Guardian First Book Award
The Guardian First Book Award was a literary award presented by The Guardian newspaper. It annually recognised one book by a new writer. It was established in 1999, replacing the Guardian Fiction Award or Guardian Fiction Prize that the newspaper had sponsored from 1965.[1] The Guardian First Book Award was discontinued in 2016, with the 2015 awards being the last.[2]
History[]
The newspaper determined to change its book award after 1998, and during that year also hired Claire Armitstead as literary editor. At the inaugural First Book Award ceremony in 1999, she said that she was informed of the change, details to be arranged, by the head of the marketing department during her second week on the job. "By the time we left the room we had decided on two key things. We would make it a first book award, and we would involve reading groups in the judging process. This was going to be the people's prize."[1] About the opening of the prize to nonfiction she had said in August, "readers do not segregate their reading into fiction or non-fiction, so neither should we."[3] There was no restriction on genre; for example, both poetry and travel would be included in principle,[1] and so would self-published autobiographies.[3]
For the first rendition, 140 books were submitted, including a lot of nonfiction strongest "by far" in "a hybrid of travel-writing and reportage"; weak in science and biography. Experts led by Armitstead selected a longlist of 11 and Borders book stores in Glasgow, London, Brighton and Leeds hosted reading groups that considered one book a week, September to November, and selected a shortlist of six. A panel of eight judges including two Guardian editors chose the winner.[3] The newspaper called it "the first time the ordinary reading public have been involved in the selection of a major literary prize." In the event, the 1999 reading groups selected a shortlist including six novels, and all four groups favoured the novel Ghostwritten by David Mitchell. Their second favourite was one of the travelogue and reporting hybrids, by Philip Gourevitch of The New Yorker.[4] The judges chose the latter, We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families —"a horrifying but humane account of the Rwandan genocide, its causes and consequences", the newspaper called it in August.[3]
The prize was worth £10,000 to the winner. Eligible titles were published in English, and in the UK within the calendar year.[5]
Winners and shortlists[]
Source: [6]
Blue ribbon () = winner
- 1999
Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, a hybrid of journalism and travelogue about the Rwandan genocide
- Daren King, Boxy an Star, a drugs fantasy written in a beautifully sustained argot
- David Mitchell, Ghostwritten, a patchwork of stories from all corners of the world
- Raj Kamal Jha, The Blue Bedspread, a chamber tragedy by Calcutta-based author
- Gary Younge, No Place Like Home, account of his soul-searching journey from Stevenage to the deep South
- Bella Bathurst, Lighthouse Stevensons, the story of Robert Louis Stevenson's lighthouse-building ancestors
- 2000
Zadie Smith, White Teeth, novel
- Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves, novel
- Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, memoir
- Naomi Klein, No Logo, politics
- Andrew X. Pham, Catfish and Mandala: a Vietnamese Odyssey, travelogue
- 2001
Chris Ware, Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, graphic novel
- Miranda Carter, Anthony Blunt: His Lives, biography
- David Edmonds and John Eidinow, Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers, non-fiction
- Glen David Gold, Carter Beats The Devil, fiction
- Rachel Seiffert, The Dark Room, fiction
- 2002
Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
- Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
- Hari Kunzru, The Impressionist
- Oliver Morton, Mapping Mars
- Sandra Newman, The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done
- 2003
Robert Macfarlane, Mountains of the Mind
- Monica Ali, Brick Lane
- DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little
- Paul Broks, Into the Silent Land
- Anna Funder, Stasiland
- 2004
Armand Marie Leroi, Mutants: On the Form, Varieties and Errors of Human Body
- Matthew Hollis, Ground Water
- David Bezmozgis Natasha and Other Stories
- Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
- Rory Stewart, The Places in Between
- 2005
Alexander Masters, Stuart: A Life Backwards
- Reza Aslan, No god but God
