The 2010 Pulitzer Prizes have been awarded with Paul Harding taking top honors in the Fiction category for Tinkers (Bellevue Literary Press), a debut novel set in New England about a dying clock repairman who, on his deathbed, revisits his life. Bellevue is preparing to go back to press on Tinkers--one of PW's Best Books of 2009--but had not set the new print run as of late Monday afternoon. Bellevue's titles are distributed by Consortium.
Before the announcement, Bellevue had about 15,000 copies of the book in print, in a combination of hardcover and trade paper. Tinkers is also available as an e-book. Random House has signed Harding's next two novels with Susan Kamil, Random House editor-in-chief, taking U.S. rights to the books at auction from Ellen Levine at Trident. The first book to be released, Enon, is set in the same town as Tinkers.
In History, Liaquat Ahamed took the prize for Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (Penguin Press), an examination of how the Depression was not caused by a perfect storm of economic events but, rather, the actions of a select group of powerful bankers. In biography, T.J. Stiles won for The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (Knopf); Rae Armantrout won in Poetry for Versed (Wesleyan University Press); and David E. Hoffman won in General Nonfiction for The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman (Doubleday). The winner in Drama, Next to Normal, is set to be released in trade paperback June 1 by Theatre Communications Group, also distributed by Consortium.
