The annual Midwest Booksellers Choice Awards honor authors from the Midwest and books about the Midwest. Five award-winning books are both nominated and voted on by our knowledgeable booksellers. Our awards are a celebration of handselling at its best.
- Five awards are bestowed to authors each year: Adult Fiction, Adult Non-Fiction, Poetry, Children’s Picture Book, and Children’s Literature (including both fiction and non-fiction).
- All nominated books must have subject matter which relates to our Midwest region, or the author must live in one of our member states. These states include Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
- Books eligible for our 2012 awards must have been published in either hardcover or paperback between May 1, 2011, and April 30, 2012.
We join our booksellers in congratulating and warmly recommending these outstanding books and authors for 2011.
Adult Fiction
Nina Revoyr, Wingshooters (Akashic Books)
Trade paperback, 9781936070718, $15.95; Trade Cloth, 9781936070862, $23.95; eBook, 9781617750182.
Nina Revoyr is the author of four novels, The Necessary Hunger, Southland, The Age of Dreaming, and most recently, Wingshooters. Southland was a BookSense 76 pick, won the Lambda Literary Award, and was a Los Angeles Times “Best Book” of 2003. The Age of Dreaming was a finalist for the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Wingshooters won an Indie Booksellers’ Choice Award and is a finalist for a SCIBA Award; upon its release, the novel was selected for IndieBound’s Indie Next List as well as being an MBA Midwest Connections Pick. She lives and works in Los Angeles.
Adult Nonfiction
Wendy McClure, The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie (Riverhead Books/Penguin Group)
Hardcover, 9781594487804, $25.95; Trade paperback, 9781594485688, $16.00, available April 2012
Wendy McClure is a columnist for BUST magazine and a children’s book editor. Her essays have appeared in the The New York Times Magazine, The Chicago Sun-Times, and in numerous anthologies. She was born in Oak Park, Illinois, graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and now lives in Chicago with her fiance, Chris, in a neighborhood near the river.
Childrens Literature
Clare Vanderpool, Moon Over Manifest (Delacorte Press/Random House)
Hardcover, 9780385738835, $16.99; Trade paperback, 9780375858291, $7.99, available December 2012
Newbery-award-winning Moon Over Manifest, Clare Vanderpool’s first novel, is set in the fictional small town of Manifest, Kansas, which is based on the real southeastern Kansas town of Frontenac, home of both of her maternal grandparents. Drawing on stories she heard as a child, along with research in town newspapers, yearbooks, and graveyards, Clare found a rich and colorful history for her story. Clare lives in Wichita, Kansas, with her husband and their four children.
Childrens Picture Book
Jane Yolen (author) and David Small (illustrator), Elsie’s Bird (Philomel/Penguin)
Hardcover, 9780399252921, $17.99
Jane Yolen is an author of children’s books, fantasy, and science fiction, including Owl Moon, The Devil’s Arithmetic, and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? She is also a poet, a teacher of writing and literature, and a reviewer of children’s literature. She has been called the Hans Christian Andersen of America and the Aesop of the twentieth century. Her books and stories have won the Caldecott Medal, two Nebula Awards, two Christopher Medals, the World Fantasy Award, three Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards, the Golden Kite Award, the Jewish Book Award, the World Fantasy Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Association of Jewish Libraries Award among many others.
Poetry
William Kloefkorn, Swallowing the Soap (University of Nebraska Press/Bison Books)
Trade paperback, 9780803234055, $26.95
William Kloefkorn (1932–2011) was an emeritus professor of English at Nebraska Wesleyan University and Nebraska’s state poet. He is the author of many volumes of poetry including the collection Swallowing the Soap: New and Selected Poems and a four-volume memoir: This Death by Drowning, Restoring the Burnt Child, At Home on This Moveable Earth, and Breathing in the Fullness of Time, all published by the University of Nebraska Press. Ted Genoways is the editor of Virginia Quarterly Review and the author of Bullroarer: A Sequence. He has edited numerous books, including The Selected Poems of Miguel Hernández.
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The 2010 Midwest Booksellers’ Choice Award Winners were announced to the public on August 24, 2010.
2010 AWARD WINNERS
FICTION
A Gate at the Stairs
Lorrie Moore
Knopf / Random House
$25.95, hc 9780375409288
Vintage / Random House (September)
$15.00, ppr 9780375708466
NONFICTION
The Girls From Ames: A Story of Women & a Forty-Year Friendship
Jeffrey Zaslow
Gotham Books / Penguin Group USA
$26.00, hc 9781592404452
$16.00, ppr 9781592405329
POETRY
The Chain Letter of the Soul: New and Selected Poems
Bill Holm
Milkweed Editions
$18.00, ppr 9781571314444
CHILDREN’S PICTURE BOOK
Otis
Loren Long
Philomel / Penguin Group USA
$17.99, hc 9780399252488
CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
Shiver
Maggie Stiefvater
Scholastic Press
$17.99, hc 9780545123266
8.99, ppr 9780545123273
2010 HONOR BOOKS
FICTION
Driftless
David Rhodes
Milkweed Editions
$16.00, ppr 9781571310682
NONFICTION
Healthy Bread In Five Minutes a Day
Jeff Hertzberg & Zoë François
St. Martin’s Press / Macmillan
$27.99, hc 9780312545529
POETRY
Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude
Jim Perlman, Deborah Cooper,
Mara Hart, Pamela Mittlefehldt, Eds.
Holy Cow! Press / Consortium
$16.95, ppr 9780977945894
CHILDREN’S PICTURE BOOK
Moose on the Loose
Kathy-jo Wargin
Illustrated by John Bendall-Brunello
Sleeping Bear Press
$15.95, hc 9781585364275
CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
Odd and the Frost Giants
Neil Gaiman
HarperCollins
$14.99, hc 9780061671739
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