The winners of the 67th annual National Book Awards were announced tonight at a ceremony hosted by Larry Wilmore. He opened the night with inevitable jokes about the presidential election, describing the declining emotional health of liberals on November 8 as akin to everyone’s dog dying at the same time. The political banter then transitioned into more literary-based humor, as Wilmore told the crowd that Trump’s election will have a big impact on publishing. For example, Wilmore informed the crowed that all of President-elect Trump’s books are currently being moved from the nonfiction section in libraries to the horror section, while the Constitution gets moved over to the fiction shelf. Wilmore also suggested that many books might actually change their titles to reflect the new leadership regime, saying that Pride and Prejudice will now be called Pride and Really [self-censored] Prejudice. The awards presentations were then free to commence, and the finalists and winners (bolded) of this year’s National Book Awards are as follows.
FICTION:
Chris Bachelder, The Throwback Special
Paulette Jiles, News of the World
Karan Mahajan, The Association of Small Bombs
Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad
Jacqueline Woodson, Another Brooklyn
NONFICTION:
Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Viet Thanh Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War
Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America
Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy
POETRY:
Daniel Borzutzky, The Performance of Becoming Human
Rita Dove, Collected Poems 1974 – 2004
Peter Gizzi, Archeophonics
Jay Hopler, The Abridged History of Rainfall
Solmaz Sharif, Look
YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE:
Kate DiCamillo, Raymie Nightingale
John Lewis, Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell (Artist), March: Book Three
Grace Lin, When the Sea Turned to Silver
Jason Reynolds, Ghost
Nicola Yoon, The Sun Is Also a Star
