PSST: It’s coming up soon: The International Dublin IMPAC Award

Do you know about the The International IMPAC Dublin Award? It’s an annual book award for books printed in English. Not only does it offer the biggest prize money of any of the major book awards, but its nominees are compiled in a really unique way.

The IMPAC Award’s honours books of “high literary merit” from around the world, all which are suggested by libraries. Halifax Public Libraries has been participating in the IMPAC award nomination process since 2004. In that time we’ve nominated 17 books, 3 of which have gone on to make the short list for the award. Our nominees for the 2009 award are:

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn

Where White Horses Gallop by Beatrice MacNeil

The short list for this year’s award will be announced on April 2 - we’ll let you know here what books make it to the short list. In the meantime we’re gearing up to submit our suggestions for the 2010 award; if there’s something you think should be considered let us know in the comments below. (Books need to have been published in English for the first time in 2008, translations that appeared in English for the first time in 2008 are also eligible as long as the original language publication was between 2004

and 2008). We’ll take your suggestions into consideration when putting together our nominees.

Oooh, are you curious about which of our past nominees made it to the short list? They were:

Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry for the 2004 award

Deafening by Frances Itani for the 2006 award

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer for the 2007 award.