Some awards are given for single works, others for lifetime achievements. This category gathers together the news articles about the latter.
To see all the latest literary awards news, see the front page of The Burnt Ones: Literary Awards News.
Wallace Stevens Award announced
Date: August 8, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
The American Academy of Poets has selected Charles Simic as the recipient of the 2007 Wallace Stevens Award. The $100,000 poetry prize has been awarded since 1994, and recognizes “outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry” in the English language.
The Yugoslavian-born Simic’s poetry first appeared in publication after his family’s move to the United States in the late 1950s. He has since published more than twenty collections of poetry, as well as some forty other books.
Simic’s work can be found at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, and Amazon.co.uk.
Filed under American literature, English literature, Lifetime awards, Poetry, Winners
Chinua Achebe wins Man Booker International
Date: June 15, 2007 | Discussion: 1 Comment
The Nigerian novelist, poet and literary critic Chinua Achebe has won the 2007 Man Booker International Prize. The £60,000 prize is awarded once every two years to a living author, whose body of work “has contributed to an achievement in fiction on the world stage”. This is the second time the award has been handed out, after Ismail Kadaré won it in 2005.
Achebe is probably best known for his first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958) and the Booker Prize shortlisted Anthills of the Savannah (1987).
Things Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe
One of Chinua Achebe’s many achievements in his acclaimed first novel, Things Fall Apart, is his relentlessly unsentimental rendering of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism. First published in 1958, just two years before Nigeria declared independence from Great Britain, the book eschews the obvious temptation of depicting pre-colonial life as a kind of Eden. Instead, Achebe sketches a world in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence. His Ibo protagonist, Okonkwo, is a self-made man. …
You can read more about Things Fall Apart at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca.
Anthills of the Savannah
by Chinua Achebe
Chirs, Ikem and Beatrice are three like-minded friends working under the military regime of His Excellency, the Sandhurst-educated president of Kangan. In the pressurized atmosphere, they are simply trying to live and love - and remain friends. …
You can read more about Anthills of the Savannah at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca.
Filed under African literature, English literature, Fiction, Lifetime awards, Novels, Poetry, Winners, World literature
Lucille Clifton wins Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
Date: May 18, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
The poet Lucille Clifton has been given the $100,000 2007 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize lifetime achievement award, which is among the most prestigious American literary honours. Clifton has published 11 books of poetry, as well as numerous children’s books and a prose novel. She has been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize.
Clifton’s work can be found at both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
Filed under American literature, English literature, Lifetime awards, Poetry, Winners
Antonio Gamoneda receives the Cervantes Prize
Date: April 26, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
Spanish poet Antonio Gamoneda has been awarded Spain’s top literature award, the Cervantes Prize. The winner of the 90,000 euro lifetime achievement award is chosen annually by the Spanish Ministry of Culture from candidates nominated by the various Language Academies of Spanish speaking countries around the world.
Gamoneda, who had his first works published in the 1960s, is perhaps best known for his 1987 National Poetry Prize winning collection “Edad”, which collected the poet’s finest works so far. He is also known for his translations of foreign poets.
Only some of Gamoneda’s collections have been translated into English. See Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk for more information.
Filed under European literature, Lifetime awards, Poetry, Winners, World literature
Man Booker International shortlist announced
Date: April 12, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
Shortlist for the 2007 Man Booker International Prize, a biennial prize awarding living authors published in English, has been announced. The listed authors are:
Chinua Achebe
Margaret Atwood
John Banville
Peter Carey
Don DeLillo
Carlos Fuentes
Doris Lessing
Ian McEwan
Harry Mulisch
Alice Munro
Michael Ondaatje
Amos Oz
Philip Roth
Salman Rushdie
Michael Tournier
Winner of the £60,000 prize will be announced in June. The first Man Booker International Prize, which was awarded two years ago, went to the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare.
Filed under American literature, Australian literature, British literature, Commonwealth literature, English literature, Lifetime awards, Shortlists, World literature
Philip Roth awarded the Bellow Prize
Date: April 2, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
Philip Roth has been awarded the first ever PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction. The price was named after Roth’s late friend and Nobel laureate Saul Bellow.
Roth, whose literary career spans six decades, is perhaps best known for such award-winning works as his 1969 novel Portnoy’s Complaint and the 1990s trilogy American Pastoral (1997), I Married a Communist (1998), and The Human Stain (2000).
If you are interested in Roth’s work, purchasing his books from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk (through these links) will also support this website.
The $40,000 Bellow Prize will from now on be awarded once in every two years, and voted by the members of the PEN panel for any “distinguished living American author of fiction whose body of work in English possesses qualities of excellence, ambition, and scale of achievement over a sustained career which place him or her in the highest rank of American literature.”
