Awards:
It’s book award season! Several organizations have announced winners and nominations for the best of 2011:
• The American Library Association announced today the winners of the Pura Belpé Awards, given to children’s and young adult books that honor Latino culture. The Author Award winner was Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall. The Honor Books were Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck by Margarita Engle and Maximilian and the Mystery of the Guardian Angel: A Bilingual Lucha Libre Thriller by Xavier Garza.
The Illustrator Award Winner went to Diego Rivera: His World and Ours by Duncan Tonatiuh. The Honor Books were The Cazuela that the Farm Maiden Stirred, written by Samantha R. Vamos and illustrated by Rafael López, and Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match, written by Monica Brown and illustrated by Sara Palacios.
• Luis J. Rodriguez was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in the autobiography category for his memoir, It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing. Aracelis Girmay, who is part Puerto Rican, received a nod in the poetry category for her book, Kingdom Animalia, which has already won the 2011 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award.
• Justin Torres‘s We the Animals will be one of five books vying for the NAACP Image Award’s Outstanding Literature Work – Debut Author.
• Diana Gabaldon’s short story “Lord John and the Plague of Zombies,” from the anthology Down These Strange Streets, earned her a Best Short Story nomination from the Edgar Awards by the Mystery Writers of America.
• Busboys and Poets bookstore, the progressive Washington D.C.-based bookstore, included several Latino-themed books in its Best of 2011 list: Pam Muñoz Ryan’s The Dreamer; Let’s Go See Papa!, by Lawrence Schimel, Alba Marina Rivera and Elisa Amado; the Spanish-language version of Howard Zinn’s classic A People’s History of the United States, La Otra Historia de los Estados Unidos; The Guatemala Reader by Greg Grandin, Deborah T. Levenson, Elizabeth Oglesby and News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media by Juan Gonzalez and Joseph Torres.
Arizona:
Aztec Muse magazine is starting a Libro Traficante Caravan to distribute books in Tucson, Arizona, after the school district put away many Latino books from classrooms to retain funding from the state, which has banned ethnic studies. For a great take on the topic, here’s Texas-based writer Beatriz Terrazas’ essay on the Mamiverse website.
Mexico:
Here’s an excellent NPR story about how Mexican artists, including poet Javier Sicilia, are using words and music to react to their country’s drug war.
Mario Vargas Llosa:
Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, right, declined an offer to head the Cervantes Institute in Spain, which promotes Latin American culture, according to the Latin American Herald-Tribune.
The Hispanic Reader 