Connecticut Book Award 2009 Finalists Announced

Connecticut Book Awards
Sunday, September 20, 2009, 2pm
Hartford Public Library
Awards program free and open to the public
Reception with book signings will be a ticketed event: nominated books will be for sale and all attending finalists will be available to sign their books. Tickets are $45.
Contact: klyons@hplct.org by 14 September to reserve
860.695.6320

The Freedom Business, Including a Narrative of the Life & Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa, illustrated by acclaimed painter and UConn professor Deborah Dancy, is a finalist for two book awards.

Jessica Helfand's Scrapbooks: An American History is a finalist for design.

Press Release:

This tribute to Connecticut’s vigorous and varied literary community recognizes and honors books with specific ties to our state: the author, illustrator, or designer must be native-born or have been a legal resident of Connecticut for at least three years, or the book must have a Connecticut setting in order to be considered. Eligible books are those first published in the previous calendar year. Katharine Weber, winner of the 2008 award for Fiction, said that the Awards, “remind us that our state not only possesses a magnificent literary heritage but also has a significant, thriving contemporary population of notable writers of all persuasions.”

Winners in each category will be announced for the first time during the program. Meriden-born children’s book author/illustrator Tomie dePaola will deliver the keynote. Published for 40 years and author/illustrator of more than 200 books, his work has been recognized with the Caldecott Honor Award, the Newbery Honor Award, and Smithsonian Institution's Smithson Medal. Matthew K. Poland, Interim Co-Director of Hartford Public Library, will serve as Master of Ceremonies. Fran Keilty, proprietor of Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Depot, will speak on behalf of the Connecticut Center for the Book Advisory Council, as its Chairperson. The Lifetime Achievement in Service to the Literary Community Award will be presented to Bessy Reyna during the ceremony.

Finalists for 2009:

Nonfiction

Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism
Viking, Written by Kevin Phillips

Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation
Pantheon, Written by Charles Barber

Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, 1861-2003
Viking, Written by William N. Eskridge, Jr.

The Quest for Democracy in Iran: A Century of Struggle against Authoritarian Rule
Harvard University Press, Written by Fakhreddin Azimi

Thinking Beyond the Unthinkable: Harnessing Doom from the Cold War to the Age of Terror
Viking, Written by Jonathan Stevenson

Biography & Memoir

Joseph Hopkins Twichell: The Life and Times of Mark Twain’s Closest Friend
The University of Georgia Press, Written by Steve Courtney

The Prodigal Daughter: Reclaiming an Unfinished Childhood
University of Missouri Press, Written by Margaret Gibson

Children’s Author

Fly, Monarch, Fly!
Marshall Cavendish Children, Written by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace

The Freedom Business, Including a Narrative of the Life & Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa
Wordsong: Boyds Mills Press, Written by Marilyn Nelson

Waiting for Normal
Katherine Tegen Books: HarperCollins Publishers, Written by Leslie Connor

Children’s Illustrator

Baseball Hour
Marshall Cavendish Children, Illustrated by Bill Thomson

The Freedom Business, Including a Narrative of the Life & Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa
Wordsong: Boyds Mills Press, Illustrated by Deborah Dancy

The Wolves Are Back
Dutton Children’s Books: Penguin Young Readers Group, Illustrated by Wendell Minor

Design

Scrapbooks: An American History
Yale University Press, Designed by Jessica Helfand

Fiction

Dinosaurs on the Roof
Simon & Schuster, Written by David Rabe

Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn
HarperCollins, Written by Alice Mattison

Songs for the Missing
Viking, Written by Stewart O’Nan

Poetry

Let’s Not Call It Consequence
Shearsman Books (UK), Written by Richard Deming

The Odes of Horace
The Johns Hopkins University Press, Translated by Jeffrey H. Kaimowitz

Present Vanishing
Sarabande Books, Written by Dick Allen

This program is made possible in part by support from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism.