NEWS

NOMINEES FOR ANNUAL NORTH AMERICAN HAMMETT PRIZE ANNOUNCED



The North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers is pleased to announce nominees for their annual HAMMETT PRIZE for a work of literary excellence in the field of crime writing by a US or Canadian author. The nominees are as follows:

Heywood Gould, Leading Lady (Five Star)

Colin Harrison, The Finder: A Novel (Sarah Crichton           Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

David Levien, City of the Sun: A Novel (Doubleday)

George Pelecanos, The Turnaround (Little, Brown)

Abraham Rodriguez, South by South Bronx (Akashic)

A reading committee of IACW/NA members selected the nominees, based on recommendations from other members and the publishing community. The committee was headed by Deen Kogan and included William Bayer, David Goewey, William Heffernan, and Allen Wyler.

The winner will be chosen by three distinguished outside judges: Harvey Finkel, owner of the Clinton Book Shop (Clinton, NJ); author John Matteson, winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for biography for Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father; and Carolyn Wakeman who is on the faculty of the University of California’s Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and directs their Asia-Pacific Program. Her latest book, co-written with San San Tin, is No Time for Dreams: Living in Burma under Military Rule.

The organization will name the HAMMETT PRIZE winner, during the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) Fall Conference, in Baltimore, October 4-5, 2009. The winner will receive a bronze trophy, designed by sculptor Peter Boiger.

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