Let the Quills Voting Begin

by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 8/8/2005

Following the announcement last week of the 95 nominees for the first-ever Quill Awards, voting in the 19 categories is set to begin August 15. The winners will be announced October 11 at a ceremony in New York City hosted by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams. Also slated to appear at the event, which was created earlier this year by Reed Business Information (parent of PW) and NBC Universal Television Stations, are Jon Stewart and Robert Klein.

While the nominees were selected by a panel of booksellers and librarians, winners will be determined by the reading public, who can vote online at www.quillsvote.com from August 15 to September 15. Voting kiosks will be set up at all Borders stores, while other bookstores will offer brochures with a list of nominees and voting instructions.

Random House garnered the most nominations, 19, followed by HarperCollins with 14 and Simon & Schuster with 13. Time Warner Book Group earned 11 nominations, while Penguin got eight.

Among the major categories, A Long Way Homeby Nick Hornby; Gilead by Marilynne Robinson; The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd; The Plot Against America by Philip Roth; and Zorro by Isabel Allende are the nominees in general fiction. In the children's illustrated book category, the nominees are America the Beautiful by Robert Sabuda; Egyptology by Nick Harris, Ian Andrew and Helen Ward; Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems; Runny Babbit by Shel Silverstein; and Zen Shorts by Jon J. Muth.

Nominees for the debut author of the year are Stephanie Kallos for Broken for You; Mireille Guilian, author of French Women Don't Get Fat; Dave King for The Ha-Ha; Elizabeth Kostova for The Historian; and John Twelve Hawks for The Traveler. A list of all nominees is available at www.quillsliteracy.org.

Highlights of the event will be covered in a one-hour Quill Awards television special airing October 22 on 14 NBC Universal–owned & -operated television stations.