Finalists announced in Quills awards

Get your voting fingers ready.

Organizers of the Quills, the new national “consumer-driven” book awards, have announced finalists in 19 categories encompassing children’s literature, audio books and graphic novels, as well as traditional fiction and nonfiction.

Designed as a populist answer to the National Book Awards and Pulitzers, in which winners are selected by small committees, the Quills culled finalists from nominations by about 6,000 booksellers.

The Quills’ lists include such critical favorites -- and past winners of various awards -- as Philip Roth, Marilynne Robinson, David McCullough and Jared Diamond, as well as such reader favorites as Stephen King (in the science fiction category) and Deepak Chopra (for books about spirituality).

The winners will be determined by consumers voting online at , or at Borders stores, from Aug. 15 through Sept. 15, and announced during an Oct. 11 black-tie ceremony at New York City’s Chelsea Piers.

The show will be taped for a one-hour broadcast on NBC Universal television stations, including Los Angeles’ KNBC Channel 4, on Oct. 22.

“We look forward to the stage that sets the Quills apart among book awards -- turning the voting process over to consumers, who will make the final decisions,” said Gerry Byrne, chairman of the Quills Literacy Foundation and former publisher of Variety and Daily Variety.

Winners receive no cash, just a trophy, and the ceremony doubles as a fundraiser for the Quills Literacy Foundation to benefit unspecified literacy projects. A “book of the year” will be selected from all of the finalists.

The organization also plans to announce a Life Achievement Quill award, selected by the group’s executive council rather than a consumer vote.

The program aims to infuse the world of books with the kind of excitement usually associated with entertainment awards programs such as the Oscars, Emmys and People’s Choice.

To be a finalist, a book had to have received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, been selected in Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers Program, the American Booksellers Assn.’s Book Sense Picks, or a Borders Books & Music Original Voices program. Books making bestseller lists at those organizations also were eligible.

The finalists range from well-known novelists to lesser-known children’s works. Among the notables are:

General Fiction: “A Long Way Down” by Nick Hornby; “Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson; “The Mermaid Chair” by Sue Monk Kidd; “The Plot Against America” by Philip Roth, and “Zorro” by Isabel Allende.

Biography and memoir: “Chronicles: Volume One” by Bob Dylan; “The Glass Castle: A Memoir” by Jeannette Walls; “His Excellency: George Washington” by Joseph J. Ellis; “Magical Thinking: True Stories” by Augusten Burroughs, and “Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare” by Stephen Greenblatt.

History, current events and politics: “102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers” by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn; “1776” by David McCul