Sarah Wolberg

John Vaillant wins the Baillie Gifford Prize for Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World. Kim Stanley Robinson wins the Hans Carl von Carlowitz Sustainability Award for The Ministry for the Future. The winners of the National Outdoor Book Awards are announced. Waterstones shares its books of the year for Scotland and Wales; Blackwell’s also announces its books of the year. The shortlist for the CBC Poetry Prize is released. Washington Post and Book Riot name their best books of 2023.

The winners of the National Book Award are announced: Justin Torres’s Blackouts, Ned Blackhawk’s The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History, Craig Santos Perez’s from unincorporated territory [åmot], and Stênio Gardel’s The Words That Remain, tr. by Bruna Dantas Lobato. Halik Kochanski wins the Wolfson History Prize for Resistance: The Underground War Against Hitler, 1939–1945. Kirkus lists its best fiction of 2023. Washington Post shares more picks for the best books of 2023. Plus new title best sellers.

Benjamin Myers wins the Goldsmiths Prize for his novel Cuddy. Mosab Abu Toha wins the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry for Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza. Tania Branigan wins the Cundill History Prize for Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution. The winners of the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards are announced. The longlist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize for issue-driven fiction is also announced. Librarians are filing workplace discrimination claims with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to oppose book bans and their firings.

One for Sorrow, Two for Joy by Marie-Claire Amuah wins the adult division of the Diverse Book Awards. Winners are announced for Bookshop.org UK’s inaugural Indie Champions Awards. Poets&Writers issues its “5 Over 50” list of the best debut poetry authors. Shortlists are announced for the Ledbury Hellens Poetry Prize for Second Collections and the Waterstones Book of the Year Award.

Winners are announced for Taste Canada Awards for cookbooks and food writing. Finalists are announced for Canada’s National Business Book Awards. Southern Book Prize finalists are revealed, representing “bookseller favorites from 2023 that are Southern in nature—either about the South or by a Southern writer.” Plus new title best sellers.

Rebecca Campbell’s Arboreality wins the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction. The shortlist is announced for Scotland’s National Book Awards. Salman Rushdie says that if authors are only allowed to write characters similar to themselves and their own experiences, “the art of the novel ceases to exist.”

Maria Stepanova wins the Berman Literature Prize for her family saga In Memory of Memory; the award honors works “in the spirit of the Jewish tradition.” The shortlist is announced for the Nan Shepherd Prize for underrepresented voices in nature writing. Finalists are announced for the Governor General’s Literary Awards, administered by the Canada Council for the Arts. Plus new title best sellers and interviews with Tananarive Due, Megan Kamalei Kakimoto, Margaret Renkl, and more.

The shortlist is announced for the An Post Irish Book Awards. No Country for Girls by Emma Styles wins the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. Wanda Nanibush and Georgiana Uhlyarik win the Toronto Book Award for Moving the Museum: Indigenous + Canadian Art at the AGO. U.S. authors and European publishing trade bodies call for action on generative AI. 

LeVar Burton to host National Book Awards. Winners are announced for the Forward Prizes for Poetry. LitHub reviews highs and lows from the New York Film Festival’s literary fare and hosts a conversation about Palestine between Masha Gessen and Nathan Thrall, author of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy. There are interviews with Marie NDiaye, Lee and Andrew Child, N.K. Jemisin, and more. Plus new title best sellers.