Borders Announces 2003 Original Voices Award Winners

Posted on February 27, 2004

Borders Group has announced the winners of the seventh annual Borders Original Voices Awards. Winners will receive $5,000 from the company for their outstanding achievement in crafting creative, original books. All Original Voices Award finalists and winners will be featured during the month of March on in-store displays, in Borders This Month, a magazine distributed at Borders locations across the country and online.

Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, published by Riverhead Books, won top honors in the fiction category. Hosseini's tale of Afghani class distinction woven into a timeless story of the loyalty between friends and family won over the hearts and minds of the judging committee even in the company of strong competition including Whitbread Award winner The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-Time by Mark Haddon and Today Show book group choice The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

Random Family, written by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc and published by Scribner, was the nonfiction winner. LeBlanc balances compassion and objective journalism to describe the pathos of a Puerto Rican family living in the Bronx. She engages readers in the questioning of education, health care, social reform, drug laws and welfare.

Author Peter H. Reynolds won in the children's picture book category for The Dot, published by Candlewick Press. The simply illustrated story speaks to both children and adults about creativity and self-confidence. In the young adult category, Jennifer Donnelly won for her coming of age story set in rural New York in the early 1900's, A Northern Light, published by Harcourt Children's Books.

The Original Voices Award finalists were chosen based on the votes of Borders' booksellers across the country, corporate office employees as well as input from the buyers in each category. Final judging committees comprised of corporate office employees from all departments of Borders' organization -- from legal to marketing, information technology to merchandising -- were then formed to determine the winners.