2010 Locus Awards

The winners of the 2010 Locus Awards, voted on by Locus magazine readers and announced on Saturday at the annual Science Fiction Awards Weekend:
Best science fiction novel: Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
Best fantasy novel: The City & The City by China Miéville
Best first novel: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
Best young adult novel: Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
Best novella: The Women of Nell Gwynne's by Kage Baker
Best novelette: "By Moonlight" by Peter S. Beagle in We Never Talk About My Brother
Best short story: "An Invocation of Incuriosity" by Neil Gaiman in Songs of the Dying Earth
Best magazine: Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Best publisher: Tor
Best anthology: The New Space Opera 2, edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan
Best collection: The Best of Gene Wolfe by Gene Wolfe
Best editor: Ellen Datlow
Best artist: Michael Whelan
Best nonfiction/art book: Cheek by Jowl by Ursula K. Le Guin

Legendary Chicago Bookseller Stuart Brent Dead at 98

Stuart Brent, legendary bookseller in Chicago, died last week at the age of 98. He founded his first bookstore in 1946. A few years later, he opened Stuart Brent Books, which became a Chicago institution and closed in 1996. The Chicago blog of the University of Chicago Press called Brent "a bookseller of the most independent sort: well-read, opinionated, and willing (or more) to shape his customers' reading habits. Over the course of his fifty years in the business, bookselling became ever more concentrated in the mall stores, superstores, and virtual stores of billion dollar corporations. The books stocked in Stuart Brent Books were chosen by a personality, not an algorithm." The Chicago Sun Times wrote: "He was proud of his roots on the city's old West Side, where his Ukrainian parents taught Mr. Brent--then called Samuel Brodsky--folk tales, stories of shtetl life, and intellectual debate. Mr. Brent's love of reading came from his father, who devoured Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain and Yiddish authors." Brent wrote a memoir, Seven Stairs, named after his first bookstore. In a foreword for Seven Stairs, Saul Bellow wrote: "Stuart Brent is the Orpheus of Chicago booksellers, ready to challenge hell itself to bring a beautiful book back to Chicago and the light of its reading lamps."

Nobel Prize Winner Jose Saramago Dies

Jose Saramago, the first Portugeses language winner of the Nobel Prize, has died after a long illness. His first novel, Country of Sin, was published in 1947. For the next 18 years, he worked as a journalist, publishing travel and poetry books. In the 1980s, Saramago became one of Portugal's best selling novelists. Perhaps his most known novel is Blindness . He has said that it addresses the world's "blindness of rationality." In the novel, the population of an unknown city is struck by a mysterious blindness. Chaos and societial breakdown ensues. The novel was made into a 2008 film starring Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo. Saramago critized his fellow man: "we're rational beings, but we don't behave rationally. If we did, there'd be no starvation in the world." He was outspoken and blunt, and his writing style was critized for its wordiness and lack of punctuation. His strong support ofCommunism also earned him criticism. His other books include: Baltasar and Blimunda, The History of the Siege of Lisbon, The Stone Raft, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.

Nominees for Anthony Award Announced

The nominees for the Anthony Award were announced on the Bouchercon2010 blog. Named for the late Anthony Boucher, the award winners, chosen by the attendees of the convention, will be announced this October during Bouchercon in San Francisco.
The nominees are:
Best Novel:
The Last Child by John Hart
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston
The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny
The Shanghai Moon by S. J. Rozan
Best First Novel:
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley
A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield
The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville
In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff
Best Paperback Original:
Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott
Tower by Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman
Quarry in the Middle by Max Allan Collins
Death and the Lit Chick by G. M. Malliet
Air Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan
Best Short Story:
"Last Fair Deal Gone Down" by Ace Atkins
"Femme Sole" by Dana Cameron
"Animal Rescue" by Dennis Lehane
"On the House" by Hank Phillippi Ryan
"Amapola" by Luis Alberto Urrea
Best Critical Non-Fiction:
Talking about Detective Fiction by P. D. James
The Line Up by Otto Penzler, ed.
Haunted Heart by Lisa Rogak
Dame Agatha's Shorts by Elena Santangelo
The Talented Miss Highsmith by Joan Schenkar

