Caitlin was the overall winner of the public vote which comprised winners of all eleven categories from the Galaxy National Book Awards.

The other contenders for the Galaxy Book of the Year were: The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst (Waterstone’s UK Author of the Year), A Tiny Bit Marvellous by Dawn French (Specsavers Popular Fiction Book of the Year), Before I Go to Sleep by S J Watson (Crime & Thriller of the Year), Charles Dickens by Claire Tomalin (Daily Telegraph Biography of the Year), A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (International Author of the Year), The Good Cook by Simon Hopkinson (Food & Drink Book of the Year), Room by Emma Donoghue (WHSmith Paperback of the Year), A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (National Book Tokens Children’s Book of the Year), My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young, read by Dan Stevens (Audible.Co.UK Audiobook of the Year), When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman (Galaxy New Writer of the Year).

Caitlin Moran on How To Be A Woman from Bookhugger on Vimeo.

About How To Be a Woman…

How To Be a Woman

Ebury Press 2011, Paperback, 320 pages, £11.99

1913 – Suffragette throws herself under the King’s horse.

1969 – Feminists storm Miss World.

NOW – Caitlin Moran rewrites The Female Eunuch from a bar stool and demands to know why pants are getting smaller.

There’s never been a better time to be a woman: we have the vote and the Pill, and we haven’t been burnt as witches since 1727. However, a few nagging questions do remain…

Why are we supposed to get Brazilians? Should you get Botox? Do men secretly hate us? What should you call your vagina? Why does your bra hurt? And why does everyone ask you when you’re going to have a baby?

Part memoir, part rant, Caitlin Moran answers these questions and more in How To Be A Woman – following her from her terrible 13th birthday (‘I am 13 stone, have no friends, and boys throw gravel at me when they see me’) through adolescence, the workplace, strip-clubs, love, fat, abortion, TopShop, motherhood and beyond.

• Read an extract

The Sense of an Ending

Jonathan Cape 2011, Hardcover, 160 pages, £12.99

Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life.

Now Tony is in middle age. He’s had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He’s certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer’s letter is about to prove.

The Sense of an Ending is the story of one man coming to terms with the mutable past. Laced with trademark precision, dexterity and insight, it is the work of one of the world’s most distinguished writers.

• Read the Bookgeeks review of The Sense of an Ending

The shortlist consisted of:

• The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes
• Jamrach’s Menagerie, by Carol Birch
• The Sisters Brothers, by Patrick deWitt
• Pigeon English, by Stephen Kelman
• Half Blood Blues, by Esi Edugyan 
• Snowdrops, by A. D. Miller

The ten authors in The (W)riters’ Library are: Bret Easton Ellis, David Nicholls, Hephzibah Anderson, Geoff Dyer, Ned Beauman, Alex Preston, Naomi Alderman, Sloane Crosley, Jake Arnott and Craig Taylor. Between them, they have chosen 100 books from classics to graphic novels, including Warhol, Fitzgerald, Dr Seuss and Atwood.

Unlike most rooms for books, The (W)riters’ Library isn’t dusty, or hushed or boring.  There is no dull person peering over shoulders or stopping people reading something they shouldn’t.  Instead, it is a stylish sanctuary, a place with comfortable nooks to sink into, cocktails on hand to help ease into a literary journey and best of all, each book tells its very own personal story of how it came to be there.

“The (W)riters’ Library offers visitors a view of what inspires and excites ten influential writers. We are thrilled to work with all these inspirational authors and introduce their personal recommendations to our guests”, says Kevin Rockey, General Manager, W London – Leicester Square.

The (W)riters’ Library is open to W London guests and the public now.

W London – Leicester Square is located at 10 Wardour Street, London, W1D 6Q.  A stay at W London – Leicester Square starts from £335 per double room per night, including taxes and charges.  To book call 00800 325 25252 or visit www.wlondon.co.uk.

Fiction Uncovered

Fiction Uncovered will create the opportunity for eight UK-based fiction writers to be part of a major promotion supported by retailers, and a major publicity and marketing campaign.

