The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance have tallied the votes of hundreds of independent booksellers all across the South and announced the finalists for the annual SIBA Book Awards, which recognize excellence in literature with a Southern identity. Listed below are the nominees, some of whom, you'll notice, we offer in signed first editions and for whom we will thus be rooting....
In Children's Literature:
Aurora County All Stars by Deborah Wiles (Harcourt) Signed first editions available.
Br’er Rabbit Captured by Jean Cassels (Walker)
Chicken Dance, by Jacques Couvillon (Bloomsbury)
Deep in the Swamp by Donna Bateman (Charlesbridge)
Louisiana’s Song by Kerry Madden (Viking)
Something Rotten by Alan Gratz (Dial Books)
In Cookbooks:
A Love Affair with Southern Cooking by Jean Anderson (William Morrow)
In Praise of Pecans by June Jackson (Bright Sky Press)
Soby’s New South Cuisine by Freidank, Sobocinski, Williams, & Peck (Soby’s)
In Fiction:
Coal Black Horse by Robert Olmstead (Algonquin) Signed first editions available.
Down River by John Hart (Thomas Dunne)
Garden Spells by Sara Addison Allen (Bantam)
Rhett Butler’s People by Donald McCraig (St. Martin’s Press) Signed first editions available.
Thistle & Twigg by Mary Saums (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
In Non-Fiction:
Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins)
Boone by Robert Morgan (Shannon Ravenel Books)
Somebody’s Going to Die if Lilly Beth Doesn’t Catch that Bouquet by Gayden Metcalfe & Charlotte Hays (Hyperion) Signed first editions available.
In Poetry:
House on Boulevard Street by David Kirby (LSU Press)
Out of the Garden by Kathryn Kirkpatrick (Mayapple Press)
Whatever Remembers Us by Walker & Chambers (Negative Capability)
The awards will be announced over Labor Day Weekend at the Decatur Book Festival in Georgia. More on that later....
