Hollis Seamon wins "Ippy" Gold Medal

Hollis Seamon, this year's featured guest author at the New York State Summer Young Writers Institute for high school-aged writers, tied for the 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award ("Ippy") Gold Medal for Short Fiction for her story collection, Corporeality.

More 2014 "Ippy" results here:  http://www.independentpublisher.com/article.php?page=1791

Students at the Young Writers Institute will read Seamon's 2013 young adult novel, Somebody Up There Hates You, about a 17-year-old battling cancer.

Booklist said, "Seamon’s first young-adult novel is a tender, insightful, and unsentimental look at teens in extremis. It brings light to a very dark place, and in so doing, does its readers a generous service."

More about Hollis Seamon:  http://www.skidmore.edu/youngwriters/guest-author.php

More about the New York State Summer Young Writers Institute:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/nyssywi.html

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Gene Mirabelli Wins Top Indie Fiction Prize

82-year-old Eugene Mirabelli, Professor Emeritus at UAlbany who presented his newest novel at the Writers Institute on February 26, 2013, has won the Literary Fiction Gold Medal in the 2013 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book awards.

This year the number one spot in the literary fiction category was a tie, and Eugene Mirabelli’s novel, Renato the Painter, shares top honors with Ned Bachus’s City of Brotherly Love.

The Awards program was created to highlight the year’s most distinguished books from independent publishers. Award winners are chosen by librarians and booksellers who are on the front lines, working everyday with patrons and customers. Some 125 books competed for the literary fiction Gold Medal. These books are examples of independent publishing at its finest.

More about Delmar resident Gene Mirabelli:  http://mirabelli.net/

More about last February's event: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/mirabelli_hood13.html

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When Publishing Was a More Genteel Pursuit.

James Salter (who visits UAlbany on Thursday) is interviewed in Publishers Weekly about his new novel, All That Is, and its setting:  the world of publishing in New York in the period immediately following World War II.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/55753-a-different-kind-of-intimacy-pw-talks-with-james-salter.html

Read more about Salter's upcoming visit here:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/salter_james13.html

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