So without further ado, the 2011 Fiction Uncovered winners are:

The Water Theatre

Alma Books Ltd 2011, Paperback, 450 pages, £7.99

The Water Theatre, by Lindsay Clarke

As war-reporter Martin Crowther arrives in Umbria, still raw from a recent assignment in Africa, and from a failing love affair back home, a storm hits and the sky opens. Things are powerfully on the move inside him too as he comes to the small village of Fontanalba, on a mission to track down two friends from a lifetime ago. Adam and Marina are the estranged children of his mentor, Hal Brigshaw, who is nearing the end of a turbulent life and wants to summon them home. But there are good reasons for their self-imposed exile, and not all of them are understood, and not all are in the past. An air of secrecy also surrounds preparations for an event at Fontanalba in which Adam and Marina have an extraordinary role to play. As Martin waits, trapped between duty and desire, he is both intrigued and dismayed by his dealings with a close-knit community, who seem bent on protecting their own – and on shaking the ground of Martin’s life.

The English German Girl

Polygon: An Imprint of Birlinn Limited 2011, Paperback, 368 pages, £12.99

The English German Girl, by Jake Wallis Simons

‘Rosa must carry her suitcase herself. She heaves it up, walks through the doorway, looks back one final time: Papa and Mama are standing arm in arm, they are waving, but their masks have fallen away, they look hopeless, and that is the worst thing of all; Rosa turns her back and they are gone.’

The Klein family is slowly but surely losing everything they hold dear or ever took for granted as Hitler’s anti-Jewish laws take hold in 1930s Berlin. In desperation, fifteen-year-old Rosa is put on a Kindertransport train out of Germany, to begin a new life in England. In a foreign country, barely able to make herself understood, she struggles to find a way to rescue her parents. Overtaken by the war, however, they gradually lose touch. Now Rosa must face the prospect of not only being unable to fulfil her vow to save her family but also of an unknown future, quite alone.

One of Britain’s most compelling and original new voices, Jake Wallis Simons blends meticulous research with powerful storytelling in an epic journey from heartbreak to hope.

Night Waking

Granta Books 2011, Paperback, 416 pages, £12.99

Night Waking, by Sarah Moss

Historian Anna Bennett has a book to write. She also has an insomniac toddler, a precocious, death-obsessed seven-year-old, and a frequently-absent ecologist husband who has brought them all to Colsay, a desolate island in the Hebrides, so he can count the puffins. Ferociously sleep-deprived, torn between mothering and her desire for the pleasures of work and solitude, Anna becomes haunted by the discovery of a baby’s skeleton in the garden of their house. Her narrative is punctuated by letters home, written 200 years before, by May, a young, middle-class midwife desperately trying to introduce modern medicine to the suspicious, insular islanders. The lives of these two characters intersect unexpectedly in this deeply moving but also at times blackly funny story about maternal ambivalence, the way we try to control children, and about women’s vexed and passionate relationship with work. Moss’s second novel displays an exciting expansion of her range – showing her to be both an excellent comic writer, and a novelist of great emotional depth.

The Proof of Love

Portobello Books Ltd 2011, Paperback, 304 pages, £12.99

Proof of Love, by Catherine Hall

‘Who are you Spencer Little?Why are you here?’

During the long hot summer of 1976, a brilliant young Cambridge mathematician arrives in a remote village in the Lake District and takes on a job as a farm labourer. Painfully awkward and shy, Spencer Little is viewed with suspicion by the community and his only real friendship is with scruffy, clever ten-year-old Alice. When he saves Alice from a wild-fire, the locals at last begin to accept him, but as he is drawn deeper into their lives, he also becomes aware of their secrets – and of the difficulty of keeping his own. As the heat-wave intensifies and the web of complicity tightens around him, it becomes clear that Spencer will eventually have to make a choice: between passion and logic, and between loyalty and truth…

Nimrod’s Shadow

Portobello Books Ltd 2011, Paperback, 352 pages, £7.99

Nimrod’s Shadow, by Chris Paling

Reilly is an impoverished painter who lives alone in a shabby garret, with only his unsold canvases and his faithful dog Nimrod for company. He seems destined to remain in artistic obscurity until the most influential art critic of the time begins to notice his talent. But no sooner has he found a patron than the critic is found downed in a local canal and the trail leads directly back to Reilly. From Reilly’s prison cell in Edwardian London to an exclusive gallery in contemporary Soho, the clues that lead to the real murderer lie carefully hidden, until the day when Samantha, a young office assistant, finds herself drawn to one of Reilly’s pictures and decides to embark on her own investigation…

Steeped in atmosphere and laced with intrigue, Nimrod’s Shadow is a gripping tale of genius, jealousy, and revenge – with a few twists and turns along the way.

