Alice Munro Wins Booker International Prize

Canadian short story writer Alice Munro has won the third Booker International Prize. The prize is awarded every two years for an entire body of work and is open to writers from around the world. The first International Prize was awarded to Albanian writer Ismail Kadare in 2005. Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe won it in 2007. Munro has a new collection of stories, Too Much Happiness, coming out in November.

Northwestern Graduate Henriquez's Debut Novel

Cristina Henriquez's novel The World in Half reflects her life as the American-born child of Panamanians. The novel is set in Panama City and Hyde Park. The main character is a young student who abandons her studies at the University of Chicago to search for the Panamanian father who left her pregnant mother years before. Both the author and her character question where they belong. Henriquez has felt connected to both Panama and the United States, appreciating the cultures and customs of both countries. Holding a dual citizenship, Henriquez navigates comfortably in the 2 worlds. Henriquez wrote most of the novel at her Hinsdale home and the local library.

Lincoln Biographer Donald Dead

David Herbert Donald, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the Civil War and American South, died this past Sunday. A professor emeritus at Harvard University, Donald won Pulitzers for biographies of abolitionist Charles Sumner and novelist Thomas Wolfe. His latest book is Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War. He was best known for his books on Lincoln. An award was named after him, the David Herbert Donald Prize for “excellence in Lincoln studies.”

Dan Brown's Angels and Demons Film

Angels & Demons, based on the novel by Dan Brown opens this Friday, May 15. The story takes place before the events recorded in his best selling novel Da Vinci Code. Ron Howard directs this story of a Harvard symbologist (Tom Hanks) who must stop a secret society's attack on the Vatican. The film runs 138 minutes and is rated PG-13.

Public Enemies Film Based on Burrough's Book of Same Name

Bryon Burrough's book Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34 is the basis of Johnny Depp's upcoming film Public Enemies. The film was shot in Chicago and will open on the July 4th weekend. Depp plays the infamous gangster John Dillinger. Burrough, an extra in the film, goes to Depp's (Dillinger's)side after he has been shot. Depp (Dillinger)falls on the same slab of Chicago where Dillinger was shot 75 years ago.

Pen/Beard Awards

Cormac McCarthy has won the $25,000 PEN/Saul Bellow Award for lifetime achievement in American fiction. The PEN American Center also named Steve Coll the recipient of a nonfiction award for his book, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century; and awarded citations to Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, Ha Jin and 18 other authors for excellence in short fiction.
The James Beard Foundation named Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes by Jennifer McLagan as cookbook of the year.

2009 Edgar Awards

The Mystery Writers of America named C. J. Box's Blue Heaven the best novel of 2009. Other 2009 Edgar winners:
Best First Novel: The Foreigner by Francie Lin
Best Paperback Original: China Lake by Meg Gardiner
Best Fact Crime: American Lightning: Terror, Mystery and the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century by Howard Blum
Best Critical/Biographical: Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to his Tell-Tale Stories by Dr. Harry Lee Poe
Best Short Story: "Skinhead Central," Mystery Writers of America Presents: The Blue Religion by T. Jefferson Parker
Best Juvenile: The Postcard by Tony Abbott
Best Young Adult: Paper Towns by John Green
Best Play: The Ballad of Emmett Till by Ifa Bayeza
Best Television Episode Teleplay: Prayer of the Bone, Wire in the Blood, Teleplay by Patrick Harbinson
Best Motion Picture Screen Play: In Bruges, Screenplay by Martin McDonagh
Robert L. Fish Memorial Award: "Buckner's Error," Queens Noir by Joseph Guglielmelli
Raven Awards: Edgar Allan Poe Society, Baltimore, Md., and Poe House, Baltimore, Md.
S&S/Mary Higgins Clark Award: The Killer's Wife by Bill Floyd