Book News: ALA’s GLBTRT Names 2008 Book Award Winners

Michael Rogers -- Library Journal, 2/11/2008 6:30:00 AM

• Ellis Avery wins Barbara Gittings Book Award in Literature for The Teahouse Fire
• Mark Doty’s Dog Years: A Memoir takes the Israel Fishman Book Award for Nonfiction

The American Library Association’s (ALA) Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Round Table (GLBTRT) has announced the winners of the 2008 Stonewall Book Awards. Ellis Avery took the Barbara Gittings Book Award in Literature for The Teahouse Fire (Riverhead) while Mark Doty’s Dog Years: A Memoir (HarperCollins) won the Israel Fishman Book Award for Nonfiction. 

ALA said The Teahouse Fire tells the story of “Aurelia Bernard, an American orphan who finds refuge in the household of a Japanese tea master” during the opening of Japan to the West. Doty’s title unfurls his day-to-day life with his partner and two dogs, and “reflects on love and loss and takes the reader through his process of grieving for his human and canine companions.”