AbeBooks is offering speculative fiction fans a chance to win tickets to this year’s Nebula awards. The Nebulas are one of the biggest speculative fiction events of the year, and they’re a great chance to hear and meet authors and publishers in the SF business.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and AbeBooks.com have teamed up to give a pair of lucky speculative fiction fans the chance to attend the Nebula Awards ceremony and banquet on May 11-12 2007 in New York. The Nebulas acclaim the best science fiction / fantasy fiction published in the United States during the two previous years.

Anyone interested in buying tickets or getting more information about the event can do so at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America website www.sfwa.org . However, you can win a pair of tickets (each worth $125) to the awards ceremony and banquet plus a two-night stay in the Marriott New York where the event is being stayed. Just answer this simple question:

Who was awarded the Nebula for “Best Novel” last year (2006) in Tempe Arizona?

Know the answer (or got Google)? Enter to win here (via Futurismic).  US and Canada residents only, unfortunately.

Thousands of book lovers will be heading to Oxford next month for the city’s annual literary festival.

Highlights this year will include an appearance by Oxford author Philip Pullman, who will be talking about how his prize-winning book Northern Lights has been turned into a film starring Nicole Kidman.

And visitors are promised an early glimpse of Lyra and the main characters in the eagerly awaited film, The Golden Compass.

Click here to read the full article.

Instead of burying their head in a book or heading to the nearest coffee shop to beat the boredom of laundry, New York writer Emily Rubin has organised a series of readings called “Dirty Laundry: Loads of Prose,” at laundromats in New York.

“Just mixing laundry and writing seemed completely natural to me because truly in life and metaphorically as a writer, everyone has dirty laundry,” said the Brooklyn native who started the series last year.

She contemplated holding the readings in various neighborhood venues including shops but said a laundromat seemed “a natural fit.”

People can wash their dirty laundry while listening to a poem or short story or just attend the readings. During the first of the 2007 series writer Carolyn Turgeon read some of her work while people loaded the dryers and washing machines.

Link to the Yahoo! News article

In a program to promote awareness of the importance of Edinburgh on the current and historical literary scene, copies of Robert Louis Stevenson’s book Kidnapped are being given away for free this month in the city.

All this February, readers can pick up one of 25,000 free copies of the book from a variety of public libraries across Edinburgh, with plans afoot to leave further copies on buses and park benches and in cafes and bars. Added to this, a month-long events programme encompasses talks, readings, storytelling, drama workshops, film shows, discussions and puppetry.

Copies of Kidnapped will be available in an abridged version, in an unabridged version, and as a specially-commissioned graphic novel.

Read the full Guardian article here.

Tavistock is to host the first ever Dartmoor Literary Festival next year. The event will celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Dartmoor Society and will run over the weekend of May 9 to 11 2008.

Planning for the festival is still in its early stages, but it is hoped it will feature a mixture of talks, readings, and workshops, and will cover fiction of all genres — including novels, poems, and plays — written about and on Dartmoor. It is also expected that local reading and writing groups, as well as schools in the area, will have the chance to become involved.

Continue reading on Okehampton Today.

BookExpo America has expanded its free podcasting and video streaming service so that for the first time, BEA and other book-related programming will be available to the general public. Yesterday’s inaugural podcast was of the 57th National Book Awards presentation, which was held earlier this month. The program was made available on the BEA’s podcast site, www.bookexpocast.com.

“BEA’s podcast platform will enable BEA to become a year-round ‘convention without walls,’ and a destination for the thousands of people who are seeking book-related news and entertainment,”said Rob Simon, president and CEO of BurstMarketing, the company that is partnering with BEA.

Link to the Publishers Weekly article, link to the BookExpoCast site

Mark your calendar! The Nineteenth Annual Independent and Small Press Book Fair - December 2 & 3, 2006

December 2 & 3, Independent and Small Press Book Fair hosts over 100 top-notch presses & leading authors from Nation Books, PEN American & New York’s literary & political scene, including: Pamela Aidan, Dore Ashton, Amiri Baraka, Jennifer Baumgardner, Colin Channer, T. Cooper, Michael Cunningham, Luis Francia, Steve Freeman, Matthea Harvey, Caren Lissner, Joe Meno, Jonas Mekas, Mark Crispin Miller, Eileen Myles, Greg Palast, Rachel Pine, Peter Plate, Katha Pollitt, Eyal Press, Paul Robeson, Jr., Martha Southgate, David Levi Strauss, Anne Waldman and much more. Free Admission ($1 suggested donation). For a complete list of panels and events please click here. To register as an exhibitor please click here

For more information, see the Small Press Center website. (Via Publishers Weekly)

The judges for what used to be called the Whitbread prize have marked its shift to sponsorship by the Costa coffee chain by shifting their taste towards the thriller.Two of the four books picked for the novels shortlist released last night for the inaugural £50,000 Costa award are marketed by their publishers as “gripping”, “tremendously exciting”, “gritty” and “thrilling”.

Read the rest of the Guardian article and browse the shortlist here.