A literary award is an award presented to an author who has written a particularly lauded piece or body of work. There are awards for forms of writing ranging from poetry to novels. Many awards are also dedicated to a certain genre of fiction or non-fiction writing (such as science fiction or politics). Most literary awards come with a corresponding award ceremony.
Some of the most notable literary prizes include the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Man Booker Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the Whitbread Awards, the Neustadt Prize and the Hugo Awards.
In recent years, some media corporations have sponsored new literary prizes, including the Quill Awards, which were first awarded in 2005 and The Ireland Funds AWB Vincent Literary Award in 2000.
There are also spoof awards, such as The Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award, the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year, and the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction and Lyttle Lytton Contests, which are both given to deliberately bad sentences.
See also[]
- List of literary awards
- List of poetry awards
- List of the world's richest literary prizes
- Literary festival
External links[]
- Book Prize Information: database of literary awards
- Author Ranking by Literary Awards: ranked lists of authors that received prominent literary award honors
- Best books of: 2008, 2009, 2000-2009, 2010, Year-end "Best Books" lists aggregated at Large Hearted Boy.
- "The Art of Prize-Fighting", by Tom Chatfield in Prospect Magazine, January 2009. Essay on the history and merit of modern literary prizes.
- "75 Notes For An Unwritten Essay on Literary Prizes", by Matthew Hunte, at "The Busy Signal" November 27 2010. Essay-notes on the history of literary prizes.