This is part of my ongoing series on using Awards Lists as a RA tool. Click here for all posts in the series in reverse chronological order. Click here for the first post which outlines the details how to use awards lists as a RA tool.
I really enjoy finding awards that are broad and useful. Yes, the major literary and genre awards get a lot of attention and bring readers into our libraries seeking the winning titles, but there are so many other awards that alert us to titles that we can use to fill out our collections, giving us a wider range of titles to suggest to our readers.
Two such awards made announcements recently. The first you probably heard about: The International Booker Prize. The titles on the shortlist for this award are considered the very best books translated into English in the last year. And you can click here to get all of the titles throughout the history of the award-- long list, short list, and winners.
Use this award and its nominees to flesh out your "in translation" offerings and/or to build a display. What is wonderful about a display of the very best titles translated into English is that just by pulling the titles and displaying them together you are sure to get a display that represents many different cultures and types of stories. The titles that get the International Booker distinction often are not straight up literary fiction [like we tend to see with literary prizes here in America]; rather they tend have strong genre influences. Click here to see what I mean. You can also click here for other resources I have written about in order to identify titles in translation that are worth considering for your public library collection.
The second was one I was vaguely aware of, and when it was announced I ended up spending a good 30 mins browsing through the backlist of winners: The Whiting Award. From the award webpage:
Since 1985, the Foundation has supported creative writing through the Whiting Awards, which are given annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. Read about the most recent cohort below, browse the 37-year history of Whiting Award-winning writers, or search the full list of winners.
Okay, so you may not know the 10 writers getting the 2022 distinction, but that is sorta the whole point of the award. However, go browse the history of writers who have earned this distinction and wowza!, you will see literal household name authors there.
The time I spent perusing that list of past winners made me realize this is an award we all need to pay more attention to. And with 10 each year, across the spectrum of publishing-- fiction, nonfiction, poetry, an drama-- you are sure to have a wide range of stories that will appeal to many different readers.
While you may not be able to add entire books by these emerging writers yet, you can go back to the last 2-8 years of winners and see what they have published. At the very least, they are worthy of considering an add to most public library collections.
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