Delphinium Books

Offering readers the best in quality literature

  • Home
  • About
  • Our Books
  • Blog
  • Submissions
  • Contact
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

American Writers and the Booker Prize

October 18, 2015

I am one American writer who was disappointed when the Booker Prize decided to include works originally published in the U.S.A. I understand that this was a preemptive move to ensure that the Booker Prize, besides paying the most money of any major English-language prize, would hold onto its preeminence.  In my humble opinion, the prize always would have been preeminent due to the fact that the ceremony itself is televised and that a large percentage of the population in the UK actually watches the winner being announced.  This could never happen in the U.S.  There isn’t enough interest in such things, and even if there were, a televised literary ceremony would probably be preempted by some sporting event that would certainly draw down any potential audience.  Don’t get me wrong, Europeans watch sports as much as or more than we do; however, educated Europeans seem to have more time to devote to cultural awards or to the celebration of culture, itself.  In France, for example, a literary television show called Apostrophe was hugely popular until it went off the air, and any American published in French and whose French was good enough to be on the show, saw book sales spike in Oprah-like fashion.  Ask Paul Auster. [Read more…]

Filed Under: General Tagged With: American, Bob Marley, fiction, France, Hana Yanagihara, literature, Marlon James, minoroties, New York City, novelists, The Booker Prize, UK

Recent Posts

  • Sleeping With Women [excerpt] from THE GRETA GARBO HOME FOR WAYWARD BOYS AND GIRLS by Steven Gaines August 20, 2024
  • EXCERPT: Animals of the Alpine Front—new historical fiction from Don Zancanella [August 20, 2024] August 5, 2024
  • On Writing ORIANA by Anastasia Rubis February 28, 2024
  • “First Loves” (excerpt) from MY LIFE AT THE WHEEL by Lynne Sharon Schwartz December 11, 2023
  • Started as a Text: The Writing Process by Bill Gaythwaite September 28, 2023
  • The Fact and the Truth of THE LIGHT OF SEVEN DAYS by River Adams August 8, 2023

Categories

  • Delphinium Authors
  • General
  • New Books
  • News

Tags

1954 acceptance speech artists Austria autobiographical Books Booz Allen Hamilton bottoming out celebrity demotic Dostoyevsky dysfunctional Edward Snowden fame fiction fiction-writing Fitgerald Fuhrer George Elliot Germany Hemingway Historical Fiction holocaust imagination James Frey Jewish Karen Silkwood literature Memoir memoirist Middlemarch Nabokov Nazi Nazis Nobel Prize novelist novelists NSA Reading redemption Sobibor style World War II writers writing

Archives

  • August 2024
  • February 2024
  • December 2023
  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • December 2022
  • August 2022
  • April 2022
  • October 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2019
  • April 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • August 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • October 2013

© 2025 · Delphinium Books. All rights reserved.