National Book Award: Winners, Finalists, and Longlisted Titles
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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.
2 Books Honored by the National Book Foundation in 2012
Finalist – Fiction
This Is How You Lose Her
by Junot Diaz
List Price: $26.95
Knopf (Sep 11, 2012)
Fiction, Hardcover, 224 pages
ISBN: 9781594487361Publisher: Penguin Random House
Book Description:
Pulitzer Prize-winner Junot D az s first book, Drown, established him as a major new writer with the dispassionate eye of a journalist and the tongue of a poet (Newsweek). His first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, was named #1 Fiction Book of the Year by Time magazine and spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, establishing itself with more than a million copies in print as a modern classic. In addition to the Pulitzer, D az has won a host of major awards and prizes, including the National Book Critic s Circle Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, the PEN/O. Henry Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the Anisfield-Wolf Award.Now D az turns his remarkable talent to the haunting, impossible power of love obsessive love, illicit love, fading love, maternal love. On a beach in the Dominican Republic, a doomed relationship flounders. In the heat of a hospital laundry room in New Jersey, a woman does her lover s washing and thinks about his wife. In Boston, a man buys his love child, his only son, a first baseball bat and glove. At the heart of these stories is the irrepressible, irresistible Yunior, a young hardhead whose longing for love is equaled only by his recklessness and by the extraordinary women he loves and loses: artistic Alma; the aging Miss Lora; Magdalena, who thinks all Dominican men are cheaters; and the love of his life, whose heartbreak ultimately becomes his own. In prose that is endlessly energetic, inventive, tender, and funny, the stories in the New York Times-Bestselling This Is How You Lose Her lay bare the infinite longing and inevitable weakness of the human heart. They remind us that passion always triumphs over experience, and that the half-life of love is forever.
Pulitzer Prize-winner Junot D az s first book, Drown, established him as a major new writer with the dispassionate eye of a journalist and the tongue of a poet (Newsweek). His first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, was named #1 Fiction Book of the Year by Time magazine and spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, establishing itself with more than a million copies in print as a modern classic. In addition to the Pulitzer, D az has won a host of major awards and prizes, including the National Book Critic s Circle Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, the PEN/O. Henry Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the Anisfield-Wolf Award.Now D az turns his remarkable talent to the haunting, impossible power of love obsessive love, illicit love, fading love, maternal love. On a beach in the Dominican Republic, a doomed relationship flounders. In the heat of a hospital laundry room in New Jersey, a woman does her lover s washing and thinks about his wife. In Boston, a man buys his love child, his only son, a first baseball bat and glove. At the heart of these stories is the irrepressible, irresistible Yunior, a young hardhead whose longing for love is equaled only by his recklessness and by the extraordinary women he loves and loses: artistic Alma; the aging Miss Lora; Magdalena, who thinks all Dominican men are cheaters; and the love of his life, whose heartbreak ultimately becomes his own. In prose that is endlessly energetic, inventive, tender, and funny, the stories in the New York Times-Bestselling This Is How You Lose Her lay bare the infinite longing and inevitable weakness of the human heart. They remind us that passion always triumphs over experience, and that the half-life of love is forever.
Finalist – Poetry
Fast Animal
by Tim Seibles
List Price: $14.00
Etruscan Press (Feb 07, 2012)
Poetry, Paperback, 72 pages
ISBN: 9780983294429Publisher: Etruscan Press
Book Description:
2012 National Book Award Finalist in Poetry
Crisply comic,disarmingly frank, and aurally bold
Publishers WeeklyThis collection by African American poet Tim Seibles explores a range of poetic form, including lyric, ode, narrative, and mystical. Like a "fast animal," the poet s voice can swiftly change direction and tone as he crisscrosses between present and past. Built like one single sustained song, Fast Animal is alive with music, ardor, and wit that flow in utterances that are uniquely [Seibles ] and his alone." Laure-Anne Bosselaar, author of The Hour BetweenFrom "Delores Jepps"It seems insane now, but
she d be standing soaked
in schoolday morning light,
her loose-leaf notebook,
flickering at the bus stop,
and we almost trembled
at the thought of her mouth
filled for a moment with both
of our short names. I don t know
what we saw when we saw
her face, but at fifteen there s
so much left to believe in Tim Seibles, who teaches at Old Dominion University, is the author of six previous books, including Body Moves and Hurdy-Gurdy. His poetry has been featured in Best American Poetry 2010. Seibles has been the recipient of an NEA grant for poetry and Open Voice award.
2012 National Book Award Finalist in Poetry
Crisply comic,disarmingly frank, and aurally bold
Publishers WeeklyThis collection by African American poet Tim Seibles explores a range of poetic form, including lyric, ode, narrative, and mystical. Like a "fast animal," the poet s voice can swiftly change direction and tone as he crisscrosses between present and past. Built like one single sustained song, Fast Animal is alive with music, ardor, and wit that flow in utterances that are uniquely [Seibles ] and his alone." Laure-Anne Bosselaar, author of The Hour BetweenFrom "Delores Jepps"It seems insane now, but
she d be standing soaked
in schoolday morning light,
her loose-leaf notebook,
flickering at the bus stop,
and we almost trembled
at the thought of her mouth
filled for a moment with both
of our short names. I don t know
what we saw when we saw
her face, but at fifteen there s
so much left to believe in Tim Seibles, who teaches at Old Dominion University, is the author of six previous books, including Body Moves and Hurdy-Gurdy. His poetry has been featured in Best American Poetry 2010. Seibles has been the recipient of an NEA grant for poetry and Open Voice award.
