So Barnes & Noble has announced this year’s finalists for the Discover Great New Writers Awards, and by an amazing coincidence, all three of the nonfiction slots were given to HarperCollins authors: Eric Blehm (The Last Season), Marilyn Johnson (The Dead Beat), and Daniel Mendelsohn (The Lost). Setting aside the logic of calling Mendelsohn a “great new writer” when his first book was deemed “notable” by the New York Times and “best” by the LA Times back in 1999, along with the premise that the critically acclaimed and NBCC-nominated The Lost “might otherwise be overlooked in a crowded book marketplace,” as B&N defines its selection criteria—none of which should be construed as knocking what’s said to be an excellent book—one can only offer congratulations to HarperCollins, because it’s not like you can buy this kind of recognition.
Harper’s Ecco imprint also nabs a space on the fiction shortlist, for Ben Fountain’s short story collection Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, but St. Martin’s and Coffee House Press also represent with O. Z. Livaneli‘s Bliss and Sam Savage‘s Firmin (which was the autumn selection of the Litblog Co-op).