first novel from the representative writers of the Africa, Asia, Canada & Europe, Caribbean, and the Pacific regions.

Just recently the Regional Winners were announced. These writers will now compete to become the overall winner, to be announced at Hay Festival UK on May 31st.

Here is a list of the Regional Winners:

Africa
-- Sterile Sky by E.E. Sule (Nigeria), Pearson Education

Asia
-- Island of a Thousand Mirrors by Nayomi Munaweera (Sri Lanka), Perera-Hussein Publishing House

Canada & Europe
-- The Death of Bees by Lisa O'Donnell (United Kingdom), William Heinemann

Caribbean
-- Disposable People by Ezekel Alan (Jamaica), self-published [available as print-on-demand]

Pacific
-- The Last Thread by Michael Sala (Australia), Affirm Press

Please note that for the time being most of these titles are not available to us. Books published internationally are not always available through our suppliers.

2013 Locus Award finalists have been announced

This year's finalists for the Locus Awards, sponsored by the Locus Science Fiction Foundation, have been announced. Here are the shortlists, broken down into categories:

SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

• The Hydrogen Sonata, Iain M. Banks
• Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, Lois McMaster Bujold
• Caliban's War, James S.A. Corey
• 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson
• Redshirts, John Scalzi

FANTASY NOVEL

• The Killing Moon, N.K. Jemisin
• The Drowning Girl, Caitlin R. Kiernan
• Glamour in Glass, Mary Robinette Kowal
• Hide Me Among the Graves, Tim Powers
• The Apocalypse Codex, Charles Stross

YOUNG ADULT BOOK

• The Drowned Cities, Paolo Bacigalupi
• Pirate Cinema, Cory Doctorow
• Railsea, China Mieville
• Dodger, Terry Pratchett
• The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, Catherynne M. Valente

FIRST NOVEL

• Throne of the Crescent Moon, Saladin Ahmed
• vN, Madeline Ashby
• Seraphina, Rachel Hartman
• The Games, Ted Kosmatka
• Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson

For a complete list that includes all of the categories of the Locus Awards, see Locus Online's website.