Riverbend Up for a Book Prize!

Couldn't be happier. Hope she wins.

Iraqi woman's Baghdad blog in the running for GBP 30,000 book prize.

An anonymous Iraqi woman has become the first blog author to be in the running for a big literary prize for a book published between hard covers.Baghdad Burning, by a 26-year-old author who has won an international readership under the pen name Riverbend, is longlisted for the GBP 30,000 Samuel Johnson award.

In the list, announced today, she is up against 18 other books including Alan Bennett's latest bestseller, histories of the cold war and the great wall of China, and a biography of the 19th-century cookbook author Mrs Beeton. The Guardian carried an extract from Riverbend's title last summer.

The small literary publisher Marion Boyars brought out Baghdad Burning last year, classifying it under biography and memoir. The publishing house says it knows Riverbend's identity but respects her wish to remain anonymous.

It has already come third in the Lettre Ulysses prize for Reportage, winning GBP 14,000, and was shortlisted for an Index on Censorship freedom of expression award.

Riverbend began the blog with the words: "I'm female, Iraqi and 24. I survived the war. That's all you need to know. It's all that matters these days anyway."

University-educated Riverbend worked as a computer programmer before the invasion which began on March 20, 2003.

She lost her job, she told her readers, when it became too dangerous for Iraqi women to travel to work alone.

I encourage everyone to visit Baghdad Burning if you have not already. The moral distance between Riverbend and Donald Rumsfeld, say, could not be calculated w/ a million supercomputers all working at computation speeds greater than we can imagine in 1,000 lifetimes -- somewhere around the equivalent of 10,000 billion light years, I'm guessing. And I'm not exaggerating.

Comments

[The Fat Lady Sings]

Bravo for Riverbend! I read her blog every time she posts. I had no idea she'd been bought out by a publisher. I'm glad for her. The money should grant her a nest egg for after the war.

[Congogirl]

That's amazing, and as The Fat Lady Sings said, she should have a nice cushion. I was concerned about that, actually, till I read here that the publisher knows her identity.

[ae]

Hi, TFLS! I hope Riverbend does get that nest egg, too, because I hate to think what she's living through everyday. That her eloquence can shine through when she's courageously sending us slices of reality and truth at great personal risk still surprises me sometimes. I hope she prospers.

[ae]

Right on, Congogirl. I was worried actually when I read that the publisher knew Riverbend's identity (though, of course, it makes sense). In this age of ubiquitous surveillance and crushing gov't interference, I worried that our gubmint might try to quiet her, but they're just making me paranoid. Hopefully, she's not even on their radar. (Fingers crossed.) I used to be a normal(-ish) person before the Cheney madministration.