The winners of the Edgar Allan Poe Awards have been announced.

Best Novel

Down River, by John Hart (St. Martin’s Minotaur)

Best First Novel By An American Author

In the Woods, by Tana French (Viking)

Best Paperback Original

Queenpin, by Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster)

Best Critical/Biographical

Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters, by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley (Penguin)

Best Fact Crime

Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, by Vincent Bugliosi (Norton)

Best Short Story

“The Golden Gopher,” Los Angeles Noir, by Susan Straight (Akashic)

Best Young Adult

Rat Life, by Tedd Arnold (Dial/Sleuth)

Best Juvenile

The Night Tourist, by Katherine Marsh (Hyperion)

Best Play

Panic, by Joseph Goodrich (International Mystery Writers’ Festival)

Best Television Episode Teleplay

“Pilot,” Burn Notice, by Matt Nix (USA Network/Fox Television Studios)

Best Motion Picture Screen Play

Michael Clayton, by Tony Gilroy (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Robert L. Fish Memorial Award

“The Catch,” from Still Waters, by Mark Ammons (Level Best)

A: $100,000

The New York Times reports that Gary Snyder (Back on the Fire, 2007) has won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

I may not always be first, but I do get there eventually. The winners of the 2007 Nebula Awards have been announced.

Novel

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, by Michael Chabon

Novella

“Fountain of Age,” by Nancy Kress

Novelette

“The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” by Ted Chiang

Short Story

“Always,” by Karen Joy Fowler

Script

Pan’s Labyrinth, by Guillermo del Toro

The 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes have been announced. And there’s one name that’s conspicuously absent.

Biography

Young Stalin, by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Knopf)

Current Interest

Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature through Peace and War at West Point, by Elizabeth D. Samet (Farrar)

Fiction

Be Near Me, by Andrew O’Hagan (Harcourt)

Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, by Dinaw Mengestu (Riverhead)

History

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, by Tim Weiner (Doubleday)

Mystery/Thriller

The Indian Bride, by Karin Fossum (Harcourt)

Poetry

Old Heart: Poems, by Stanley Plumly (Norton)

Science & Technology

I Am a Strange Loop, by Douglas R. Hofstadter (Basic)

Young Adult Fiction

A Darkling Plain, by Philip Reeve (Eos)

2007 Robert Kirsch Award

Maxine Hong Kingston

If I were a gambling man, I would have picked The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to win Fiction and A Long Way Gone to win Current Interest. But then again, they often do things differently on the Left Coast. Last year, for instance, they chose A Woman in Jerusalem over The Road. But I am positively delighted to see Be Near Me getting more recognition.

Arnost Lustig has won the Franz Kafka Prize. Details are sketchy, but it is reported that the Czech will take home a $10,000 check (or, if you prefer, cheque). You might think that there’s some favoritism at work here, but, in the eight-year history of the prize, Lustig is only the second Czech to win it.

The prize, though prestigious, carries with it a unique burden. Previous winners report recurring nightmares of living in a bureaucratic and impersonal world, and also persistent sensations of having undergone unsavory transmogrifications. But, even for prize-winning authors, writing can sometimes be a trial.

The 2008 Pulitzer Prize winners have been announced. Here are the books:

Fiction

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz (Riverhead)

History

What Hath God Wrought, by Daniel Walker Howe (Oxford Univ.)

Biography

Eden’s Outcasts, by John Matteson (Norton)

Poetry

Time and Materials, by Robert Hass (Ecco/HarperCollins)

Poetry

Failure, by Philip Schultz (Harcourt)

General Nonfiction

The Years of Extermination, by Saul Friedlander (HarperCollins)

As I wrote yesterday, I still have some catching up to do, which is why I’m a week late with the winner of the Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year: If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs.

The self-help manual, by an American writer called Big Boom, won 2,870 votes (33%) since the shortlist was announced on 22nd February. The runner-up is I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen (20%) and in 3rd place is Cheese Problems Solved (19%).

Not bad, but I prefer some of the past winners (”‘Closure’ wins oddest book award,” Reuters):

The annual competition was launched in 1978 at the Frankfurt Book Fair when it was won by the memorably titled “Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice”.

Since then, with the exceptions of 1987 and 1991 when no award was granted due, according to Rickett, to a lack of oddness, the weird and wonderful titles have flowed thick and fast with some eyebrow raising winners.

“Joy of Chickens” took the 1980 title, with “The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling” in 1983, “Lesbian Sadomasochism Safety Manual” in 1990, “Living with Crazy Buttocks” in 2002 and “Bombproof Your Horse” in 2004 are but a sample.

However, the 1997 winner “Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition” does stand out among the glittering array, and in September this year the public will be asked to vote for the oddest of all the winners.

The 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize regional winners have been announced.

Africa

Best Book: The Hangman’s Game, by Karen King-Aribisala (Peepal Tree) (Nigeria)

Best First Book: Imagine This, by Sade Adeniran (SW) (Nigeria)

Canada and Caribbean

Best Book: The Book of Negroes, by Lawrence Hill (HarperCollins) (Canada)

Best First Book: The End of the Alphabet, by CS Richardson (Doubleday Canada) (Canada)

Europe and South Asia

Best Book: Animal’s People, by Indra Sinha (Simon and Schuster) (India)

Best First Book: A Golden Age, by Tahmima Anam (HarperCollins) (Bangladesh)

South East Asia and South Pacific

Best Book: The Time We Have Taken, by Steven Carroll (HarperCollins) (Australia)

Best First Book: The Anatomy of Wings, by Karen Foxlee (Univ. Queensland) (Australia)

From the Washington Post (”Australian Author Wins Lindgren Award,” by Malin Rising):

STOCKHOLM, March 12 — Australian author Sonya Hartnett is the winner of the $818,000 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for Literature, the largest children’s book award in the world.

Hartnett, 39, published her first novel, “Trouble All the Way,” at the age of 15 and since then has written 18 novels for children, young people and adults.

The jury praised her “linguistic virtuosity and brilliant narrative technique” and said her works are “a source of strength.”

According to the jury’s citation, “Sonya Hartnett is one of the major forces for renewal in modern young adult fiction. With psychological depth and a concealed yet palpable anger, she depicts the circumstances of young people without avoiding the darker sides of life.”

Recent books by Hartnett include The Silver Donkey (2006), the Printz Honor Book Surrender (2006), and Stripes of the Sidestep Wolf (2005).

Kate Christensen is the winner of the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, for her novel The Great Man (Doubleday). From the Washington Post (”Behind Every Great Man . . . ” by Bob Thompson):

“I’m really shocked,” she said in a telephone interview. To her, an award like the PEN/Faulkner “always seemed unattainable.” Among other reasons, in the 28 years it has existed, only four other women have won.

“It’s me and John Updike and Philip Roth. I was like, do women actually win this thing?” Christensen joked.

From Donna Seaman’s Booklist review:

Christensen’s arch and gratifying novel (think Margaret Drabble) pairs the ridiculous with the sublime, and reminds us that nothing human is simply black or white. 

The runners-up:

Annie Dillard, The Maytrees (HarperCollins)

David Leavitt, The Indian Clerk (Bloomsbury)

T. M. McNally, The Gateway: Stories (Southern Methodist)

Ron Rash, Chemistry and Other Stories (Picador)