Book Award

St. Vincent Pallotti student Joseph Vellanikren, of Laurel, is the 2011 recipient of the St. Michael's College Book Award for Academic Achievement with a Social Conscience. The award is given to high school juniors who are members of the National Honor Society, or their school's equivalent honors organization, and who take leadership roles in school or community service activities. St. Michael's College is a Catholic college in Burlington, Vt.

Woodberry Kitchen's Spike Gjerde wasn't the only Baltimorean who got good news at Monday's announcement of the James Beard Award finalists.  Paul Lukacs, director of the Center for Humanities at Loyola University Maryland, was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Book Award. Lukacs' book, Inventing Wine: A New History of One of the World's Most Ancient Pleasures , was among three finalists in the Beverage category. Lukacs was a James Beard Foundation Book Award winner in 2001 for his previous book, American Vintage . The James Beard Foundation Book, Broadcast & Journalism Awards Dinner will take place on May 3 at Gotham Hall in New York City.

Lucille Clifton had been through this once before and not won, so when she learned she was a finalist for a prestigious National Book Award last month, she was honored, she said, just to be nominated. The second time, though, proved to be the charm. Last night in New York, Clifton, the Columbia poet who is the author of more than 30 books and former poet laureate of Maryland, won the National Book Award for poetry for her latest collection, "Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1998-2000."

Adrienne Rich, one of the country's most honored and influential poets, whose finely tuned verse explored her identity as a feminist, a lesbian and an agent for political change, died Tuesday at her home in Santa Cruz, Calif. She was 82. She died of complications from rheumatoid arthritis, said her son, Pablo Conrad. In more than 60 years as a published poet, Ms. Rich examined the evolving lives of women in modern society and embodied many of those changes herself. She was a precocious child of a privileged Baltimore family, then a young wife and mother, and later dedicated herself to the ideals of feminism.

NEW YORK - As the limousine leaves the Upper East Side, the women start talking about the most popular literary criticism of the moment - the kind that takes aim at them. Once again, they've been drubbed in the morning's newspapers. As the chauffeur speeds north for their first joint book reading since becoming finalists for the National Book Award, the writers turn road warriors in each other's defense. "I'm halfway through your book," the novelist Lily Tuck tells fellow finalist Christine Schutt as the traffic weaves around them, "and I'm just in awe."

"I'm stupid in a lot of ways. I'm a slow learner I'm a really slow writer. I write terrible first drafts. My cats could write better first drafts. It's not uncommon for me to write 15 or 18 drafts. For me, [the creative process] is like going outside with a camera and taking a picture with my eyes shut I wish I could do this better, but I can't."Andrea Barrett's self-effacing words initially are a great comfort to anyone who yearns to write. Then one realizes that virtually no one else seems willing to say such rude things about the latest National Book Award winner.

NEW YORK - The National Book Awards are often called the Oscars of the literary world - winners are announced in real time, amid swelling music and swirling spotlights - and last night's event delivered several surprise envelope-please moments. The awards went to a number of dark horse candidates - perhaps not unusual this year, because many of the finalists themselves were considered obscure to begin with. Arc of Justice by Kevin Boyle, a study of racial tensions in 1920s Detroit that combines a courtroom drama with an emotional biography, won the National Book Award for nonfiction.

Maryland poet Lucille Clifton is among 20 finalists for the National Book Awards, it was announced yesterday. "I just found out yesterday," Clifton said from her home in Columbia. "It is an honor. It's one of the most prestigious literary awards in the country." Clifton was nominated for her book, "Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000" (BOA Editions, Ltd.) "It's my 30th or 31st book, which includes 10 books of poetry," she said. The book by the former poet laureate of Maryland was among 835 titles considered for awards by the National Book Foundation.

Alan Dugan might not be an early bloomer, but once he started, he took over the garden. Dugan, 78, won the National Book Award for the second time last week (for Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry, Seven Stories Press) adding it to a slew of other awards. He was born on Feb. 12, 1923, to a blue-collar family in New York. After a stint in the U.S. Army, he bummed around the country, went to Mexico, embarked on a series of white-collar jobs and began sending out his verse - with little success.

Every year -- as an author, book reviewer and avid pleasure reader -- I reflect upon the decisions of judges who select the best books of the previous season. Why in the world did the judges in the biography category of the Pulitzer Prize select Biography A over Biography W? I muse. I read both, and I thought W was so much better researched and written. Why did the National Book Award judges choose Novel D over Novel M? I ask myself. I found D nearly unreadable. I could stop at the easy answer: Tastes differ.

