Major Book Awards Calendar For 2019 and (Fiction) Award Winners

And just like that – we’ve arrived at the end of the year, and the last MAJOR Book Awards to be presented in 2019 – that we’ve been tracking – has been presented. We first shared this calendar in January, and now, at the end of November, here’s a look at the WINNERS. Which books have you read? Which of the winners did you predict? We’re also now hosting a Book Awards Reading Challenge for 2020 – so check it out and join in as we choose a book from the award winners to read each month.

JANUARY

COSTA BOOK AWARDS

The Costa Book Awards is one of the UK’s most prestigious and popular literary prizes and recognizes books written by authors based in the UK and Ireland. The prize has five categories – First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book – with one of the five winning books selected as the overall Costa Book of the Year.

The Cut Out Girl: A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found, Bart van Es

* NEW * Book of the Year Winner

The extraordinary true story of a young Jewish girl in Holland during World War II, who hides from the Nazis in the homes of an underground network of foster families.

2019 DATES

• Jan. 29, 2019 – Book of the Year Winner
• Jan. 7, 2018 – Category Winners
  
• Nov. 22, 2018 – Category Shortlists

Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction

The Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction recognize the best Fiction and Non-Fiction books for adult readers published in the U.S. the previous year. The awards are given by the American Library Association, and reflect the expert judgment and insight of library professionals who work closely with adult readers.

The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai

* NEW * Best Fiction

In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, his friend Nico’s little sister.

2019 DATES

• Jan. 27, 2019 – Winners announced
  
• Oct. 24, 2018 – Shortlist
• Sep. 27, 2018 – Longlist

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MARCH

Audie Awards

The Audie Awards, sponsored by the Audio Publishers Association (APA), recognizes distinction in audiobooks and spoken word entertainment in 29 categories.

Children of Blood and Bone, Tomi Adeyemi – Read by Bahni Turpin

* NEW * Audiobook of the Year

Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls. But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope. Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good.

2019 DATES

• Mar. 4, 2019 – Winners announced
  
• Feb. 6, 2019 – Finalists

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS

The National Book Critics Circle Awards honor the best literature published in the United States in six categories – autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Also added in recent years is the John Leonard Award, a new prize honoring an author’s first book. These are the only national literary awards chosen by critics themselves.

Milkman, Anna Burns

* NEW * Best Fiction
In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle, and rumors start to swell, middle sister becomes ‘interesting’. The last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed and to be noticed is dangerous.

2019 DATES

• Mar. 14, 2019 – Winners announced
• Jan. 22, 2019 – Finalists

 

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APRIL

THE EDGAR AWARDS

The Edgar Awards are presented by the Mystery Writers of America honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television.

Down the River Unto the Sea, Walter Mosley

* NEW * Best Novel

Joe King Oliver was one of the NYPD’s finest investigators, until, dispatched to arrest a well-heeled car thief, he is framed for assault by his enemies within the NYPD, a charge which lands him in solitary at Rikers Island. A decade later, King is a private detective, running his agency with the help of his teenage daughter, Aja-Denise. When he receives a card in the mail from the woman who admits she was paid to frame him those years ago, King realizes that he has no choice but to take his own case: figuring out who on the force wanted him disposed of–and why.

2019 DATES

• Apr. 25, 2019 – Winners announced
• Jan. 22, 2019 – Nominees

PULITZER PRIZE

The Pulitzer Prize is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine and online journalism, literature, and musical composition in the United States.

The Overstory, Richard Powers

* NEW * Fiction

There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

2019 DATES

• Apr. 25, 2019 – Winners and Nominated finalists announced
  

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May

Best Translated Book Awards

The Best Translated Book Awards honor the best original works of international fiction and poetry published in the U.S. during the previous year.

Slave Old Man by Patrick Chamoiseau, Translated from French and Creole by Linda Coverdal

* NEW * Best Fiction
We follow an elderly slave’s daring escape into the wild from a plantation in Martinique, with his master and a fearsome hound on his heels. The old man’s flight to freedom will transform them all in truly astonishing – even otherworldly – ways, as the overwhelming physical presence of the forest reshapes reality and time itself. Chamoiseau’s exquisitely rendered new novel is an adventure for all time, one that fearlessly portrays the demonic cruelties of the slave trade and its human costs in vivid, sometimes hallucinatory prose.

2019 DATES

• May 31, 2019 – Winners
• May. 15, 20198 – Finalists
• Apr. 10, 2019 – Longlist

Nebula Awards

The Nebula Awards are voted on, and presented by, active members of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. They are given each year for various categories including best novel, novella, novelette, short story along with the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy.

The Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal

* NEW * Best Novel
On a cold spring night in 1952, a huge meteorite fell to earth and obliterated much of the east coast of the United States, including Washington D.C. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated effort to colonize space, and requires a much larger share of humanity to take part in the process. Elma York’s experience as a WASP pilot and mathematician earns her a place in the International Aerospace Coalition’s attempts to put man on the moon, as a calculator. But with so many skilled and experienced women pilots and scientists involved with the program, it doesn’t take long before Elma begins to wonder why they can’t go into space, too.

2019 DATES

• May 18, 2019 – Winners
• Feb. 19, 2019 – Nominees

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JUNE

Women’s Prize for Fiction

The Women’s Prize for Fiction is a UK-based award honoring the best novel of the year written in English by a female author

An American Marriage, Tayari Jones

* NEW * Best Novel

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined.

