2006 in literature

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The year 2006 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Books

Literature

New drama

Poetry

See 2006 in poetry

Non-fiction

Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme - My Life in France
Deborah Davis - Party of the Century
Alain de Botton - The Architecture of Happiness
Wayne Federman (with Terrill and Maravich) - MARAVICH: The Definitive biography of Pistol Pete Maravich.
Peter Ford and Christopher Nickens -Glenn Ford: A Life in Film
Al Gore - An Inconvenient Truth
Glenn Greenwald - How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok
John Grisham - The Innocent Man
Hywel Williams - Days That Changed the World: the 50 Defining Events of World History
John McQuaid & Mark Schleifstein -Path of Destruction: the Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms
Larry Miller - Spoiled Rotten America: Outrages of Contemporary Life
Max and Monique Nemni - Young Trudeau: Son of Quebec, Father of Canada, 1919-1944
Richard Sennett - The Culture of the New Capitalism
James Sites - Inger!

Short stories

Out of 40 stories published in both of these two annual anthologies, stories from The New Yorker are represented eight times, Zoetrope: All-Story four times, Tin House and One Story three times each, and all of these magazines had stories in both collections.

Best American Short Stories 2006

Of 20 stories, four came from The New Yorker, three from Zoetrope: All-Story and two each from The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Tin House and One Story.

Paul Yoon	"Once the Shore"	One Story
Tobias Wolff	"Awaiting Orders"	The New Yorker
Donna Tartt	"The Ambush"	Tin House
Maxine Swann	"Secret"	Ploughshares
Mark Slouka	"Dominion"	TriQuarterly
Patrick Ryan	"So Much for Artemis"	One Story
Benjamin Percy	"Refresh, Refresh"	The Paris Review
Edith Pearlman	"Self-Reliance"	Lake Effect
Alice Munro	"The View from Castle Rock"	The New Yorker
Kevin Moffett	"Tattooizm"	Tin House
Thomas McGuane	"Cowboy"	The New Yorker
Jack Livings	"The Dog"	The Paris Review
Yiyun Li	"After a Life"	Zoetrope: All-Story
Aleksandar Hemon	"The Conductor"	The New Yorker
Mary Gaitskill	"Today I’m Yours"	Zoetrope: All-Story
Nathan Englander	"How We Avenged the Blums"	The Atlantic Monthly
Robert Coover	"Grandmother’s Nose"	Daedalus
David Bezmozgis	"A New Gravestone for an Old Grave"	Zoetrope: All-Story
Katherine Bell	"The Casual Car Pool"	Ploughshares
Ann Beattie with Harry Mathews	"Mr. Nobody at All"	McSweeney’s

O. Henry Prize stories

Of this year's 20 stories, four came from The New Yorker, four from Epoch, and two each from Harper's Magazine, One Story and The Georgia Review

Edward P. Jones	"Old Boys, Old Girls"**	The New Yorker
Jackie Kay	"You Go When You Can No Longer Stay"	Granta
Lydia Peelle	"Mule Killers"	Epoch
Paula Fox	"The Broad Estates of Death"	Harper's Magazine
Neela Vaswani	"The Pelvis Series"	Epoch
David Lawrence Morse	"Conceived"	One Story
William Trevor	"The Dressmaker’s Child"	The New Yorker
Stephanie Reents	"Disquisition on Tears"	Epoch
David Means	"Sault Ste. Marie"	Harper's Magazine
Karen Brown	"Unction"	The Georgia Review
Terese Svoboda	"’80s Lilies"	Indiana Review
Alice Munro	"Passion"**	The New Yorker
George Makana Clark	"The Center of the World"	The Georgia Review
Susan Fromberg Schaeffer	"Wolves"	Prairie Schooner
Douglas Trevor	"Girls I Know"	Epoch
Louise Erdrich	"The Plague of Doves"	The New Yorker
Xu Xi	"Famine"	Ploughshares
Lara Vapnyar	"Puffed Rice and Meatballs"	Zoetrope: All-Story
Melanie Rae Thon	"Letters in the Snow [...]"*	One Story
Deborah Eisenberg	"Window"**	Tin House

* Full title: "Letters in the Snow—for kind strangers and unborn children—for the ones lost and most beloved"
** "Juror favorites"