Disputed Land

William Heinemann 2011, Hardcover, 224 pages, £12.99

Disputed Land, by Tim Pears

Leonard and Rosemary Cannon summon their middle-aged offspring, along with partners and children, to the family home in the Welsh Marches for the Christmas holiday. As the gathered family settle in to their first Christmas together for some years, the grown siblings – Rodney, Johnny and Gwen – are surprised when they are invited to each put stickers on the furniture and items they wish to inherit from their parents.

Disputed Land is narrated by Leonard and Rosemary’s thirteen-year-old grandson, Theo, who observes how from these innocent beginnings age-old fissures open up in the relationships of those around him. Looking back at this Christmas gathering from his own middle-age – a narrator at once nostalgic and naïve – Theo Cannon remembers his imperious grandmother Rosemary, alpha-male uncle Johnny, abominable twin cousins Xan and Baz; he recalls his love for his grandfather Leonard and the burgeoning feelings for his cousin Holly. And he asks himself the question: if a single family cannot solve the problem of what it bequeaths to future generations, then what chance does a whole society have of leaving the world intact?

Forgetting Zoe

Windmill Books 2011, Paperback, 288 pages, £7.99

Forgetting Zoe, by Ray Robinson

Zoë Nielsen was just like any other ten-year-old walking to school, not knowing that a chance encounter with Thurman Hayes would lead to her abduction and imprisonment in a converted nuclear bunker, 4,000 miles away, beneath a remote ranch house in Arizona. Enslaved in her underground tomb, deprived of food and light and water, the girl Zoe once was steadily begins to disappear…

But over time Thurman grows tired of the rapidly maturing Zoë, and when he decides it is time to get rid of her, Zoë must finally make her bid for freedom. Forgetting Zoë is a moving, epic tale of courage, survival, horror and loss, that explores how a bond of affection and intimacy can develop between captive and captor.

The London Satyr

Doubleday 2011, Hardcover, 368 pages, £16.99

The London Satyr, by Robert Edric

It is the summer of 1891 and London is simmering under an oppressive heatwave. The air is thick with tension and sexual repression. But another wave is about to rock the capital – one of morality – as Oliver Wheeler and the puritans of his London Vigilance Committee seek out perversion and aberrant behaviour in all its forms.

Charles Webster, an impoverished photographer working for famed actor-manager Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theatre, has been sucked into a shadowy demi-monde which exists beneath the surface of civilized society. It is a world of pornographers and prostitutes, corralled under the sinister leadership of master photographer and manipulator Marlow, to whom Webster illicitly provides theatrical costumes for pornographic shoots.

But knowledge of this enterprise has somehow reached the Lyceum’s upright theatre manager, Bram Stoker, who suspects Webster’s involvement. As the net appears to tighten around Marlow and his cohorts, a member of the aristocracy is accused of killing a child prostitute, and public outrage sweeps the capital. It is the worst possible time for Webster’s wife to announce she is to become a professional medium…

The London Satyr is a brilliant summoning of the last decade of Victorian England. At a time when public morality has never been more extreme nor superstition more prevalent, below the surface swirls a fetid and ever-quickening current of perversity and exploitation…

