ABR hits America!

Rebecca Starford

Thanks to conscientious ABR reader, Lisa Hill, the magazine’s annual reviewing competition, worth $1000, is now listed on the National Book Critics Circle blog, ‘Critical Mass’. NBCC member Janice Harayda, of the ‘One-Minute Book Reviews’ blog, hopes that ABR’s Reviewing Competition ‘might encourage a sponsor in the US to start giving out prizes like that, too. This prize differs from the Pulitzer and NBCC prizes for criticism in that it’s for an unpublished review’. The first prize for the ABR Reviewing Competition is, after all, a big one: Harayda notes that when she was the book editor of the largest newspaper in Ohio, ‘we generally paid $100, on rare occasions $150.’ Operating in a small and indeed recessionary Australian market, it is heartening to see ABR as a forerunner in the recognition and appreciation of robust literary criticism.

Entries for the 2009 ABR Reviewing Competition are now welcomed – click here for more information.