Last night, William T. Vollmann’s searing complicated epic, Europe Central, received the much-coveted National Book Award in the fiction category. The NBA judges described Vollmann’s 811 page masterpiece as…”heroic art, the writer’s courageous immersion in totalitarian ugliness to retrieve forgotten moral heroes…”

Vollmann, 46, won over four other formidable finalists:

E.L. Doctorow for The March
Mary Gaitskill for Veronica
Christopher Sorrentino for Trance
Renè Steinke for Holy skirts

Winners in the other categories of the 2005 National Book Awards are:

Young People’s Literature

Jeanne Birdsall for The Penderwicks – for more details on this title, watch the upcoming blog from Kidlit

Poetry

W.S. Merwin for Migration: New and Selected Poems

Non-fiction

Joan Didion for The Year of Magical Thinking

Mr. Vollmann considered himself such an underdog, given his competition, that, when presented with the National Book Foundation’s sculpture and check for $10,000, said, “I thought I would lose, so I didn’t prepare a speech.”

November 14 through November 20 is Children's Book Week. Try some folktales from around the world and celebrate with us. From Persia try Three Princes, or Rose's Smile.

November 14 through November 20 is Children's Book Week. Try some folktales from around the world and celebrate with us. From Russia try Russian Folk-Tales, Matreshka or Tale of the Tsar Saltan.

November 14 through November 20 is Children's Book Week. Try some folktales from around the world and celebrate with us. In the "What a Doll" program the following stories were featured. The story "Grateful Statues" is from Japanese Children's Favorite Stories and Juan Bobo and the Pig.

David Westheimer, author of the Von Ryan’s Express (1964), died yesterday in Los Angeles.

The former WWII POW and later editor of the former Houston Post newspaper, used his wartime experience to pen Von Ryan’s Express which was made into a movie by the same name a year later, and starred Frank Sinatra and Trevor Howard. In 1980, Westheimer wrote the sequel, Van Ryan’s Return.

Westheimer also wrote My Sweet Charlie (1965), which became a Broadway play in 1966 and which netted Patty Duke an Emmy for the TV adaptation in 1970.

Vine Deloria, Jr., generally considered by historians and anthropologists to be the most important spokesperson for Native American issues for the last thirty-five years, died November 13, 2005.

Deloria exploded into the national consciousness in 1969 with his incendiary Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto.

Several of his other writings – God Is Red: A Native View of Religion (1973), Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence (1974), and Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact (1995) – showcased his dual background training as both a student of theology and an attorney.

The first U.S. retrospective of acclaimed ceramic artist Ruth Duckworth, one of the world’s foremost ceramic sculptors will open at Cranbrook Art Museum November 18th.

This exhibition of approximately eighty vessels and sculptural artworks spanning six decades of Duckworth’s career will travel to the Museum of Arts & Design in New York City in January.

Ruth Duckworth: Modernist sculptor is part of a continuous gift of art books by the Ladies Library Association to the community since 1931.

"The School is not White it's brown brick" is a statement spoken by Mae Bertha Carter to her children after their first day at an all white school. The eight Carter children suffered humiliation, prejudice and intimidation for five years in their attempt to integrate a Mississipi school. A good choice for teaching young children about civil rights and the courage of those who fought for equality.

How many of you can name 5 westerns written for teens in the past five years? 3 westerns?? 1 western??? Finally, there is someone brave enough to tackle this genre for a teenage audience, and do a pretty darn good job at the same time. David Ives writes about Scrib, a 16-year-old boy who ran away from home to the Wild West in order to write letters for people who can’t do it themselves. Sound a little far-fetched? Just wait, as Scrib’s chosen occupation leads to him nearly getting killed, being jailed as a criminal, joining up with the notorious Crazy James Kincaid, and delivering a letter from President Abraham Lincoln to a Paiute Indian.

Jonathan Rowe, Ann Arbor native, two-time Hopwood award winner, lawyer (with a recent appearance before the Michigan Supreme Court), and city tennis tournament champion, has written a comic thriller involving a long-time SDS Weather Underground fugitive, sought for her part in an attempted fire bombing of the University law school and the attendant murder of an Ann Arbor policeman. Set in Ann Arbor with local buildings, alleys and parking structures featured in a chase scene, with local street people, and local restaurants. The main character is a tabloid journalist (and disbarred attorney), who breaks and enters, plants bugs and video cameras, misrepresents himself, and, reader please be forewarned, mutilates and steals Ann Arbor District Library materials.