As AAN papers scramble to meet the Feb. 8 deadline for the 2010 AltWeekly Awards journalism competition, entrants should know that several of the winning entries will be published in book form in 2011.

AAN has just signed a contract with Northwestern University Press to publish a book titled Best AltWeekly Writing 2009 and 2010.

The book will be a selection of first-place winning pieces from several categories, including feature writing, investigative reporting, food criticism, long and short news in both circulation categories from two years’ worth of the AAN contest.

“Northwestern University Press is very pleased to be publishing Best AltWeekly Writing in partnership with AAN,” says Henry Carrigan, senior editor and assistant director of the press. “At a time when major newspapers are experiencing real struggles providing both form and content to their readers, alternative weeklies continue to offer new and exciting ways to deliver content to their readers, keeping journalism alive and vital in the twenty-first century. The prize-winning articles in the collection represent the best of this work from alternative newsweeklies, providing a glimpse of the future of journalism.”

In addition to award-winning journalism, the book will include AAN’s “How I Got That Story” interview series with winning authors. Several of these interviews were conducted in 2009 by members of AAN’s editorial committee. Those interviews will now be converted to print form, and the committee members will be conducting the remainder of the interviews for publication.

Winners in the 2010 contest will be interviewed shortly after the announcements of awards at the July annual convention in Toronto.

“We’re very pleased that Northwestern is excited about also including the ‘How I Got That Story’ interviews,” says Julia Goldberg, AAN’s editorial chair, who is working directly with the press on the project. “While it’s really exciting that the high-quality work AAN papers produce is going to be presented by a prestigious press, the accompanying interviews that the hard-working members of the editorial committee are putting together are going to give the book even more depth.”