BTW News Briefs

Southeast Booksellers Association Announces 2004 Book Awards

On Tuesday, June 8, the Southeast Booksellers Association (SEBA) announced the winners of its SEBA 2004 Book Awards.

The winners are:

• Fiction: Lunch at the Picadilly, Clyde Edgerton, Algonquin;
  
• Nonfiction: Grits: Girls Raised in the South, Deborah Ford, Dutton;
  
• Poetry: Locales, Poems from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, Ed. by Fred Chappel, Louisiana University Press;
  
• Children: How I Became a Pirate, Melinda Long, Harcourt; and
  
• Cookbook: The Gift of Southern Cooking, Scott Peacock & Edna Lewis, Knopf
  

This year's SEBA Book Awards Dinner will take place on June 26, at The Park Hotel in Charlotte, North Carolina. Tickets are $40 for the dinner that starts at 7:00 p.m. For ticket information contact SEBA at (803) 779-0118 or go to www.sebaweb.org.

College Hill Book Store to Close

After 39 years in business, Ken Dulgarian, president of College Hill Book Store, recently announced that the Providence, Rhode Island, institution would close.

"This decision has been heart wrenching, inasmuch as we have considered ourselves to be part of a larger community that included our loyal employees, interesting customers, academics, and others," Dulgarian noted in a press release. "We wish, at this time, to publicly thank our loyal staff, and our devoted customers, who allowed the College Hill Book Store to be a warm and vibrant institution. However, with other business interests requiring significantly more of my time and energy, I have reluctantly concluded that it was necessary to harvest my energies, and to move my family's business interests into other productive arenas." Dulgarian said the store would close within the next two months.

Griffin Poetry Prize Winners Announced

In Toronto on June 3, the Griffin Poetry Trust announced the winners of the 2004 Griffin Poetry Prize. The Canadian winner was Anne Simpson's Loop (McClelland & Stewart), and August Kleinzahler's The Strange Hours Travelers Keep (FSG) won in the International category. The Griffin Poetry Prize is awarded annually for two books of poetry published in English (including translations) the previous year that are chosen by the Griffin Poetry Trust panel of judges.

The winners, who each receive C$40,000, will be invited to read at Poetry International 2004 at the Royal Festival Hall in London on October 28 at 7:30 p.m. They will be joined by Trustee Margaret Atwood, Anne Carson, (Griffin Poetry Prize Canadian winner 2001), and Robert Bringhurst (Shortlist 2001).

King's English Owners Honored

The owners of The King's English bookstore, Betsy Burton and Barbara Hoagland, were recipients of the 2004 Woman Business Owner of the Year Award from the Salt Lake chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO), as reported in The Salt Lake Tribune. They were recognized as being champions of women entrepreneurs.

Hoagland has served on the Salt Lake Business Advisory Board. In 2001, the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association named Burton its Bookseller of the Year. In 2003, Hoagland and Burton were named to the list of "Risk Takers, 30 Women to Watch" by Utah Business Magazine, said The Salt Lake Tribune.

New Owner and Operator for Dartmouth Landmark Bookstore

The new owner of the Dartmouth Bookstore in Hanover, New Hampshire, held a press conference this week outlining the future of the 132-year-old store. Alex Schiffman, an accounting firm executive and longtime Hanover resident, announced his ownership and his plans for a complete refurbishing of the store, including the addition of a cafe, as reported in Hanover's Valley News.

Although the bookstore will retain the name given to it by its founders, a group of Dartmouth College students in 1872, Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, Inc., will operate the store. It will again sell textbooks, a practice discontinued in 2002, the year marking the death of the store's longtime owner, Phoebe Storrs Stebbins. Schiffman's purchase, at an undisclosed price, ended 123 years of ownership by the Storrs family. A community advisory board, including David Cioffi, Dartmouth Bookstore's manager since 1972, was named by Schiffman to "ensure that the store caters to the needs of Upper Valley customers."

Sarah Holmes Named Winner of Ursula Nordstrom Fiction Contest

On June 15, HarperCollins Children's Books announced that it had named Sarah Holmes of Columbus, Mississippi, winner of The 2004 Ursula Nordstrom Fiction Contest. Holmes' winning book, titled Letters From Rapunzel, earned her a $1,500 cash prize and a book contract with a $7,500 advance. Selected from more than 300 entries, Letters From Rapunzel is scheduled to be published by HarperCollins Children's Books in Spring 2006.

HarperCollins Children's Books established the Ursula Nordstrom Fiction Contest in November 2003 to encourage new talent in the writing of innovative and challenging middle grade fiction. Ursula Nordstrom (1910-1988) was director of Harper's Department of Books for Boys and Girls from 1940-1973 and published many of America s most beloved middle grade writers, including Mary Rodgers, E.B. White, and Laura Ingalls Wilder.