FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – At this year’s big Book Expo America fair held in New York City in late May a number of organizations announced their annual book awards and University of Arkansas Press books picked up two of them.

Oxford American Book of Great Music Writing, edited by Marc Smirnoff

American Book of Great Music Writing, edited by Marc Smirnoff

Fire Landscape, by Gary Fincke

ForeWord Magazine announced its 2008 Book of the Year awards and the Oxford American Book of Great Music Writing, edited by Marc Smirnoff, won a first place Gold Prize in the music category. The magazine’s awards were established to bring “increased attention to librarians and booksellers of the literary and graphic achievements of independent publishers and their authors.” The magazine’s unique awards process “brings readers, librarians, and booksellers together to select their top categories as well as choose the winning titles.”

The book was published late last year and has been receiving excellent reviews and notices, including a “Starred” review in Library Journal — “All public and academic libraries catering to serious music fans should purchase this gem of an anthology” — and the New York Post — “If something calls itself ‘Great’ in a title, you have to wonder. But in this anthology from a decade of annual Southern Music issues of the Arkansas-based literary quarterly, it’s no exaggeration.”

The Lambda Literary Foundation also announced its 21^st annual book awards on May 29 at a gala event held in conjunction with BEA. In the gay poetry category there was a tie. The University of Arkansas Press’s Now You’re the Enemy, by James Allen Hall, shared the prize with past National Book Award winner Mary Doty for his latest collection, Fire to Fire.

The Lambda Literary Awards seek to “recognize excellence in the field of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender literature.” Each year, over 80 judges — writers, booksellers, librarians, and journalists — assess the entries in more than 20 categories.

In a review of Hall’s book published in ForeWord Magazine, its reviewer said that “the poems are compelling with inventive phrasing and create enough of a flinch that the reader cannot look away as the lines between love and hate blur.” Hall’s book was a finalist in this year’s ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year awards in the poetry category.

The 2009 Paterson Poetry Prize winners were just announced by the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in New Jersey. The University of Arkansas Press’s Fire Landscape, by Gary Fincke, was given a Paterson Award for Literary Excellence for Previous Finalists. In 2007 the prestigious Paterson Poetry Prize was given to Christopher Bursk’s The First Inhabitants of Arcadia, which the University of Arkansas Press published in 2006.