And The 2007 T.S. Eliot Prize Goes to...Sean O'Brien for The Drowned Book!

British poet, Sean O'Brien has claimed the 2007 T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry with The Drowned Book after winning the Forward prize for best collection an unprecedented third time following Ghost Train in 1995 and Downriver in 2001, making him the first author ever to take the UK's two top poetry awards in the same year.

The T. S. Eliot Prize is the biggest cash award in UK poetry, inaugurated in 1993 to celebrate the Poetry Book Society's 40th birthday and honor its founding poet and is awarded annually to the author of the best new single-author collection of poetry published in the UK or Ireland. View the 10 poets shortlisted for the award here.

O'Brien, who is professor of creative writing at Newcastle University, received a cheque for £15,000 at Monday night's ceremony, held at the Wallace Collection in Central London. The other shortlisted poets also received cheques of £1,000 each, in recognition of their work.

Library of Virginia Literary Awards

The Library of Virginia and the Library of Virginia Foundation is currently accepting nominations for the 2008 Library of Virginia Literary Awards for books published in the calendar year 2007. These awards honor outstanding Virginia authors and books about Virginia in the areas of fiction, nonfiction and poetry.

Here are the 2007 winners...

Deborah Eisenberg for Twilight of the Superheroes (Fiction)

Scott Reynolds Nelson for Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry for The Untold Story of an American Legend (Non-fiction)

Elizabeth Leigh Palmer Hadaway for Fire Baton (Poetry)

Tom Wolfe received the lifetime achievement award.

Past winners include Donald McCaig, Eric Pankey, Suzanne Lebsock, Carrie Brown, Charles Wright, Richard Bausch, Ruth Stone, Melvin Patrick Ely, and Edward P. Jones. View a complete list of past Literary Awards finalists and winners here. The winners in each category received a $3,000 prize and a handsome engraved crystal book.

The 2008 finalists will be honored and the winners announced at the 11th Annual Library of Virginia Awards Celebration Honoring Virginia Authors and Friends, to be held on Saturday, October 18, 2008.

To nominate a book, please visit the Library of Virginia.

Catherine O'Flynn Wins 2007 Costa First Novel Award

As an aspiring novelist, I have been asked a couple of times what my greatest challenge is in my career as a writer (currently working on a fiction thriller about an immigrant...). My answer has always been: getting a publisher! You probably consider that too as a major challenge and perhaps get discouraged and disheartened.

But negative emotions like that could dash one's dream to become an author, especially when several publishing agents have rejected your work. Some who are fortunate get accepted after writing to just a few agents. Good for them.

For one thing, most publishers are looking for what would sell big time. After all, that's why they are in business. So if that piece of work that you have labored for gets rejected once, twice, three times...maybe more, should you quit?

Do you really want to quit? Ok. Before you decide, read about the winner of the 2007 Costa first novel award, Catherine O'Flynn who got published after being rejected by 14 separate literary agents.

O'Flynn's novel, What Was Lost, was named winner of the 2007 Costa first novel award after being longlisted for the Booker and the Orange prizes, and shortlisted for the Guardian's first book award.

(See the winner of the 2007 Booker prize and the winner of the 2007 Orange prize).

Interestingly, the 2007 Guardian's first book award was won by Ethiopian-American Dinaw Mengestu with his novel, Children of the Revolution, that tackles fraught questions of identity, dislocation and loneliness through the life of an Ethiopian émigré in the US.

Hopefully, these few examples could motivate you to fulfill your desire to become an author and possibly a best-selling author.