Newsletter: June 2008

June is upon us, month of the Wimbledon tennis championships, summer picnics, school exams... which means that it's been raining quite a bit here in the UK. Still, we don't get despondent, because there's plenty to keep up with in the world of books and publishing.

The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2008 has been awarded to the Belgian author Paul Verhaeghen (below) for his novel Omega Minor. Verhaeghen is the first author to have both written and translated the winning title and has therefore won the full £10,000 prize for his work translated from Dutch into English. However, he's opted to donate his winnings to the American Civil Liberties Union in protest of US foreign policy. 

 Photo: The Independent

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Booker Prize, previous winners Pat Barker, Peter Carey, J. M. Coetzee, J. G. Farrell, Nadine Gordimer and Salman Rushdie are all in the running to win a one-off award and be lauded as 'Best of the Booker'. Public votes are being collected for each, so to make yours count visit www.themanbookerprize.com before 8th July 2008 and choose the title you think deserves the award. The winner will be announced on 10th July.

Dublin writer Derek Landy (below) has won the coveted Red House Prize for children's writing, with his book Skulduggery Pleasant, about a zombie detective who fights the forces of darkness with his twelve-year-old sidekick Stephanie. Sounds good to me.

 Photo: Malcolm Godwin

The winner of the 2008 Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction was due to be revealed at a special event at the Hay Festival last month. But careful readers of the festival programme noticed that, among the finalists, only Will Self was described as 'winner of the 2008 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction'. Which meant that by the time the winer was 'revealed', it, er, wasn't much of a surprise to anyone...

The Wales Book of the Year prize has winners in both the English and Welsh language categories. In the running for the English are: The Presence, by Dannie Abse (below), Blue Sky July by Nia Wyn, and The Claude Glass by Tom Bullough; while shortlisted for the Welsh prize are Pryfeta by Tony Bianchi, Y Proffwyd a'l Ddwy Jesebel by Gareth Miles and Dauwynebog by Cer Wyn Jones. The winner will be announced on 1st July.

 Photo: Elsa Corbluth

Writers aren't the only ones to get to pretend that prizes don't matter to them. All the work that goes on behind the scenes in the publishing world can also, occasionally, be rewarded. At the recent British Book Industry Awards, publishers Random House and Quercus picked up awards, Foyles was named best chain bookstore, and poet Robin Robertson (below) was named Editor of the Year for Jonathan Cape. The last word this month should go to Robin, who when he picked up his award, announced: 'I guess it's all downhill from here.'

 Photo: Niall McDiarmid

See you next month.

Susan Tranter

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