Mystery Writer Eleanor Taylor Brand Dies

Eleanor Taylor Bland, author of 13 mystery books, died of cancer on June 2. Her series features African American Marti MacAlister as a tough streetwise homicide detective who lives in a suburb about thirty miles north of Chicago with her two children. Bland lived most of her life in Waukegan. Her support of the written word was legendary. She served on the board of the Waukegan Public Library and chaired the friends of the library. She mentored writers Libby Fischer Hellman and Michael Dymmoch and served as president of Sisters in Crime. Bland once commented that "the most significant contribution that we (African American women writers) have made, collectively, to mystery fiction is the development of the extended family; the permanence of spouses and significant others, most of whom don't die in the first three chapters; children who are complex, wanted and loved; and even pets." Bland received the Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award, the Chester A. Himes Mystery Fiction Award, and the Most Influential African American of Lake County Award. On her blog, Chicago author Sara Paretsky wrote: "Our world of writers, readers, humans is diminished....Grace under pressure, gallantry, these are the images that come to mind, and, always, a smile that warmed us to the core of our souls. May your memory be a blessing to those of us you’ve left behind."

New York Times Names 20 Authors Under 40 to Watch

After a decade, the New York Times has presented a new list of authors under 40 that it describes as promising and "worth watching." The authors are Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chris Adrian, Daniel Alarcón, David Bezmozgis, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Joshua Ferris, Jonathan Safran Foer,Nell Freudenberger, Rivka Galchen, Nicole Krauss, Yiyun Li, Dinaw Mengestu, Philipp Meyer, C. E. Morgan, Téa Obreht, Z Z Packer, Karen Russell, Salvatore Scibona,Gary Shteyngart,and Wells Tower. In January, the newspaper's editors asked literary agents, publishers and other writers to suggest potential candidates. From those suggestions, the editors created a shortlist of about 40 eligible writers. A few well known writers, including Colson Whitehead and Dave Eggers, were not eligible due to their age. The shortlisted authors were required to submit new writing, such as a short story or an excerpt from a novel. Those who did not submit any writing were eliminated. The selected writers’ fiction will be printed in future New York Times magazines.
Adichie is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Purple Hibiscus and Half a Yellow Sun. Adrian,a pediatrician, is best known for his novel The Children's Hospital. In 2007, Alarcon's book Lost City Radio was selected as a best book of the year by many reviewers. Bezmozgis wrote Natasha and Other Stories, a collection vividly describing the ups and downs of immigrant life. Bynum's debut novel Madeleine is Sleeping was named a 2004 National Book Award Finalist. Ferris is best known for his novel, Then We Came to the End, a 2007 National Book Award Finalist. Foer's bestselling novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close received critical acclaim. Meyer's novel American Rust, a third person, stream of consciousness narrative, won several awards and was compared to James Joyce's work. It also made Newsweek's list of the Best of Books Ever. The New York Times selected Morgan's first novel All the Living for its Notable Books list; the title is from Ecclesiastes 9:3. In a rather surprising move, Obrent is on the list, yet her novel The Tiger's Wife will be published next year. However, excerpts have been published in the New Yorker. Chicago born Packer's short story collection, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, was a PEN/Faulkner Finalist. Critic Ben Marcus calls Karen Russell a "literary mystic"; she is best known for her short stroy collection St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. Scibona's debut novel The End won several awards, including National Book Award Finalist. Shteyngart is known for his vast imagination; his novels The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan mix reality and absurdity. Tower's short story collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned reflects his belief that a writer "can be believably generous to a character, (a writer) can show somebody fumbling for redemption in a believable way."

Hammett Prize Winner Announced

The North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers has awarded the Hammett Prize to The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry. The Hammett Prize is given annually to recognize excellence in the field of crime writing. Crime-writing is defined as any published work of adult fiction or narrative nonfiction that encompasses such areas as crime, suspense, thriller, mystery, or espionage. A collection of short stories by a single author would qualify. The winner receives a "Thin Man" trophy, designed by sculptor Peter Boiger. The Hammett Prize is named after Dashiell Hammett, the author of The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, and The Thin Man.