• Read more about Fiction Uncovered

• YARNers can take part in a very grown up game of consequences during 5-Aside Story. Hosted by Acorn Independent Press and running for the duration of the festival, everyone can head online to create a story together, with writers only able to add 5 sentences to the mix.
• If you fancy getting your pens, pencils and crayons out, YARNers can take part in the creation of a zine at a workshop hosted by Hato Press, Cure Studio and Soupa Creative Network.
• The Illustrationarium will be open throughout the weekend, where you can come and create your own illustrations – come down on the Sunday night for Illustrationarium – LIVE! to see authors and storytellers perform their stories whilst illustrators simultaneously take up the challenge of illustrating the story, live!
• For the more wordy amongst us, if trying to add five sentences to a story just isn’t playful enough for you Acorn Independent Press will be hosting Libations, Laughs and Literature on Sunday afternoon – the ultimate pub-quiz for people who can get more than 3 words from a boggle!
• The almighty Scat Pack will be presenting whole movies live on stage on Sunday evening in Lights! Camera! Improvise! If you came down to Movies in Minutes last year, this is like that, but on speed!
• On Monday evening, YARNfest is honoured to have Hanif Kureishi join us to judge Cover Wars. We’re taking The Buddha of Suburbia, handing it over to four London Illustration Networks, and see them battle it out Live on the night, creating their new versions of the cover artwork! Hanif Kureishi will read from the novel and judge the artworks created, alongside Jon Gray of Gray318.
• On Tuesday evening, YARN presents The Special Relationship – A night of literary entertainment where award-winning writers, poets, comedians and filmmakers have a story to tell.
• And our finally this year will be Ten Stories about Smoking. If you enjoyed YARNs Four Stories High then you will love this event. Join us in a smoky underbelly to launch Stuart Evers new collection Ten Stories about Smoking. See the collection interpreted into film, theatre, music and spoken word by artists including The Strumpettes, Quattro Formaggio, Verity Flecknell, The Android Angel and Camila Fiori.

YARN HQ and Bookhugger can’t wait to see you there! Make sure to purchase your tickets in adavance at www.YARNfest.com.

And you can enter the competition for a chance to win a VIP Pass for Two to ALL of the YARN events listed above, plus bonus goodies!

The Finkler Question is a novel about love, loss and male friendship, and explores what it means to be Jewish today.

Chaired by Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate, the 2010 judges were Rosie Blau, Literary Editor of the Financial Times; Deborah Bull, formerly a dancer, now Creative Director of the Royal Opera House as well as a writer and broadcaster; Tom Sutcliffe, journalist, broadcaster and author and Frances Wilson, biographer and critic.

For more information visit the Man Booker Prize website.

This is how it works:

• Tell us a bit about yourself, your reading habits and preferences and your online life
• We will send you books carefully selected for your reading tastes, before they are published, so you can tell us – and the world – what you think
• There will also be chances to get books for friends and family, attend exclusive author events and share your thoughts with authors and publishers
• Please note that you must be resident in the UK or Republic of Ireland to take part

If you are interested in joining Real Readers please follow the link below, fill in the form, tell us as much about your likes and dislikes as you can, and we will take it from there!

To apply, visit the Read Readers website

• Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)
• Emma Donoghue Room (Pan MacMillan – Picador)
• Helen Dunmore The Betrayal (Penguin – Fig Tree)
• Damon Galgut In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic – Atlantic Books)
• Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)
• Andrea Levy The Long Song (Headline Publishing Group – Headline Review)
• Tom McCarthy C (Random House – Jonathan Cape)
• David Mitchell The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Hodder & Stoughton – Sceptre)
• Lisa Moore February (Random House – Chatto & Windus)
• Paul Murray Skippy Dies (Penguin – Hamish Hamilton)
• Rose Tremain Trespass (Random House – Chatto & Windus)
• Christos Tsiolkas The Slap (Grove Atlantic – Tuskar Rock)
• Alan Warner The Stars in the Bright Sky (Random House – Jonathan Cape)

The 2010 shortlist will be announced on Tuesday 7 September. The winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction will receive £50,000 and can look forward to greatly increased sales and worldwide recognition. Each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, will receive £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their shortlisted book.

Chaired by Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate, the 2010 judges are Rosie Blau, Literary Editor of the Financial Times; Deborah Bull, formerly a dancer, now Creative Director of the Royal Opera House as well as a writer and broadcaster; Tom Sutcliffe, journalist, broadcaster and author and Frances Wilson, biographer and critic.

