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`Blooker' prize celebrates new hybrid literary form

A 32-year-old New Yorker who spent a year trying to master every recipe in a book of French cookery has become the inaugural winner of a prize devoted to books born of blogs.

While its better known near-namesake has on occasion been accused of elitism, the Blooker Prize claims to be based on more democratic principles.

All the books, or "blooks," entered for the award started life as blogs.

Julie Powell, a frustrated unpublished author approaching 30 in a dead-end office job, came up with the idea of attempting to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child's 1961 cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Her husband suggested chronicling her efforts online, where her musings on life, love and cooking drew an ever-larger cult following. The blog led to a publishing deal, and the resulting tome -- Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Kitchen Apartment -- sold more than 100,000 copies.

She beat two British bloggers-turned-authors on the shortlist, the online call-girl diarist Belle de Jour, who triggered many newspaper column inches speculating on her identity last year, and Egg, Bacon, Chips and Beans, a literary tribute to London's greasy spoon cafes by Russell Davies.

Powell credits blogging with kick-starting her writing career.

"I had no idea what a blog was a week before I began," she said.

The prize was established by Bob Young, a US entrepreneur who made a fortune from his Red Hat software business.

He launched it partly as a means of promoting his latest venture, Lulu.com, which offers anyone the chance to upload their manuscript to the Internet and publishes books on demand when they are ordered, and partly as a means of honoring a new form of writing.

Young said he had been "staggered" by the response.

"Blooks are the new books -- a hybrid literary form at the cutting edge of both literature and technology," he said.

The award attracted 89 entries from a dozen countries.

Other category winners included a serialized gothic novel, Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Cherie Priest, and Totally Boned: A Joe and Monkey Collection, a comic book targeted at self-confessed geeks by 24-year-old Zach Miller.
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