Barnes and Noble Announces Winners of Discover Great New Writers Awards

Posted on February 28, 2007

Barnes & Noble announced the the winners of the 14th annual Discover Great New Writers Awards for fiction and nonfiction. The short story collection Brief Encounters with Che Guevara by Ben Fountain (Ecco) won the fiction award. The nonfction award went to The Last Season by Eric Blehm(HarperCollins). Each writer was awarded a cash prize of $10,000, and a full year of additional marketing and advertising support.

Second place was awarded to Turkish writer O. Z. Livaneli's novel, Bliss (St. Martin's Press) for fiction and to Daniel Mendelsohn's memoir, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (HarperCollins), for nonfiction. Each second place winner received $5,000. Sam Savage's first novel, Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife (Coffee House Press), and Marilyn Johnson's exploration of a literary art form, The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries (HarperCollins), won third place and a $2,500 prize for each.

The judges for the fiction awards were Mohsin Hamid, the author of the novel Moth Smoke, and an upcoming second novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist; Lily King, the author of The English Teacher, whose first novel, The Pleasing Hour, won the Discover Award in 1999; and Marcus Stevens, the author of the novels The Curve of the World and Useful Girl.

Congratulations to all the winners!