BTW News Briefs

BEA to Offer Podcast of Author Events

BookExpo America (BEA) has announced that it will make critical portions of its special event and educational speeches and panels available in a podcast format. The BEA Podcast will consist of approximately 20 episodes, each lasting about 30 minutes, and will be distributed over a period of two months after BEA itself is over.

The podcast will be produced and published by BurstMarketing, publisher of Authors on Tour -- Live, a weekly podcast of bestselling authors and new voices, which is produced in partnership with The Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver.

The BEA Podcast will be created by taping select speeches and conversations from many of the special events and panels, and may include selections from such notable personalities as John Updike, Tim Russert, Barack Obama, Monica Ali, and Anderson Cooper, among many others. The program will also feature selections from the Editor & Bookseller Buzz Forum, as well as the Frontline Booksellers' Summer Picks. In addition, the BEA Podcast will create original content by having a roving reporter at the exhibition hall conducting one-minute spot interviews with attendees and industry experts on "what's hot" at the show.

The BEA Podcast is being hosted at www.bookexpocast.com, where people can pre-subscribe free of charge to the podcasts in advance of BEA.

MWA Announces 2006 Edgar Winners

On April 27, the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) announced the winners of the 60th Annual Edgar Allan Poe Awards at a banquet held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City. Winners were selected from among 1,000 books, 500 short stories, and numerous television programs, movies, and plays.

Here's a partial list of the winners of the Edgar awards:

• Best Novel: Citizen Vince by Jess Walter (Regan Books);
• Best First Novel by an American Author: Officer Down by Theresa Schwegel (St. Martin's Minotaur);
• Best Paperback Original: Girl in the Glass by Jeffrey Ford (Dark Alley);
• Best Fact Crime: Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece by Edward Dolnick (HarperCollins);
• Best Critical/Biographical: Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak (Harcourt);
• Best Short Story: "The Catch" -- Greatest Hits by James W. Hall (Carroll & Graf);
• Best Juvenile: The Boys of San Joaquin by D. James Smith (Simon & Schuster Children's Books);
• Best Young Adult: Last Shot by John Feinstein (Knopf Books for Young Readers);

For more information, go to www.mysterywriters.org.

Bellwether Prize Winner Named

On April 28, Barbara Kingsolver announced the 2006 winner of the Bellwether Prize for Fiction. Hillary Jordan of Tivoli, New York, will receive the $25,000 award for her unpublished novel, Mudbound. The Bellwether Prize, established by Kingsolver in 1999, is awarded biennially to an unpublished novel that addresses issues of social justice.

Jordan will have the opportunity to work with editors at Scribner, this year's publishing partner for the Bellwether Prize.

Mudbound explores the lives of farmers and sharecroppers in the Mississippi Delta in 1946, including veterans of "Eleanor Roosevelt's Army," the corps of African-American men who returned from service in World War II to face unaltered contempt in the Jim Crow south.

Booksellers on the Move

Lisa Baudoin leaves her position with Main Street Books in Pella, Iowa, this month to become the manager at The Book Vault in Oskaloosa, Iowa.

Dennis Evans has joined Title Wave Books in Anchorage, Alaska, as the bookstore's new General Manager. He assumes responsibilities formerly shared by the company's founders and co-owners, Steve Lloyd and Julie Drake, who will remain active in other roles at the store. Evans previously managed Sam Weller's Zion Bookstore in Salt Lake City.