IRELAND. The shortlist for the 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award was announced on April 12th. The work of three women authors made the list of eight finalists for the 100,000 euro award. They are:
The Elegance Of The Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
The Believers by Zoe Heller
Home by Marilynne Robinson
More information can be found on the award's website

AUSTRALIA: The Miles Franklin Literary Award, Australia's first and most prestigious literary award, was established in 1954 with a bequest from the author Miles Franklin. She was concerned to see Australian literature flourish and knew first hand the struggles most authors have in Australia. The 2010 Miles Franklin Literary Award longlist includes the following works by women:
The Book of Emmett by Deborah Forster (Random House)
Siddon Rock by Glenda Guest (Random House)
Butterfly by Sonya Hartnett (Penguin Group AU)
For more information see the Trust Foundation website.



AUSTRALIA: Announced in February, Every Secret Thing by Marie Munkara (University of Queensland Press) has won the Northern Territory Book of the Year Award, worth $5,000. "Set on a mission in the Northern Territory, Every Secret Thing examines with wise and witty irreverence the collision of Catholic and indigenous cultures, figured here as a drama of comic misunderstandings between the Mission Mob and the Bush Mob." --- author Gail Jones, Judging panel.

AUSTRALIA: The winner of the 2010 Barbara Jefferis Award is Kristina Olsson for The China Garden (Univ.of Queensland Press). The award gives $35,000 for "the best novel written by an Australian author that depicts women and girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society." Other shortlisted works were:
The Lost Life by Steven Carroll (HarperCollins)
Swimming by Enza Gandolfo (Vanark Press)
The World Beneath by Cate Kennedy (Scribe)
Headlong by Susan Varga (UWA Publishing)

For more information on the Barbara Jefferis Award visit the Australian Society of Authors website.

UNITED KINGDOM: The Orange Prize for Fiction shortlist was announced April 20th. The shortlisted books are:

The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
Black Water Rising by Attica Locke
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey

For the complete longlist, visit the award's website at www.orangeprize.co.uk.

UNITED KINGDOM. The winner of the 2010 Commonwealth Prize for Best First Novel is Siddon Rock by Glenda Guest. The winner is chosen from the regional winners announced in March. Works by women which were regional winners were: Africa - Adaobi Tricia Nwaubeni from Nigeria won Best First Book for I Do Not Come to You by Chance and Marie Heese from South Africa won Best Book for The Double Crown. Caribbean & Canda - Shandi Mitchell from Canada won Best First Book for Under This Unbroken Sky South East Asia and Pacific - Glenda Guest from Australia won Best First Book for Siddon Rock

Other works by women on the Best Book regional shortlists include:
Trespass by Dawn Garisch (South Africa)
The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria)
Eyo by Abidemi Sanusi (Nigeria)
Tsamma Season by Rosemund Handler (South Africa)
The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels (Canada)
February by Lisa Moore (Canada)
Euphoria by Connie Gault (Canada)
The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon (Canada)
A Good Land by Nada Awar Jarrar (Australia)
Singularity by Charlotte Grimshaw (New Zealand)

Other works by women on the regional shortlists for Best First Book:
The Shape of Him by Gill Schierhout (South Africa)
Come Sunday by Isla Morley (South Africa)
Jelly Dog Days by Erica Emdon (South Africa)
Harmattan Rain by Aysha Harunna Attah (Ghana)
Amphibian by Carla Gunn (Canada)
The Hungry Ghosts by Anne Berry (UK)
An Equal Stillness by Francesca Kay (Britain)
Among Thieves by Mez Packer (UK)
The Ice Age by Kirsten Reed (Australia)
After the Fire, a Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld (Australia)
Come Inside by Glenys Osborne (Australia)

For more information on the Awards and for the complete regional shortlistings, see the Award's website.

ICELAND. Finnish author Sofi Oksanen has won the 2010 Nordic Council Literature Prize for her third novel Puhdistus (Cleansing). The prize, announced in March, will be presented in November at the Nordic Council Session in Rekajavik. For more information on the winning novel and the prize, visit the Council's website

UNITED STATES. The winner of the 2010 National Book Critic Circle Award for Fiction, announced in January, is UK author Hilary Mantel for her novel, Wolf Hall (Henry Holt). Other women authors who were shortlisted: Bonnie Jo Campbell, American Salvage (Wayne State University Press), Michelle Huneven, Blame (Sarah Crichton Books/FSG), and Jayne Anne Phillips, Lark and Termite (Knopf)
For a full list of winners and shortlisted authors in all categories visit the blog of the National Book Critics Circle Board.

UNITED STATES. Announced March 10th, Gail Hareven’s The Confessions of Noa Weber, translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu and published by Melville House Press is the recipient of the 2010 Best Translated Book Award for fiction. Organized by Three Percent, a resource for international literature at the University of Rochester, the award is the only prize of its kind to honor the best original works of international literature and poetry published in the U.S. over the past year.

The Confessions of Noa Weber is the story of a middle-aged writer who married a man out of convenience (to escape her military duty) and continues to love him throughout the rest of her life, despite the fact that he leaves her for Russia, another woman, and a different life. Gail Hareven is the author of six novels and three short stories collections; Noa Weber is her first title to be published in English. Dalya Bilu is a well-known translator of Hebrew literature and has been awarded a number of prizes, including the Times Literary Supplement and Jewish Book Council Award for Hebrew-English Translation. For additional information about the Best Translated Book Awards, the panelists, the winning titles, and all the finalists, please visit Three Percent at www.rochester.edu/threepercent

UNITED STATES. Pamela Samuels Young is the winner of The Black Caucus of the American Library Association's 2010 Literary Award for Fiction for her suspense novel Buying Time. The awards recognize excellence in adult fiction and nonfiction by African American authors published in the year prior. For more information visit the group's website.

UNITED STATES. The shortlists for the Shirley Jackson Award were announced April 15th. The SJA is a juried award given in recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson's writing and awards for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic. Four of the six shortlisted works for Best Novel were women. They are: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, The Owl Killers by Karen Maitland, The Red Tree by Caitlin R. Kiernan and White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi. Australia's Margo Lanagan is on the shortlist for Best Novella with "Sea-Hearts" and Russia's Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales has been shortlisted in the Single-Author Collection category. Winners will be announced in July. For more information on the award or author Shirley Jackson, please visit the award's website.

UNITED STATES. The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories by Lorraine M. Lopez, and A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore were three of the finalists for the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. For additional information see www.penfaulkner.org