[2] The newspaper determined to change its book award after 1998, and during that year also hired Claire Armitstead as literary editor.
At the inaugural First Book Award ceremony in 1999, she said that she was informed of the change, details to be arranged, by the head of the marketing department during her second week on the job.
[3] For the first rendition, 140 books were submitted, including a lot of nonfiction strongest "by far" in "a hybrid of travel-writing and reportage"; weak in science and biography.
[3] The newspaper called it "the first time the ordinary reading public have been involved in the selection of a major literary prize."
[4] The judges chose the latter, We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families —"a horrifying but humane account of the Rwandan genocide, its causes and consequences", the newspaper called it in August.