Deaths

January 4 - Irving Layton, age 93, Canadian poet
January 16 - Jan Mark, 62, British children's writer
January 30 - Wendy Wasserstein, 55, American playwright
February 2 - Chris Doty, 39, dramatist
February 4 - Betty Friedan, 85, feminist writer
February 8 - Michael Gilbert, 93, British crime writer
February 11 - Peter Benchley, 65, American novelist
February 17 - Sybille Bedford, 94, novelist and non-fiction wirter
February 20 - Lucjan Wolanowski, 86, Polish writer, journalist and traveller
February 21 - Gennadiy Aygi, 71, Chuvashian poet and translator
February 21 - Theodore Draper, 93, historian
February 22 - Hilde Domin, 96, German writer
February 24 - Octavia E. Butler, 59, American science fiction writer
February 25 - Margaret Gibson, 57, Canadian novelist and short story writer
March 27 - Stanisław Lem, 84, Polish science fiction writer
March 30 - John McGahern, 73, novelist, dramatist and short story writer
April 6 - Leslie Norris, age 84, Anglo-Welsh poet and author
April 13 - Muriel Spark, 88, novelist
April 25 - Jane Jacobs, 89, urban planning critic and activist
May 9 - Jerzy Ficowski, 81, poet, writer and translator
May 17 - Clare Boylan, 58, Irish novelist
May 18 - Gilbert Sorrentino, 77, novelist and poet
June 17 - James McClure, age 66, crime writer
June 17 - Mickey Spillane, 88, crime writer
June 28 - Nigel Cox, 55, New Zealand novelist
June 28 - David Gemmell, 57, British fantasy novelist
August 21 - S. Yizhar, 89, Israeli novelist
August 30 - Naguib Mahfouz, 94, Egyptian novelist, winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature
September 1 - György Faludy, 95, Hungarian poet, writer and translator
September 4 - Colin Thiele, 85, Australian children's author
September 25 - John M. Ford, 49, American science fiction writer and poet
November 1 - William Styron, age 81, American novelist
November 4 - Nelson S. Bond, 97, American writer
November 9 - Ellen Willis, 64, American journalist and critic
November 10 - Jack Williamson, 98, American science fiction author
November 13 - G. Gordon Strong, 92, Canadian-American publisher
November 15 - George G. Blackburn MC,90, Canadian author of Guns of Normandy
November 23 - Jesús Blancornelas, 70, Mexican journalist, founding editor of Zeta magazine
November 23 - Richard Clements, 78, British journalist
November 23 - Richard Leopold, 94, American historian
November 24 - William Diehl, 81, American author (Primal Fear, Sharky's Machine)
November 24 - Phyllis Fraser, 90, American actress, writer, and publisher
November 24 - Mostafa Mesbahzadeh, 98, exiled Iranian newspaper publisher
November 24 - George W. S. Trow, 63, American writer and media critic
November 27 - Bebe Moore Campbell, 56, Negro author (What You Owe Me)

Awards

Nobel Prize in Literature: Orhan Pamuk
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Cormac McCarthy, The Road
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Byron Rogers, The Man Who Went into the West: The life of R.S. Thomas
The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Belinda Castles, The River Baptists
Compton Crook Award: Maria Snyder, Poison Study
C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: John Tranter, Urban Myths: 210 Poems
Eric Gregory Award: Fiona Benson, Retta Bowen, Frances Leviston, Jonathan Morley, Eoghan Walls
2006 Governor General's Awards: see article
Griffin Poetry Prize: Sylvia Legris, Nerve Squall and Kamau Brathwaite, Born to Slow Horses
Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Jaya Savige, Latecomers
Man Booker Prize: Kiran Desai for The Inheritance of Loss.
Miles Franklin Award: Roger McDonald, The Ballad of Desmond Kale
Premio Nadal: Eduardo Lago, Llámame Brooklyn
Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Fleur Adcock
Scotiabank Giller Prize: Vincent Lam, Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures
Wallace Stevens Award: Michael Palmer
Whiting Writers' Awards:

Poetry: Sherwin Bitsui, Tyehimba Jess, Suji Kwock Kim
Fiction: Charles D’Ambrosio, Yiyun Li, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, Nina Marie Martínez, Patrick O’Keeffe
Plays: Stephen Adly Guirgis, Bruce Norris

2006 in literature

Books

Literature

Adventure and thriller

Children's and young adult

Fantasy

Historical fiction

Horror

Humor, satire

Mystery, suspense, thriller, espionage and crime fiction

Romance

Science fiction