Barnes & Noble Announces the Finalists for the 22nd Annual Discover Great News Writers Awards

Winners to Be Announced March 6

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products, today announced the six finalists for its prestigious 2012 Discover Great New Writers Awards. The winners in each category, fiction and nonfiction, receive a $10,000 prize and a full year of additional promotion from Barnes & Noble. Second-place finalists receive $5,000, and third-place finalists, $2,500. The finalists are:

Fiction:

Amanda Coplin, The Orchardist (HarperCollins)
Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child (Reagan Arthur Books/Little, Brown)
Karen Thompson Walker, The Age of Miracles (Random House)

Nonfiction:

Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers (Random House)
Kristen Iversen, Full Body Burden (Crown Publishers/Random House)
Cheryl Strayed, Wild (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)

The winners will be announced on Wednesday, March 6, at a private awards ceremony. The Discover Awards honor the best works featured the previous calendar year in the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program.

Books by the finalists and judges can be purchased at any Barnes & Noble store, online at Barnes & Noble.com (www.bn.com/discover) or instantly downloaded on any NOOK® eBook Reader or tablet.

The Jurists

Two panels of distinguished literary judges selected the finalists and will select the winners. Serving as this year’s fiction judges are: Lan Samantha Chang, author of the 1998 Discover selection Hunger, and, most recently, All Is Forgotten and Nothing Is Lost; Alan Cheuse, a regular contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered, and author of several books including the 1990 Discover selection A Light Possessed; and Karl Marlantes, author of the national bestsellers Matterhorn (a 2010 Discover selection) and What It Is Like to Go to War.

This year’s nonfiction judges are: Susan Cheever, whose most recent book is Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography; Wendy McClure, author of the 2011 Discover selection The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie and I’m Not the New Me; and Touré, author of The Portable Promised Land, a 2002 Discover selection, and also the forthcoming I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon.

The Discover Awards

The Discover Great New Writers program was established in 1990 to highlight works of exceptional literary quality that might otherwise be overlooked in a crowded book marketplace. This year’s selections featured the works of 53 new and previously underappreciated writers. Submissions to the program are read and discussed by a group of Barnes & Noble booksellers before selection for the program’s seasonal promotions.

Past winners of the annual Discover Great New Writers Award include Michael Levy for Kosher Chinese and Scott O’Connor for Untouchable (both 2011), Kim Echlin for The Disappeared and David R. Dow for The Autobiography of an Execution (both 2010), David Sheff for Beautiful Boy (2008), Joshua Ferris for Then We Came to the End (2007), Eric Blehm for The Last Season (2006), Alison Smith for Name All the Animals (2004), Monica Ali for Brick Lane (2003), Dina Temple-Ralston for A Death in Texas (2002), Hampton Sides for Ghost Soldiers (2001), Tracy Chevalier for Girl with a Pearl Earring (2000), Elizabeth McCracken for The Giant’s House (1996), Chang-rae Lee for Native Speaker (1995), and David Guterson for Snow Falling on Cedars (1994).

About Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS) is a Fortune 500 company and the leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products. The company operates 689 Barnes & Noble bookstores in 50 states, and one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites, BN.com (www.bn.com). Its NOOK Media LLC subsidiary is a leader in the emerging digital reading and digital education markets. The NOOK digital business offers award-winning NOOK® products and an expansive collection of digital reading and entertainment content through the NOOK Store™ (www.nook.com), while Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, LLC operates 674 bookstores serving over 4.6 million students and faculty members at colleges and universities across the United States. Barnes & Noble is proud to be named a J.D. Power and Associates 2012 Customer Service Champion and is only one of 50 U.S. companies so named. Barnes & Noble.com is ranked the number one online retailer in customer satisfaction in the book, music and video category and a Top 10 online retailer overall in customer satisfaction according to ForeSee E-Retail Satisfaction Index (Spring Top 100 Edition).

General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company's corporate website: www.barnesandnobleinc.com.