QUALITY PAPERBACK BOOK CLUB ANNOUNCES THE 2006 NEW VOICES AND NEW VISIONS AWARDS
Special Topics in Calamity Physics Author Marisha Pessl and The Year of Magical Thinking Author Joan Didion Recognized by Quality Paperback Book Club (QPB) for Outstanding Literary Works
May 16, 2007 (New York, NY): Quality Paperback Book Club (QPB) has announced the winners of this year’s New Voices and New Vision Awards. Marisha Pessl’s mesmerizing novel Special Topics in Calamity Physics was selected to receive QPB’s New Voices award for an outstanding work of fiction by a debut author. In the non-fiction category, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking received QPB’s New Visions Award for her deeply personal portrayal of loss, grief and hope. Annually, the New Voices and New Visions Award winners each receive a $5000 prize.
“We realize that the vitality of the Club is dependent on nurturing new authors as well as vigorously supporting the achievements of those authors with established careers, “ said Gary Jansen, Executive Editor of QPB. “These awards are QPB’s way of celebrating outstanding literary achievements that have deeply affected both our editors and our readers.”
QPB established the New Voices Award in 1984 as a way to honor debut works of fiction by talented new authors. The award has been given to such literary talents as Yann Martel, Richard Russo, Colson Whitehead and Clare Clark.
Carole DeSanti, Vice President and Editor at Large at Viking Penguin which publishes Pessl’s book said “A huge thank you to QPB and the judges for including SPECIAL TOPICS in their distinguished roster of past New Voices winners. We are proud to be in such excellent company and I believe QPB readers will find everything they are looking for (and a few surprises as well) in Pessl's exuberant debut novel. “
The New Visions Award, first given in 1990, recognizes distinguished works of non-fiction from both new and established authors. Recipients of this award have included David Hadju, Nicole LeBlanc and Julia Scheeres.“I want to thank QPB for this very special award,” said Joan Didion.
SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS features Blue Van Meer, a smart, eccentric teenager who—after the mysterious death of her mother—wanders from one college town to another with her father, Gareth, an academic. After settling in to her senior year at St. Gallway School in Stockton, North Carolina, Blue falls in with the Bluebloods, an elite clique of hyper-intelligent students obsessed with the film studies teacher Hannah Schneider. But after the drowning of Hannah's young male suitor at a costume party, Blue gets caught up in a disturbing nexus of events with only her deadpan wit and cultural wiles to keep her afloat. Structured like a syllabus, with nods to Nabokov, Hitchcock, and the Great Works, Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a literate, distinctively voiced coming-of-age story wrapped around an electrifying whodunit.”
THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING is Didion’s powerful, intelligent and brutally honest story about the nature of grief and love. On December 30, 2003, Joan Didion and her husband, novelist and screenwriter John Gregory Dunne, visited their daughter in the hospital, where she lay in a coma. At home that night, Didion was mixing salad when Dunne suffered a massive, fatal heart attack. This award-winning memoir is her attempt to find meaning in the devastating year that followed.
Over the years, New Voices and New Visions Awards have recognized and discovered many noteworthy authors. A full list of winners, past and present, is listed here.
NEW VOICES AND NEW VISIONS AWARD WINNERS
New Voices Winners
2006 SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS by Marisha Pessl
2005 The Great Stink by Clare Clark
2004 Brick Lane by Monica Ali
2003 Timoleon Vieta Come Home by Dan Rhodes
2002 The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
2001 The Miracle Life of Edgar White by Brady Udall
2000 House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
1999 The Intuitionist, Colson Whitehead
1998 Don’t Erase Me, Carolyn Ferrell
1997 Hotel Sarajevo, Jack Kersh
1996 Raising Holy Hell, Bruce Olds
1995 Native Speaker, Chang-rae Lee
1994 Understand This, Jervey Tervalon
1993 Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, Randall Keenan
1992 Woman Hollering Creek, Sandra Cisneros
1991 Licorice, Abby Frucht
1990 Girl with the Curious Hair, David Foster Wallace
1989 The Risk Pool, Richard Russo
1988 The Woman Who Was Not All There, Paula Sharp
1987 The Elizabeth Stories, Isabel Huggan
1986 The Golden Gate, Vikram Seth
1985 Montgomery’s Children, Richard Perry
1984 In Another Country, Susan Kenney
New Visions Winners
2006 THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING by Joan Didion
2005 Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres
2004 Sex, Time and Power by Leonard Shaolin
2003 Random Family by Adrian Nicole Leblanc
2002 Brown: The Last Discovery of America by Richard Rodriguez
2001 Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon
2000 Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham
1999 After Silence, Nancy Venable Raine
1998 Our Guys, Bernard Lefkowitz
1997 Lush Life, David Hajdu
1996 Wild Ride, Bia Lowe
1995 My Own Country, Abraham Vergese
1994 Red Azalea, Anchee Min
1993 Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, Kathleen Norris
1992 Praying For Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene
1991 Second Nature, Michael Pollan
1990 My Traitor’s Heart, Rian Malan
About Quality Paperback Book Club
Founded in 1974, the Quality Paperback Book Club® is a book club for well-educated, adventurous, independent readers who enjoy discovering books. The club’s first Main Selection was Kenneth Clark’s The Nude. QPB offers an eclectic, edgy mix of intelligent, intriguing and informative reads in fiction and nonfiction, and specializes in affordable exclusive quality paperback editions six months before they are available anywhere else. At QPB, there is a connection to cutting-edge ideas and continual learning for its intellectually questing members, who thrill in the process of discovering new books, authors and subjects through membership in the club.