I’m popping the champagne cork today. (Okay, not yet, I’m at home alone at 10:00 in the morning, so champagne would be entirely inappropriate, right? Oh, but there’s the trusty mimosa: champagne delivered with just enough OJ to make it a bona fide breakfast item.)

NO ONE YOU KNOW has been nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Fiction. The fiction nominees are:

* Lady Lazarus, Andrew Foster Altschul, Harcourt
* Doctor Olaf van Schuler’s Brain, Kirsten Menger-Anderson, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
* The Delivery Room, Sylvia Brownrigg, Counterpoint
* Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein , Molly Dwyer, Lost Coast Press
* No One You Know, Michelle Richmond, Delacorte Press

What an honor to be included in this list! Many thanks to the Northern California Book Reviewers, who established the award in 1981 “to honor the work of writers and recognize exceptional service in the field of literature in northern California.” Awards are also given in nonfiction, poetry, translation, and children’s literature; I’ll put those lists up as soon as I have the info.

The 28th Annual Northern California Book Awards will be held Sunday, April 19, at Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin at Grove, at 1:00 p.m. Immediately following the awards, a reception with book signing will begin in the Latino/Hispanic Room at the Library. The ceremony and reception are free and open to the public.