BTW News Briefs

2004 Hugo Winners Announced

The 2004 Hugo Awards, honoring excellence in the field of science fiction and fantasy, were presented at the Worldcon Convention on Saturday, September 4. Among this year's winners were:

Best Novel: Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold
Best Novella: "The Cookie Monster" by Vernor Vinge
Best Novelette: "Legions in Time" by Michael Swanwick
Best Short Story: "A Study in Emerald" by Neil Gaiman
Best Related Book: The Chesley Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy Art: A Retrospective by John Grant, Elizabeth L. Humphrey, and Pamela D. Scoville

The complete list of winners can be found at www.noreascon.org/hugos/hugoresults.html.

Six Women to Receive Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Awards

Six women writers have been singled out for excellence by the Rona Jaffe Foundation and will receive awards of $10,000 each at a ceremony on September 30 in New York City. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Writers Awards program, which was created by author Rona Jaffe specifically to address the particular difficulties that many women writers have in finding time to write. The Jaffe Writers Awards are given to writers of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. In a press release, Jaffe noted that the awards were created to provide encouragement to women writers when they need it the most -- right as they are starting out.

The 2004 recipients are:

• Carin Clevidence, (Fiction), whose short story "The Somnambulists" appeared in Story Magazine;
  
• Ann Harleman, (Fiction), author of Bitter Lake, (Southern Methodist University Press, 1996);
  
• Dana Levin, (Poetry), whose first book, In the Surgical Theatre, was published by American Poetry Review/Copper Canyon Press in 1999;
  
• Michele Morano, (Nonfiction) who is currently finishing her first book, Grammar Lessons;
  
• Tracy K. Smith, (Poetry), who won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for The Body's Question, her first collection (Graywolf Press); and
  
• Sharan Strange, (Poetry), whose first book of poetry, Ash, received the Barnard New Women Poets Prize and was published by Beacon Press in 2001.
  

Poet Jeff Clark Wins 2004 James Laughlin Award

On September 8, the Academy of American Poets announced that Jeff Clark had been selected as the recipient of the 2004 James Laughlin Award for his second collection of poems, Music and Suicide (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Clark will receive a cash prize of $5,000, and the Academy will purchase copies of Music and Suicide for distribution to its members. Elizabeth Alexander, Mary Jo Bang, and Susan Stewart were the judges for this year's award.

The James Laughlin Award is given to commend and support a poet's second book of poetry. The award was established by a gift to the Academy from the Drue Heinz Trust in honor of the poet and publisher James Laughlin (1914-1997).