The
National Book Awards are among the most eminent literary prizes in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Started in 1950, the awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the prior year, as well as lifetime achievement awards including the "Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters" and the "Literarian Award". The purpose of the awards is "to celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of good writing in America." In 1988 the
National Book FoundationThe National Book Foundation, founded 1988, is a non-profit American literary foundation established "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America." It achieves this through sponsoring the National Book Award, including the medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters...
was established which now oversees and manages the National Book Awards.
Awards are given in each of four categories:
fictionFiction is a branch of literature which deals, in part or in whole, with temporally contrafactual events...
, nonfiction,
poetryPoetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, and
young people's literatureChildren's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve and is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes exclude young-adult fiction, comic books, or other genres. Books specifically for children existed by the 17th century...
.
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The
National Book Awards are among the most eminent literary prizes in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Started in 1950, the awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the prior year, as well as lifetime achievement awards including the "Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters" and the "Literarian Award". The purpose of the awards is "to celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of good writing in America." In 1988 the
National Book FoundationThe National Book Foundation, founded 1988, is a non-profit American literary foundation established "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America." It achieves this through sponsoring the National Book Award, including the medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters...
was established which now oversees and manages the National Book Awards.
Awards are given in each of four categories:
fictionFiction is a branch of literature which deals, in part or in whole, with temporally contrafactual events...
, nonfiction,
poetryPoetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, and
young people's literatureChildren's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve and is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes exclude young-adult fiction, comic books, or other genres. Books specifically for children existed by the 17th century...
. Awards have been given in various other categories, which have since been retired or subsumed into the remaining categories.
The winners are selected in each category by an independent, expert and volunteer five-member judging panel. Panels typically consider hundreds of books in each category. A chair from each panel announces the runners-up and winner during the "The National Book Awards Ceremony and Dinner" held each year in November. The winners each receive a $10,000 cash prize and a bronze sculpture; finalists each receive $1,000, a medal, and a citation from the panel jury.
Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
The "Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters" (DCAL) is a lifetime achievement award. The medal comes with $10,000. The recipient is a person who "has enriched American literary heritage over a life of service, or a corpus of work."
- 1991: Eudora Welty
Eudora Alice Welty was an award-winning American author who wrote short stories and novels about the American South. Her book, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 and Welty was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards...
- 1992: James Laughlin
James Laughlin was an American poet and literary book publisher who founded New Directions Publishers.- Biography :He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Henry Hughart and Marjory Rea Laughlin...
- 1993: Clifton Fadiman
Clifton P. "Kip" Fadiman was an American intellectual, author, radio and television personality.- Literary career :...
- 1994: Gwendolyn Brooks
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an American writer. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.-Early years:...
- 1995: David McCullough
David Gaub McCullough is an American author, narrator, and lecturer. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award.Born and raised in Pittsburgh, McCullough attended Yale...
- 1996: Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize-winning American author, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed black characters...
- 1997: Studs Terkel
Louis "Studs" Terkel was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for The Good War, and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.-Early...
- 1998: John Updike
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....
- 1999: Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Gail Winfrey is an American media personality, actress, television producer, literary critic and magazine publisher, best known for her self-titled, multi-award winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history...
- 2000: Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American mainstream, fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer.Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury is widely considered one of the greatest and most popular American writers of speculative fiction of the...
- 2001: Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include awards-winning plays such as All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and The Crucible.Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the late 1940s, 1950s and...
- 2002: Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 story collection Goodbye, Columbus, and has since become one of the most honored authors of his generation: Roth's books have twice been awarded the National Book Award, twice the National Book Critics Circle award, and...
- 2003: Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American writer of contemporary horror fiction, science fiction, fantasy literature, and screenplays. An estimated 300–350 million copies of King's novels and short story collections have been sold, and many of his stories have been adapted for film, television, and...
- 2004: Judy Blume
Judy Blume is an American author. She has written many novels for children and young adults which have exceeded sales of 80 million and been translated into 31 languages...
- 2005: Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
- 2006: Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the [20th] century."-Early life:...
- 2007: Joan Didion
Joan Didion is an American author best known as a novelist and writer of personalized, journalistic essays. The disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos upon which her essays comment are explored more fully in her novels, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation...
- 2008: Maxine Hong Kingston
Maxine Hong Kingston is a Chinese American author and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated with a BA in English in 1962. Kingston has written three novels and several works of non-fiction about the experiences of Chinese immigrants living in the United...
- 2009: Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter and political activist...
Literarian Award
The "Literarian Award" is a lifetime achievement award. It is "presented to an individual for outstanding service to the American literary community, whose life and work exemplify the goals of the National Book Foundation to expand the audience for literature and to enhance the cultural value of literature in America."
- 2005: Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...
- 2006: Robert B. Silvers
Robert Benjamin Silvers is an American editor who has served as editor of The New York Review of Books since 1963. Jason Epstein's assessment of Silvers as "The most brilliant editor of a magazine ever to have worked in this country" has been "shared by virtually all of us who have been published...
and Barbara EpsteinBarbara Epstein was a literary editor and a founding co-editor of the New York Review of Books.Epstein, née Zimmerman, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, to a Jewish-American family, and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1949.Ms...
- 2007: Terry Gross
Terry Gross is the host and co-executive producer of Fresh Air, an interview format radio show produced by WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and distributed throughout the United States by National Public Radio. Gross has won praise over the years for her low-key and friendly yet often probing interview...
- 2008: Barney Rosset
Barney Rosset , is the former owner of the publishing house Grove Press, and publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Evergreen Review. He led a successful legal battle to publish the uncensored version of D. H...
- 2009: Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher.-Life:Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts, one of four siblings. His father was an attorney and his mother a school teacher. When Eggers was still a child, the family moved to the upscale suburb of Lake Forest, near Chicago...
See also
- The Man Booker Prize
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, also known in short as the Booker Prize, is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of either the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe...
- The Commonwealth Writers Prize
- The Prix Goncourt
The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...
- The Costa Book Awards
The Costa Book Awards are a series of literary awards given to books by authors based in the United Kingdom and Ireland. They were known as the Whitbread Book Awards until 2005, after which Costa Coffee, a subsidiary of Whitbread, took over sponsorship....
, formerly the Whitbread Book Awards
- The Governor General's Award
The Governor General's Awards are a collection of awards presented by the Governor General of Canada, marking distinction in a number of academic and artistic fields. The first was conceived in 1937 by John Buchan, Baron Tweedsmuir, a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction who created the...
- Literary festival
A literary festival, also known as a book festival or writers' festival, is a regular gathering of writers and readers, typically on an annual basis in a particular city...
External links