The following high school students were awarded the 2011 St. Michael's College Book Award for Academic Achievement with a Social Conscience: Joseph Vellanikren, of Laurel, a student at St. Vincent Pallotti High School; Rebecca Dean, of Ellicott City, a student at Archbishop Spalding High School; Richard Wismer, of Ellicott City, a student at Mount St. Joseph High School; and Alexandra Cook, of Glenelg, a...

St. Vincent Pallotti student Joseph Vellanikren, of Laurel, is the 2011 recipient of the St. Michael's College Book Award for Academic Achievement with a Social Conscience. The award is given to high school juniors who are members of the National Honor Society, or their school's equivalent honors organization, and who take leadership roles in school or community service activities. St. Michael's College is a Catholic college in Burlington, Vt.

Jaimy Gordon says she was a student at Antioch College when John Updike's "The Centaur" taught her that a writer could use "outsized metaphors" and still wield "the power to keep people interested because they need to know what happens in a book. It's the most powerful tool for any writer of narrative fiction. Who in his or her right mind would relinquish it?" In 1964, Updike won the National Book Award for "The Centaur," his third novel. In 2010, Gordon won the National Book Award for her fourth novel, "Lord of Misrule.

Baltimore novelist Anne Tyler has been named a finalist for the 2011 Man Booker International Prize, a biennial literary award that carries with it a cash prize of more than $96,000. Tyler, 69, is one of 13 finalists for the prize, which is awarded every other year by the Australia-based Man Group. The prize of 60,000 British pounds is given for an author's body of work and continuing contributions to world fiction. Others on this year's nominees' list include Americans Marilynne Robinson and Philip Roth.

Gov. Martin O'Malley announced Thursday the appointment of Stanley Plumly to be Maryland's ninth poet laureate, an honorary position that entails staging public readings around the state. Plumly, 70, founded the master of fine arts program in creative writing at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he's a professor. He is the author of nine books of poetry, including "Old Heart," which won the Los Angeles Times Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Most recently, he wrote "Posthumous Keats," a "personal biography" of poet John Keats.

More than 200 publishers submitted 1,258 books for the 2008 National Book Awards. Here are the finalists, which were announced Wednesday. The winners will be announced Nov. 19. FICTION The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon Riverhead / 304 pages / $24.95 A young writer in Chicago goes in search of the answers to why a police chief killed an Eastern European immigrant a century ago. Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner Scribner / 336 pages / $25...

During the early 1990s, a group of school librarians recognized that Maryland did not have a statewide award for outstanding children's books. So in 1992, the Maryland Educational Media Organization developed the Black-Eyed Susan Book Award program. That program has blossomed into an annual contest that this year drew votes from 50,000 children throughout Maryland, and is credited by school librarians with drawing welcome attention to a wealth of children's literature that otherwise might have been overlooked.

When it was announced earlier this year that Maryland author and 1998 National Book Award winner Alice McDermott was set to be host of a dinner and lecture in Howard County, the response was immediate: a sold-out event.The $35 tickets to tonight's Supper at Six program, an annual Maryland author event sponsored by the Howard County Library and the Maryland Center for the Book, sold out quickly as fans of McDermott's lyrical prose clamored to reserve seats at the dinner and talk.More than 275 people are expected to attend the dinner, to be held at Ten Oaks Ballroom in Clarksville.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward P. Jones lives a simple life. He rides the bus even though he can afford a car. He doesn't venture out of his Washington apartment much to find his subject matter. Instead, his books come from an immense imagination, life experiences and observations. For him, writing was not a career to which he aspired. It just came to him, he told an audience at Goucher College recently during a book signing and reading of his most recent book, All Aunt Hagar's Children (2006)

Tree of Smoke, a sweeping novel by Denis Johnson about the Vietnam War that features intersecting stories of an array of American and Vietnamese soldiers and intelligence officers, won the National Book Award for fiction last night. Johnson, whose book was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, was on assignment in Iraq. His wife, Cindy Lee Johnson, accepted the award. She read from a speech Johnson had prepared, in which he said he was "very sorry to miss this one chance to dress up in a tuxedo in front of so many representatives of the world of literature and say thank you."