SUNDAY REVIEW / NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS WINNERS

Racism was the overriding theme of the 2016 winning books at the 67^th annual National Book Awards held in New York City on November 16 (this blog posted semi-finalists on November 6). www.nationalbook.org

Each winning author per category will be awarded $10,000.

Quickly to the winners:

Fiction:

Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

Nonfiction Nominees

--Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

Poetry Nominees

Daniel Borzutzky, The Performance of Becoming Human

Young People's Literature Nominees

John Lewis, Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell, March: Book Three

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

COLIN WHITEHEAD

Colson Whitehead is the New York Times bestselling author of The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and one collection of essays, The Colossus of New York. A Pulitzer Prize finalist and a recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, he lives in New York City.

IBRAM X. KENDI

Ibram X. Kendi is currently an assistant professor of African American History at the University of Florida. An intellectual and social movement Africana studies historian, Kendi studies racist and antiracist ideas and movements. He has published essays in books and academic journals, including The Journal of African American History, Journal of Social History, and The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture. Kendi is the author of the award-winning book, The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965-1972, which was published in March 2012 as part of Palgrave Macmillan’s Contemporary Black History Series. He is currently finishing Black Apple: A Narrative History of Malcolm X and Black Power in New York, 1954-1974. He is also working on another history of racism—the sequel to Stamped from the Beginning.

DANIEL BORZUTSKY

Daniel Borzutzky’s books and chapbooks include, among others, In the Murmurs of the Rotten Carcass Economy, Bedtime Stories for the End of the World!, Data Bodies, The Book of Interfering Bodies, and The Ecstasy of Capitulation. He has translated Raúl Zurita’s The Country of Planks and Song for His Disappeared Love, and Jaime Luis Huenún’s Port Trakl (2008). His work has been supported by the Illinois Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pen/Heim Translation Fund. He lives in Chicago.

John Lewis (CENTER) co-authored the third volume of the graphic memoir March Trilogy with Andrew Aydin, drawn by Nate Powell. Lewis is Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District Representative and an American icon widely known for his role in the Civil Rights Movement. He is the author of Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, published in 1999, which won numerous awards; and Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change, published in 2012.

Andrew Aydin, an Atlanta native, grew up reading and collecting comic books. After college, upon taking a job with Congressman Lewis, Andrew (LEFT) learned that the civil rights legend had been inspired as a young man by a classic 1950s comic book, Martin Luther King & The Montgomery Story. They discussed the impact that comic books can have on young readers and decided to write a graphic novel together about the civil rights era. A few years later, the March series was born. Today, Andrew serves as Digital Director & Policy Advisor to Congressman Lewis in Washington, D.C.

Nate Powell (LEFT), called by Booklist magazine “the most prodigiously talented graphic novelist of his generation,” was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. In addition to the March series, his work includes Rick Riordan’s The Lost Hero, You Don’t Say, Any Empire, Swallow Me Whole, The Silence of Our Friends, and The Year of the Beasts. Nate’s work has received copious honors, including the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Novel, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize nomination, and four “Great Graphic Novels for Teens” from the American Library Association. His animated illustrations in Southern Poverty Law Center’s documentary Selma: The Bridge to the Ballot have reached one million students in over 50,000 schools across the nation, and he is currently preparing a new graphic novel, Cover.

MORE ON THE NATIONAL BOOK CLUB AWARDS

The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors.

The National Book Awards were established in 1936 by the American Booksellers Association, abandoned during World War II, and re-established by three book industry organizations in 1950. Non-U.S. authors and publishers were eligible for the pre-war awards. Now they are presented to U.S. authors for books published in the United States roughly during the award year.

LISA LUCAS, DIRECTOR
National Book Awards

The nonprofit National Book Foundation was established in 1988 to administer and enhance the National Book Awards and "move beyond [them] into the fields of education and literacy", primarily by sponsoring public appearances by writers. Its mission is "to celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of good writing in America."

In 2010, there were 1,115 books nominated for the four award categories, led by the Nonfiction category with 435 nominations. The 2011 ceremony was held on November 16 in New York City.—Wikipedia.

MORE ON PILLAR TO POST BLOG

Pillar to Post coverage in its weekly “Sunday Review” postings will detail each of the four 2016 National Book Award works in separate postings in 2017.  Bookmark: www.pillartopost.org

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