• Visit the Man Booker Prize website

Born in the US, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is mostly a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salomé. From a coastal island jungle to the unpaved neighbourhoods of 1930s Mexico City, through a disastrous stint at a military school in Virginia and back again, his fortunes never steady as Salomé finds her rich men-friends always on the losing side of the Mexican Revolution. Sometimes she gives her son cigarettes instead of supper.

He aims for invisibility, observing his world and recording everything with a peculiar selfless irony in his notebooks. Life is whatever he learns from servants putting him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. Making himself useful in the household of the muralist, his wife Frida Kahlo, and exiled Bolshevik leader Lev Trotsky, young Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, and the howling gossip and reportage that dictate public opinion.

A violent upheaval sends him north to a nation newly caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. In the mountain city of Asheville, North Carolina, he remakes himself in America’s hopeful image. Under the watch of his peerless stenographer, Violet Brown, he finds an extraordinary use for his talents of observation. But political winds continue to push him between north and south, in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach – the lacuna – between truth and public presumption.

This is a gripping story of identity, connection with our past, and the power of words to create or devastate. Like no other novel yet written, it illuminates an era when bold internationalism gave way to a post-war landscape of narrowly defined ‘Americanism’. Crossing two decades, from the vibrant revolutionary murals of Mexico City to the halls of a Congress bent on eradicating the colour red, The Lacuna is as deep and rich as the New World itself.

Read the extract (PDF)

Excitement ensued earlier today with the official launch of the Grubtown Tourist Board’s new website www.visitgrubtown.com. Grubtown Tourist Board Manager, Flighty Bitpart, unveiled the site at the official launch party this morning at the Tourist Board Offices. The launch suffered a delayed start due to the theft of the Tourist Board’s only computer. Luckily, Police Chief Grabby Hanson was quickly able to establish that he had stolen the computer himself and returned it, having first arrested himself and then let himself off with a caution.

‘This is a significant day for Grubtown,’ said Mr Bitpart, ‘too long overlooked as a tourist destination, due largely to our unfounded reputation for grubbiness, we can now show the world that Grubtown is a force to be reckoned with as a holiday destination.’ Responding to criticism that the positioning of buildings and other areas or interest on the site bore no relation to where they are located in reality Mr Bitpart said, ‘People should be grateful – until now we haven’t had a website at all. The fact that it may not represent in any way the actual layout of Grubtown seems a petty complaint. I am proud to say that now, anyone with internet access is able to get a very vague idea of what our town in like.’

The launch was attended by Mr Bitpart, his assistant Fergal Twine and two ducks. It is believed all the other guests got lost on the way having attempted to find the Tourist Board by using the map on www.visitgrubtown.com. I was there by chance having popped in to ask Fergal Twine for some money he owes me.

Visitgrubtown.com features six distinct Grubtown locations – including the fan favourites: the Daily Herald newspaper office, the Duckhouse/Museum and Smoky’s cinema. From April 29 until June 3, a new location unlocks each week, treating users to a special Grubtown story, delivered in instalments. Readers are encouraged to interact with characters and objects, and can discover exclusive downloads. The site incorporates fun audio and video, and drives users back to other books in the series.

The Daily Herald location will offer children a unique and entertaining way to apply their creativity by writing and submitting Grubtown news articles through the site. Using a bespoke Grubtown silly name generator to obtain a ‘press pass’, and assisted by a set of helpful writing tips, sample articles and Philip Ardagh’s own blog entries, their submitted stories will be published online.

Faber are teaming up with Newspaper Club (www.newspaperclub.co.uk) to give children the fantastic chance of having their work published in a limited edition of 500, 16-page printed copies of the Daily Herald, which will gather the best stories from the five weeks, as selected by Philip Ardagh.

The newspaper also presents a great educational opportunity. Faber aims to motivate school classes to participate and has developed classroom activities for teachers and resources for libraries. One of the authors of the selected stories will also be chosen to win a special class visit from the hilarious Philip himself who will rewrite their story as a special mini Grubtown Tale!

As well as a pioneering online accompaniment to a book series, visitgrubtown.com offers a safe, fun and educational environment for children online that can be enjoyed on their own or with a parent and aims to encourage reading and creative writing.

Visit Grubtown today