Three Finalists for SIBA Book of the Year
Featured on UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch in May 2007

The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) has recently released the finalists for the 2007 SIBA Book Award, honoring the best of Southern literature as chosen by Southern independent booksellers. Three of these award finalists are featured during season nine of UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch, Sundays at 5 PM, throughout May 2007.

This month, UNC-TV’s local literary series will feature SIBA fiction finalists Angela Davis-Gardner (Plum Wine, May 6), Lee Smith (On Agate Hill, May 20), and Charles Frazier (Thirteen Moons, May 27).

Author John Hart (The King of Lies) is yet another a SIBA fiction finalist represented in this season’s lineup of North Carolina Bookwatch. All North Carolina Bookwatch interviews with SIBA Book Award finalists, including John Hart, can also be viewed from UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch website, at http://www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

"To have four North Carolina authors in the running for the best award for the best fiction in the South is great news. To have had them all on North Carolina Bookwatch this year was a great treat for me and for our viewers,” says Bookwatch host, D.G. Martin.  “We will keep working to bring interesting authors to North Carolina Bookwatch, but it will be hard for us to top this year's great lineup." 

Final ballots have been sent to SIBA-member bookstores, and the SIBA Book Award winners will be announced in June 2007. The awards will be presented at SIBA’s Fall Trade Show in Atlanta during the Book Award Lunch on Friday, September 28. The event is sponsored by Inkreadible! and Baker & Taylor.

Each year, hundreds of booksellers across the South vote on their favorite hand-sell books of the year. These are the Southern books they have most enjoyed selling to customers; the ones that they couldn't stop talking about; the ones most often pushed into a customer’s hands with the words great books of Southern origin, as determined by people whose business it is to know great books—the independent booksellers of the South.

Books are nominated in several categories, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, cooking and children's. For a book to be eligible, it must be set in the South, and it must have been published within the calendar year. In order to promote diversity in the award, no author can win the award in the same category twice. Only SIBA-member booksellers can submit nominations, and only SIBA booksellers can vote on the finalists and winners of the award.

Finalists for the 2007 SIBA Book Award, include (by category):

CHILDREN

• The Giraffe Who Was Afraid of Heights by David A. Ufer and Kirsten Carlson
  (Sylvan Dell Publishing)

• Alabama Moon by Watt Key
  (Farrar Straus Giroux)

• The Christmas Bus by Robert Inman
  (Novello Festival Press)

COOKBOOK

• I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence by Amy Sedaris
  (Warner Books)

• Nathalie Dupree's Shrimp and Grits Cookbook by Nathalie Dupree
  (Wyrick and Company)

• The Boathouse: Tales and Recipes from a Southern Kitchen by Douglas W. Bostick and Jason Davidson (Joggling Board Press)

• Deep South Parties: Or, How to Survive the Southern Cocktail Hour Without a Box of French-Onion Soup Mix, a Block of Processed Cheese, or a Cocktail Weenie by Robert St. John (Hyperion Books)

POETRY

• Keep and Give Away by Susan Meyers
  (University of South Carolina Press)

• Path, Crooked Path by John Balaban
  (Copper Canyon Press)

• Umpteen Ways of Looking at a Possum by Grace Bauer and Julie Kane
  (Xavier Review Press)

FICTION

• Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier
  (Random House Trade)

• On Agate Hill by Lee Smith
   (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)

• Plum Wine by Angela Davis-Gardner
  (University of Wisconsin Press)

• The King of Lies by John Hart
  (St. Martin's Minotaur)

• Smonk or Widow Town by Tom Franklin
  (William Morrow & Company)

NONFICTION

• Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields
   (Henry Holt & Company)

• Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West by Hampton Sides
  (Doubleday Books)

• Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets and Growing Up in the 1970s by Margaret Sartor (Bloomsbury Publishing)

• Blue Ridge Nature Journal: Reflections on the Appalachian Mountains in Essays and Art by George Ellison (The History Press)

For more information about the award, please visit SIBA’s website for southern literature at  www.authorsroundthesouth.com or contact Executive Director Wanda Jewell via e-mail at wanda@sibaweb.com.

For more information about North Carolina Bookwatch, additional series guests and airdates, plus, the Bookwatch blog and online book club, visit: www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch. And don’t miss the all-new 10th anniversary season of North Carolina Bookwatch, premiering in July 2007.

Funding for North Carolina Bookwatch is provided by UNC-TV members and by Quail Ridge Books and Music, Raleigh’s independent, full service bookstore, bringing readers and writers together since 1984.

North Carolina Bookwatch is part of UNC-TV’s ongoing commitment to produce programs for and about North Carolina. UNC-TV is the statewide 11-station broadcast network of the University of North Carolina. For more information, please visit www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

For more information about North Carolina Bookwatch and UNC-TV’s other local productions, please visit our website at www.unctv.org.

—UNC-TV—