2019 DATES

• Jun. 5, 2019 – Winner
• Apr. 29 2019- Shortlist
• Mar. 8, 2019 – Longlist

Locus Award

The Locus Award Winners. Recognizes excellence in science fiction and fantasy literature.

The Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal – Science Fiction Novel – Winner

Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik – Fantasy Novel – Winner

The Cabin at the End of the World, Paul Tremblay – Horror Novel – Winner

2019 DATES

• Jun. 29, 2019 – Winner
• Apr. 2019 – Finalists

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JULY

RITA Awards

The purpose of the RITA (Romance) Awards is to promote excellence in the romance genre by recognizing outstanding published romance novels and novellas.

Lady in Waiting, Marie Tremayne

* NEW * First Novel Winner

When Clara Mayfield helps her sister elope, she’s prepared for the scandal to seal her fate as a spinster. What she doesn’t expect is to find herself engaged to the vile Baron Rutherford as a means of salvaging her family’s reputation. Determined not to be chained to a man she loathes, Clara slips out of Essex and sheds her identity: she becomes Helen, maid at the Earl of Ashworth’s country estate. After all, below stairs is the last place anyone would think to look for an heiress.

2019 DATES

• Jul. 26, 2019 – Winners
• Mar. 21, 2019 – Finalists

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AUGUST

The Hugo Awards

The Hugo Awards Winners are for excellence in the field of science fiction and fantasy.

The Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal

* NEW * Best Novel – Winner
On a cold spring night in 1952, a huge meteorite fell to earth and obliterated much of the east coast of the United States, including Washington D.C. The ensuing climate cataclysm will soon render the earth inhospitable for humanity, as the last such meteorite did for the dinosaurs. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated effort to colonize space, and requires a much larger share of humanity to take part in the process. Elma York’s experience as a WASP pilot and mathematician earns her a place in the International Aerospace Coalition’s attempts to put man on the moon, as a calculator. But with so many skilled and experienced women pilots and scientists involved with the program, it doesn’t take long before Elma begins to wonder why they can’t go into space, too.

2019 DATES

• Aug. 18, 2019 – Winner
  
• Mar. 30, 2019 – Finalists

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OCTOBER

Booker Prize

The Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original novel written in the English language and published in the UK or Ireland.

The Testaments (The Handmaid’s Tale #2), Margaret Atwood AND Girl, Woman, Other – Bernardine Evaristo

* NEW * Winners

The Testaments — Margaret Atwood’s sequel picks up the story more than fifteen years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.

Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years.

2019 DATES

• Oct. 15, 2019 – Winner
• Sep 19, 2019. – Shortlist
• July 23, 2019 – Longlist

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NOVEMBER

World Fantasy Awards

The World Fantasy Awards are a set of awards given each year for the best fantasy fiction published during the previous calendar year.

Witchmark, C.L. Polk

Novel – Winner

Magic marked Miles Singer for suffering the day he was born, doomed either to be enslaved to his family’s interest or to be committed to a witches’ asylum. He went to war to escape his destiny and came home a different man, but he couldn’t leave his past behind. Even after faking his own death and reinventing himself as a doctor at a cash-strapped veterans’ hospital, Miles can’t hide what he truly is. When a fatally poisoned patient exposes Miles’ healing gift and his witchmark, he must put his anonymity and freedom at risk to investigate his patient’s murder.

2019 DATES

• Nov. 3, 2019 – Winner
• Jul. 24, 2019 – Nominees

The Giller Prize

The Scotiabank Giller Prize is a literary award given to a Canadian author of a novel or short story collection published in English the previous year.

Reproduction, Ian Williams

Winner
Felicia and Edgar meet as their mothers are dying. Felicia, a teen from an island nation, and Edgar, the lazy heir of a wealthy German family, come together only because their mothers share a hospital room. When Felicia’s mother dies and Edgar’s “Mutter” does not, Felicia drops out of high school and takes a job as Mutter’s caregiver. While Felicia and Edgar don’t quite understand each other, and Felicia recognizes that Edgar is selfish, arrogant, and often unkind, they form a bond built on grief (and proximity) that results in the birth of a son Felicia calls Armistice. Or Army, for short.

Some years later, Felicia and Army (now 14) are living in the basement of a home owned by Oliver, a divorced man of Portuguese descent who has two kids–the teenaged Heather and the odd little Hendrix. Along with Felicia and Army, they form an unconventional family, except that Army wants to sleep with Heather, and Oliver wants to kill Army. Then Army’s fascination with his absent father–and his absent father’s money–begins to grow as odd gifts from Edgar begin to show up. And Felicia feels Edgar’s unwelcome shadow looming over them. A brutal assault, a mortal disease, a death, and a birth reshuffle this group of people again to form another version of the family.

2019 DATES

• Nov. 18, 2019 – Winner
• Oct. 2019 – Shortlist
• Sep. 2019 – Longlist

National Book Award

The National Book Awards celebrates the best in American literature. The Awards currently honors the best Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature published each year.

Trust Exercise, Susan Choi

Fiction – Winner

In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving “Brotherhood of the Arts,” two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed – or untoyed with – by anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley.

2019 DATES

• Nov. 20, 2019 – Winners
• Oct. 2019 – Finalists
• Sep. 2019 – Longlist

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Here’s a quick link to the Major Book Awards Calendar for 2018.

(Image Credit)