Costa Book Awards 2011 Category Winners

The winners of the various categories in the Costa Book Awards were announced in the UK overnight.

The winner in each category receives £5,000. From these category winners the Costa Book of the Year 2011 will be chosen, the winner receiving a further £30,000. The Costa Book of the Year 2011 will be announced on 24th January 2012.

Costa Biography Award

• Now All Roads Lead to France : the last years of Edward Thomas by Matthew Hollis ~ an account of the last five years of the life of author Edward Thomas and his friendship with poet Robert Frost and his decision to fight in WWI
• Judges comments: “dramatic and engrossing“

Costa Novel Award

• Pure by Andrew Miller ~ set in Paris 1785
• Judges comments: Created a “structurally and stylistically flawless historical novel”

Costa First Novel Award

• Tiny Sunbirds Far Away by Christie Watson ~ this first novel by children’s nurse Watson is set in the Niger Delta.
• Judges comments: “readability and literary merit go hand in hand in this vibrant gem of a novel.”

Costa Poetry Award

• The Bees by Carol Ann Duffy ~ Carol Ann Duffy is the Poet Laureate in Britain.
• Judges comments: “We were thrilled by the poet’s musical feeling for language and her spellbinding ability to combine naturalness and formal complexity. It’s a joyful collection.”

Costa Children’s Book Award

• Blood Red Road by Moira Young ~ currently being adapted for film.

You can read about the Costa Book Award 2011 shortlist here.

Costa Book Award shortlist

The shortlisted books for the 2010 Costa Book Awards has been announced. The Costa Book Awards is unique in having five categories: First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book. It is also the only prize where children’s books and books for adults vie equally for the final prize.

Here are the shortlisted books in each category. Instead of the usual links to the Blue Mountains City Library catalogue, these links will take you to a summary of each book and comments from the judges on why each was chosen. An asterisk indicates that Blue Mountains City Library has a copy of a book :

Costa First Novel Award

• Witness the Night by Kishwar Desai*
• Coconut Unlimited by Nikesh Shukla
• The Temple-Goers by Aatish Taseer*
• Not Quite White by Simon Thirsk

Costa Novel Award

• Whatever You Love by Louise Doughty*
• The Blasphemer by Nigel Farndale*
• The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell*
• Skippy Dies by Paul Murray*

Costa Biography Award

• How to Live : A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell*
• My Father’s Fortune by Michael Frayn
• The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal*

Costa Poetry Award

• Standard Midland by Roy Fisher
• The Wrecking Light by Robin Robertson
• Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott
• New Light for the Old Dark by Sam Willetts*

Costa Children’s Book Award

• Flyaway by Lucy Christopher
• Annexed by Sharon Dogar
• Bartimaeus: The Ring of Solomon by Jonathan Stroud
• Out of Shadows by Jason Wallace

The winner in each category receives £5,000. The 2010 category winners will be announced on January 5th 2011. Then one of the five category winners will be selected as the overall Costa Book of the Year winner, to be announced on January 25th 2011, and the author receives a further £30,000.

To be eligible for the Costa Book Awards, the author must have been resident in the UK or Ireland for over six months of each of the previous three years and the books, which are submitted by the publisher not the author, must have been first published in the UK or Ireland between 1 November of the previous year and 31 October of the current year. Books previously published elsewhere are not eligible.

A pdf file of previous Costa/Whitbread Book Award winners can be downloaded from this page.

Costa Book Awards 2009

The winners of the Costa Book Awards 2009 Novel, First Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book categories were announced in the UK overnight.

 The Costa Novel Award was won by Colm Tóibin for Brooklyn.

The judges said : “Poised, quiet and incrementally shattering – we all loved this book and can’t praise it highly enough.”

The Costa First Novel Award goes to Raphael Selbourne for Beauty.

The judges said :  “Pitch perfect on every level – we loved this book.”

 

 

The Costa Biography Award was won by Graham Farmelo for The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius.

The judges said : “The extraordinary mind and achievements of Britain’s Einstein are rendered here in the most compelling biography of the year.”

 

 

The Costa Poetry Award went to Christopher Reid for A Scattering (on order at BM Library at present), a tribute to his wife following her death in 2005.

The judges said : “Intensely moving, compelling and honest – this is a highly readable collection of wonderful poems.”

 

The Costa Children’s Book Award was won by Patrick Ness for The Ask and the Answer (Book Two of the Chaos Walking trilogy – also on order at time of posting).

The judges said : “From the first word, we were gripped by this dazzlingly-imagined, morally complex, compulsively-plotted tale. We are convinced that this is a major achievement in the making.”

Follow the links from the judges comments for more information on each winner.

Follow this link for the Costa Awards Shortlisted books.

The Costa Book of the Year will be announced on 26th January 2010.