AAP Opens 2019 PROSE Awards to Entries; National Book Awards Host Is Nick Offerman

In News by Porter Anderson

The AAP’s PROSE Awards for scholarly and professional books will be named in February. The National Book Awards winners ceremony is on November 14.

Image – iStockphoto: Ijeab

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

Entry Deadline: November 9
In Washington, DC, the offices of the Association of American Publishers have begun accepting entries for the organization’s award in the arts, humanities, reference, and sciences.

PROSE in this instance stands for Professional and Scholarly Excellence and the PROSE Awards have a deadline of November 9 for submissions.

A downloadable copy of the call for entries is here (PDF) and online entries are made here.

A large program with 57 awards overall awards available—and five “best of” honors to be chosen from 47 book, reference, journal, and e-product categories—the PROSE Awards are 43 years old and have, in the past, honored 1,920 winners.

Since being opened in 1976, the awards, according to AAP messaging, “have recognized publishers who produce books, journals, and digital products of extraordinary merit that make a significant contribution to a field of study in the arts, humanities, biological and physical sciences, reference and social sciences.”

Association member-publishers are eligible to make entries, are members of the Association of University Presses.

There are three stages of competition involved.

First, a jury of 18 specialists reviews entries in those initial 47 categories.

Then selections from that process compete in five areas:

  • Biological and Life Sciences
  • Humanities
  • Physical Sciences & Mathematics
  • Reference Works
  • Social Sciences

Finally, winners in each of those five categories compete for the R.R. Hawkins Award, which is the ultimate winner of the PROSE Award competition.

The association is to name the winners at a luncheon on February 7 during its annual Conference for Professional and Scholarly Publishing in Washington.


Actor-Author Nick Offerman at National Book Awards

The National Book Foundation has announced that the master of ceremonies at this year’s National Book Awards benefit evening on November 14 will be Nick Offerman of NBC’s shows Parks and Recreation and Making It.

Offerman, nowadays in production with Alex Garland’s series Devs for 2019, is also a four-time New York Times bestselling author whose The Greatest Love Story Ever Told, co-written with his wife Megan Mullally, was released by Penguin/Dutton on October 2.

The program on November 14 at Cipriani Wall Street announces winners of the 2018 National Book Awards in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, young people’s literature, and the new category of translated literature, as well as presentations of two lifetime achievement awards, to author Isabel Allende and Doron Weber of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.


More from Publishing Perspectives on the Association of American Publishers is here, and more on the National Book Awards is here.

About the Author

Porter Anderson

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Porter Anderson is a non-resident fellow of Trends Research & Advisory, and he has been named International Trade Press Journalist of the Year in London Book Fair's International Excellence Awards. He is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives. He formerly was Associate Editor for The FutureBook at London's The Bookseller. Anderson was for more than a decade a senior producer and anchor with CNN.com, CNN International, and CNN USA. As an arts critic (Fellow, National Critics Institute), he was with The Village Voice, the Dallas Times Herald, and the Tampa Tribune, now the Tampa Bay Times. He co-founded The Hot Sheet, a newsletter for authors, which now is owned and operated by Jane Friedman.