JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS: National Book Award finalist
NEW YORK — West Virginia native Jayne Anne Phillips was named one of five novelists nominated for the annual National Book Award on Wednesday.
Phillips’ novel “Lark & Termite” focuses on a teenage girl and her mute brother growing up in small-town West Virginia in the 1950s, and on their father, fighting in the Korean War.
Phillips was born in Buckhannon and attended West Virginia University. Her first novel, “Machine Dreams,” was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and was chosen by The New York Times as one of 1984’s 12 best books of the year.
Besides “Lark & Termite,” National Book Award fiction judges picked Colum McCann’s “Let the Great World Spin,” Daniyal Mueenuddin’s “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders,” Marcel Theroux’s “Far North” and Bonnie Jo Campbell’s “American Salvage” as finalists for the fiction award.
T.J. Stiles‘ “The First Tycoon,” a biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Greg Grandin’s “Fordlandia,” about Henry Ford’s ill-fated effort to set up a colony in Brazil, were non-fiction nominees, along with Sean B. Carroll’s “Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origin of Species”; David M. Carroll’s journal of New England wildlife “Following the Water”; and Adrienne Mayor’s “The Poison King,” a biography of the Greco-Persian ruler Mithradates.
Numerous books about Charles Darwin, born 200 years ago, came out in 2009, including Young People’s Literature finalist “Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith,” by Deborah Seligman. Other nominees were Phillip Hoose’s “Claudette Colvin,” David Small’s “Stitches,” Laini Taylor’s “Lips Touch” and Rita Williams-Garcia’s “Jumped.”
The winners, each of whom will receive $10,000, will be announced at a Nov. 18 ceremony in New York. Humorist Andy Borowitz will host and honorary medals will be presented to Gore Vidal and Dave Eggers.
–From staff, wire reports
