Eck, Ferris, and Vida Named Finalists for Discover Great New Writers Award

Barnes & Noble announced last Friday the finalists for the 2007 Discover Great New Writers Awards. The winners will each receive $10,000. Second-place finalists will receive $5,000, and third-place, $2,500. The prizes will be awarded on February 27 at Barnes & Noble’s Lincoln Triangle store in New York City.

The finalists in fiction are Matthew Eck for The Farther Shore (Milkweed Editions), Joshua Ferris for Then We Came to the End (Little, Brown), and Vendela Vida for Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name (Ecco).

The finalists in nonfiction are Kate Braestrup for Here If You Need Me: A True Story (Little, Brown), Elizabeth Samet for Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and Yaroslav Trofimov for The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine and the Birth of Al Qaeda (Doubleday).

The annual awards are given to honor "new work by debuting and underappreciated writers."