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 Barnes & Noble's 2006 Discover Awards Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers Award honors the work of new fiction and nonfiction writers featured in the Discover program each year. Meet this year’s finalists in the Fiction and Nonfiction categories, and get to know some of the freshest writers on the scene today. Eric Blehm - First Place, Nonfiction
With the pacing of a thriller and the examining eye of a true nature lover, outdoor enthusiast Eric Blehm's The Last Season heralds the arrival of "a big-league writer coming into full voice," observes Outside magazine. An accomplished writer and editor, Blehm spends plenty of time away from the keyboard and out in the great wide open. As he explains in our interview, "I have been called an adventurer, and I write about my experiences."
 Daniel Mendelsohn - Second Place, Nonfiction
An accomplished author, reporter, and literary critic, Daniel Mendelsohn has garnered his widest acclaim to date for The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million -- the story of his search for the truth behind his family's tragic past in World War II. When we asked him about his writing rituals, Mendelsohn revealed, "I write in bed, with my laptop on my lap, with the TV on in the background -- something mindless, fluffy, and undemanding, like CNN."
Marilyn Johnson - Third Place, Nonfiction
Having made a name for herself penning memorable obituaries for the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Princess Diana, Jackie Onassis, and Johnny Cash for Life and other magazines, Marilyn Johnson takes a fascinating look back at the experience in The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries. "If I die while promoting The Dead Beat, I've instructed the publicist to run with it," she quips in our interview.
Ben Fountain - First Place, Fiction
When they chose Brief Encounters with Che Guevara: Stories as a Discover Great New Writers selection, our editors announced, "It's our pleasure to introduce Ben Fountain, a writer with a sharp, provocative mind whose debut, a collection of eight short stories, offers both a journey to places most of us have never seen, and a view on life and war that's full of ambiguity." In our interview, Fountain advises aspiring authors by reminding them that "the main thing about writing is... writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work."
O. Z. Livaneli - Second Place, Fiction
One of Turkey's most prominent authors, O. Z. Livaneli was held under military detention during the coup of 1971 and lived in exile for eight years. He was later elected to Turkey's Parliament in 2002 and has written several novels, including Bliss. "I was somehow always related with the world of books," he tells us. "When my publishing house was shut down by the military junta and I was imprisoned, I chose to continue my relationship with books through the act of writing. I've been writing ever since."
Sam Savage - Third Place, Fiction
After a stint teaching philosophy "briefly and unhappily" at his alma mater, Yale, Sam Savage went on to work as a carpenter, a commercial fisherman, and a letterpress printer, all while he "attempted to write, pretended to write, and often really did write." The perseverance paid off with the publication of his offbeat novel, Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife, whose protagonist just happens to be a rat -- albeit a very literary one.
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