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National Book Award: Winners, Finalists, and Longlisted Titles

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National Book Award Medals

The mission of the National Book Foundation is to celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of great writing in America. National Book Awards are given in five categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature.

Here we highlight the winners of African descent. The first African-American writer to win a National Book Award was Ralph Ellison, in 1953, for Invisible Man.

One Book Honored by the National Book Foundation in 1969

Finalist – Poetry
In the Mecca

In the Mecca

by Gwendolyn Brooks

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Poetry, Hardcover, 55 pages
ISBN: 9780060105372Publisher: HarperCollins
Book Description:

In The Mecca (1968), a long poem about a mother searching for her lost child in a Chicago apartment building. In The Mecca was nominated for the National Book Award for poetry.
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