- Richard Benson, The Farm
- Suketu Mehta, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
- Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Sightseeing
- 2006
Yiyun Li, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
- Lorraine Adams, Harbor
- , Poppy Shakespeare
- Hisham Matar, In the Country of Men
- Carrie Tiffany, Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living
- 2007
Dinaw Mengestu, Children of the Revolution
- Tahmima Anam, A Golden Age
- Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City
- Rosemary Hill, God's Architect
- Catherine O'Flynn, What Was Lost
- 2008
Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century
- Mohammed Hanif, A Case of Exploding Mangoes
- Owen Matthews, Stalin's Children
- Ross Raisin, God's Own Country
- Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole
- 2009
Petina Gappah, An Elegy for Easterly
- Eleanor Catton, The Rehearsal
- Samantha Harvey, The Wilderness
- Reif Larsen, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet
- Michael Peel, A Swamp Full of Dollars
- 2010
Alexandra Harris, Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper
- Nadifa Mohamed, Black Mamba Boy
- Ned Beauman, Boxer, Beetle
- Maile Chapman, Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto
- Kathryn Schulz, In Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error
- 2011
Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
- Stephen Kelman, Pigeon English
- Juan Pablo Villalobos, Down The Rabbit Hole
- Mirza Waheed, The Collaborator
- Amy Waldman, The Submission
- 2012
Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds
- Kerry Hudson, Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma
- Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding
- Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution
- Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
- 2013
Donal Ryan, The Spinning Heart
- NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names
- Shereen El Feki, Sex and the Citadel
- Hannah Kent, Burial Rites
- Lottie Moggach, Kiss Me First
- 2014
Colin Barrett, Young Skins (story collection)
- Henry Marsh, Do No Harm (memoir)
- Fiona McFarlane, The Night Guest (novel)
- Evan Osnos, Age of Ambition (journalism)
- May-Lan Tan, Things to Make and Break (story collection)
- 2015
Andrew McMillan, Physical
- Diane Cook, Man v Nature
- Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen
- Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible
- Max Porter, Grief Is the Thing With Feathers
- Sara Taylor, The Shore
See also[]
- Guardian Children's Fiction Prize
- Orange Award for New Writers
- The Whitfield Prize
- Guardian Fiction Prize
References[]
- ^ a b c "Claire Armitstead on the First Book Award: Guardian literary editor's speech from the ceremony". The Guardian, 2 December 1999. Retrieved 17 April 2013.
- ^ Claire Armitstead (7 April 2016). "Saying goodbye to the Guardian first book award". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 April 2016.
- ^ a b c d Claire Armitstead, "Judges Poised as First-time Authors Excel: Travel books with bite make up the strongest entry in the Guardian's new book award - but where did all the science writers go?", The Guardian, 27 August 1999. Retrieved 18 April 2013.
- ^ Fiachra Gibbons, "Readers pick top Guardian books", The Guardian, 6 November 1999. Retrieved 18 April 2013.
- ^ "Enter the Guardian first book award 2013". The Guardian, 16 April 2013. Retrieved 12 January 2013.
- ^ "Guardian first book award: all the winners". The Guardian. 7 April 2016. Retrieved 9 April 2016.
- Annual home pages for the First Book Award, 1999 to present
- Guardian First Book Award 1999
- Guardian First Book Award 2000
- Guardian First Book Award 2001
- Guardian First Book Award 2002
- Guardian First Book award 2003
- Guardian First Book Award 2004
- Guardian First Book Award 2005
- Guardian First Book Award 2006
- Guardian First Book Award 2007
- Guardian First Book award 2008
- Guardian First Book award 2009
- Guardian First Book award 2010
- Guardian First Book award 2011
- Guardian First Book award 2012
- Guardian First Book award 2013
- Guardian First Book award 2014
- Guardian First Book award 2015
External links[]
- Books at theguardian
- British literary awards
- The Guardian awards
- Literary awards by magazines and newspapers
- First book awards
- Awards established in 1999
- Awards disestablished in 1999
- 1999 establishments in the United Kingdom
- 2016 disestablishments in the United Kingdom