Booker Winner, Poet Laureate Vie for UK Costa Prize

British author Julian Barnes poses after winning the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction with his book' The Sense of an Ending' at the Guildhall in London October 18, 2011. Reuters

Julian Barnes, who won this year's Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Carol Ann Duffy, Britain's poet laureate, were among the nominees for the 2011 Costa Book Awards announced on Tuesday.

English author Barnes is one of four shortlisted for the best novel category for The Sense of an Ending, the work that won him the coveted Booker award last month at the fourth time of asking.

Scottish writer Duffy, who was made the nation's poet in 2009, has been shortlisted in the poetry section for The Bees.

The winner of each of the five categories -- novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children's book -- will be revealed on January 4, 2012 and the overall Costa Book of the Year winner on January 24.

Barnes is up against John Burnside for A Summer of Drowning, Andrew Miller for Pure and Louisa Young for My Dear I Wanted to Tell You in the novel category.

Duffy takes on poets David Harsent for Night, Jackie Kay for Fiere and Sean O'Brien for November.

The 2010 Costa Book of the Year also went to a work of poetry -- Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott.

Since 1985 the award, open to books first published in the United Kingdom or Ireland, has been won nine times by a novel, four times by a debut novel, five times by a biography, seven times by a collection of poetry and once by a children's book.

In the biography section, journalist Patrick Cockburn and his son Henry co-authored an account of the latter's struggles with paranoid schizophrenia in Henry's Demons: Living with Schizophrenia - A Father and Son's Story.

Also in the category is Claire Tomalin's account of Charles Dickens, who is expected to be the subject of a raft of books in the run-up to the bicentenary of his birth next February.

The winner of each category receives 5,000 pounds ($7,950) and the overall winner a further 30,000 pounds.

The awards, formerly the Whitbread Book Awards, are sponsored by the Costa coffee shop chain.

Following is the full shortlist:

Costa Novel Award:

- Julian Barnes/The Sense of an Ending

- John Burnside/A Summer of Drowning

- Andrew Miller/Pure

- Louisa Young/My Dear I Wanted to Tell You

First Novel Award:

- Kevin Barry/City of Bohane

- Patrick McGuinness/The Last Hundred Days

- Christie Watson/Tiny Sunbirds Far Away