BTW News Briefs

Jon Stewart and Writers of The Daily Show Win Thurber Prize

On November 14, it was announced that Jon Stewart, David Javerbaum, and Ben Karlin, authors of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy In Action, won the 2005 Thurber Prize for American Humor. The annual prize is presented by Thurber House, the national literary center for writers and readers, based in the boyhood home of author, humorist, and New Yorker cartoonist, James Thurber in Columbus, Ohio.

Said Thurber Prize judge Rachel Cline: "When the really smart extra-terrestrials finally locate the fused wreckage of our planet, I hope they are able to retrieve a copy of this book. It catalogs the follies of faith, greed, idealism, and idolatry that animated a great nation." The two runners-up for the Thurber Prize were The Borowitz Report: The Big Book of Shockers by Andy Borowitz (Simon & Schuster) and Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas (Random House).

Whitbread Shortlists Announced

On November 16, Whitbread announced its Whitbread Book Awards 2005 Shortlists in the Novel, First Novel, Biography, Poetry, and Children's Book Award categories. The Whitbread Book Awards recognize the most enjoyable books of last year by writers based in the United Kingdom and Ireland and were established in 1971 by Whitbread, which bills itself as the U.K.'s leading hospitality business. Winners in the five categories will be announced on Wednesday, January 4, 2006.

The overall winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year will be selected and announced at the Whitbread Book Awards ceremony in central London on Tuesday, January 24. Since the introduction of the Whitbread Book of the Year award in 1985, it has been won seven times by a novel, three times by a first novel, four times by a biography, five times by a collection of poetry, and once by a children's book.