Tom Franklin’s excellent novel and Square Books bestseller, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, got in the running for two major book awards this spring when it was announced as one of six finalists for the Edgar Award and one of five finalists for a prestigious L A Times Book Prize as the best mystery novel of 2010. Franklin, who lives in Oxford and teaches in the MFA program at Ole Miss, attended the Edgar ceremony April 27, this past Thursday night, then hopped on a plane the following morning in order to attend the LA Times event Friday night. Beth Ann Fennelly, the poet and Franklin’s wife, was in the store the other day and said to us, of the awards, “I told him not to come home without at least one of them.” To home Tom Franklin triumphantly comes, then, with the L A Times Prize, presented by Attica Locke, who visited us in the summer of 2009 with her award winning first novel, Black Water Rising. Another winner at the Los Angeles ceremony, for the 2010 Innovator’s Award, are our friends at Powell’s Books, for “cutting edge work to bring books, publishing, and storytelling into the future.”
Hooray for Tom Franklin and Powell’s Books!