Chabon Wins Scriptner Achievement Award

Michael Chabon has won the 2009 Scripter Literary Achievement Award.

The prize, established in 2007, honors writers “who have made a significant and lasting impact on the art of cinematic adaptation,” according to a press release released Tuesday. At the ceremony Jan. 30, the Friends of USC Libraries will also award the prize for best film adaptation of a book or novella, which has been awarded since 1988.

“I am delighted to have been singled out for this honor,” Chabon said in a statement. “I consider myself fortunate to be able to share in the great tradition that the Scripter Award both recognizes and exemplifies.”

Steven Zaillian, screenwriter of Gangs of New York and Schindler’s List, won the first achievement award last year. Chabon previously won the 2001 Scripter Award for the screen adaptation of Wonder Boys.

Chabon Names Ideal Picks for Nobel Prize

Reuters reports on the betting and secrecy surrounding the Nobel Prize for Literature. In the report, the news agency asked Michael Chabon who he’d pick for the prize: Ursula K. Leguin, Michael Ondaatje, Cormac McCarthy, J.G. Ballard or Philip Roth.

“Every year, one crosses one’s fingers for Philip Roth,” Chabon said.

Chabon noted that the Nobel Prize, like other prominent awards, “shines a very bright light, often into an undeservedly dark corner.”

Chabon himself, of course, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001. “The day I found out that I had won a Pulitzer, I picked up my then three-year-old son from nursery school. ‘Daddy won a prize today,’ I told him. His face lit up. ‘Open it! Open it!’ he said.”

Yiddish Policemen Wins Hugo

Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union won the Hugo Award on Saturday for best novel.

It’s the second science-fiction related prize that the novel has nabbed since it was published last summer. In April, Chabon won the Nebula Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. He was nominated for an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America, but lost to John Hart’s Down River.

GalleyCat notes that while Yiddish Policemen isn’t the first book to win both the Hugo and Nebula, “it is arguably the first time that either award has been given to a book that was not published as a science fiction or fantasy novel.”

Yiddish Nominated for Hugo

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union on Friday was nominated for a Hugo Award for best novel.

The award is one of two major awards for science fiction. Yiddish has already been nominated for the other sci-fi prize, the Nebula, and is also up for mystery fiction prize the Edgar Award.

The Hugo winners will be announced August 9.