Recent(ish) Award Winners: New Awards and Weird Books
I recently updated the Current Book Award Winners page of my website, which I try to do every few months (it’s been 2 years now…), and it was fun to see what has been getting the spotlight. Some I had read, some I had heard of, but many were new to me, which was fun!
The page linked above looks at your standard mainstream book awards, but it also tracks book awards for specific formats, or that give awards for regional authors, genre book or authors and protagonists who have a typically underrepresented background, and you might have fun exploring some prizes that you didn’t know about!
Today, I have a few awards that I am tracking that you might be interested in, and next weekend, I will be sharing some specific books that I am excited about after combing through new award winners. If you want to learn more about these or other book awards I highlight, you can click the links below to find more recent winners!
This was a new discovery for me, although not a new award. The Orwell Prizes are prizes given in fiction, nonfiction and journalism for great political writing. The idea of what makes a fiction book “political” is one I am kind of fascinated by.
The fiction awards in particular are delightfully eclectic, from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize winning, The Nickel Boys, about two block boys in a reform school to Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, about a small town in rural Ireland.
The political nonfiction books are also interestingly varied, from Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me by Kate Clanchy, which is a memoir about teaching in low income schools to My Fourth Time, We Drowned by Sally Hayden, a hard hitting book about the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean.
I love an award that can include both Pulitzer Prize winning books and books I have never heard of, so I will be keeping an eye on this one!
The National Outdoor Book Awards
The National Outdoor Book Awards recognize and encourage outstanding writing and publishing in outdoor works. Books must be full length books related to outdoor recreation or nature writing, and released between June of the previous year and September of the current year, and prizes are announced in early November in quite a few categories, including Nature Writing, Nature Guide Books and Literature. They also have an “Outdoor Classic Award” for a book more than 10 years old that has has a lasting effect, which is a great idea!
I’m not sure about this one yet. They did award a prize to my all time favorite nature book, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard, which I love so much that my Goodreads claim to fame is that I have the most liked review on the website. However, they also seem to award multiple books in the same category instead of just choosing one, and overall, the prizes seem a little outdoor recreation-centric instead of focused on nature writing or natural history, which is what I tend to love. Either way, I will be keeping an eye on these as well.
The Independent Publisher Book Awards (The Ippies)
This award system is a little different than the typical Pulitzer/National Book Award system of choosing one book, and that can be a little overwhelming for some. The Ippies take this to a level that is truly staggering in scope, with over 50 categories, which allows many books to be highlighted. This is great for smaller, independent books without the marketing budget, and if you have a niche category you love (gardening, pets, cooking), it might be worth checking out their awards for your own personal interests.
In addition, I am struck by their unique overall categories. From “Most Likely to Save the Planet” to “Most Original Concept”, these categories generate equally unique books, including a coffee table book about the pandemic called The Year The World Stood Still, a book based around dress designs and swatches, called Pink Satin Sashes, and Dirty Birds, which has one of the coolest looking covers I have seen!
The Pacific Northwest Book Awards
This is one of the book awards I absolutely love!
Firstly, their award is delightfully broad and yet easy to follow – they award writers living in the Pacific Northwest or writing about the Pacific Northwest. Small and large publishers are considered, and writers do not have to write about the PNW specifically to be considered. Secondly, they just award a list of books, of all genres, without ranking them, so you don’t need to navigate a million categories, and there is always something for everyone, from children’s books to memoirs to literary fiction.
For example, this past year, the awards included a cool looking book of short stories called Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, an intriguing memoir called Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk, and a cookbook called The Wok: Recipes & Techniques and a book of poetry called The Necessity of Wildfire.
This is an interesting new book award. On one hand, it is truly one of the few awards with diversity in the title, and on the other hand, it is run by two people, not hosted by an organization, and does not come with a cash prize, so I don’t know how many books can reasonable considered, and it may not have a lot of longevity.
That being said, as one of the few book awards with general intersectional diversity as it’s goal, as long as they keep giving out prizes, I will keep sharing those books! This is an award that is specific to UK and Ireland, but most of these books seem to be available to folks in the US as well. Some of the books highlighted recently include a book called This Green and Pleasant Land by Ayisha Malik, author of the brilliant Sophia Kahn is Not Obliged, a thriller called Next of Kin, a YA fantasy called Skin of the Sea that looks pretty cool, and Windrush Child, which is a children’s fiction book about the “Windrush” generation of Caribbean immigrants to the UK.
This is a really interesting concept I am excited about. These awards, which are a list of 10 books (similar to the Pacific Northwest Book Awards) highlight books that are written for adults, but have special appeal for younger readers. As a young reader, I remember the stage when YA books were kind of boring, but adult books were just not that interesting, or written about issues I could not identify with.
This is a great list for the precocious teenager in your life who is looking for new reads, but is possibly not interested in books about adults dealing with adult problems just yet. Some recent winners include literary fantasy such as the incredible The House on the Cerulean Sea or Light from Uncommon Stars, historical fiction like The Rose Code and a retelling of Norse mythology called The Witch’s Heart.
I’ll be back a couple times this week, with some highlighted books about the Pacific Crest Trail and a few more recent award winners I was excited to discover!
