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I pay close attention to national and international book awards, but I’m also interested in state book awards. These awards are the ones that find those sleeper titles that become book group favorites through word of mouth.

Last week the short list for the Minnesota Book Awards were announced. The winners will be revealed on April 16 at a gala. The award is sponsored by the Friends of The Saint Paul Public Library and this over-twenty-year old award has become a significant event for the Friends, local libraries, booksellers, and authors.

Awards are given in eight categories ranging from children’s and teen titles to nonfiction, genre fiction, and history. You know there’s going to be some good mysteries in the genre fiction category. There’s some sensational gorey-minded authors up north.

The MBA even gets the local readers in on the act with the Readers Choice Award. Maybe it’s time to road trip into the Land of a Thousand Lakes. Or should that be changed to Land of a Thousand (and counting) Books?

This entry was posted on Monday, February 7th, 2011 at 8:45 am and is filed under Adult Books, Book Awards, Books for Youth, In the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.