Watch the 2011 National Book Award Finalists via a live Webcast. http://www.nationalbook.org

In the fiction category, only Tea Obreht's wonderful debut, The Tiger's Wife, hit bestseller lists. The other four nominees — Julie Otsuka's Buddha in the Attic, Andrew Krivak's The Sojourn, Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones, and Edith Pearlman's Binocular Vision — are beautiful pieces of work, but not strong sellers or even part of the mainstream literary conversation. (read full article)

Also read Laura Miller's Salon piece, "How the National Book Awards Made Themselves Irrelevant."

See how many of the authors AALBC.com tracks: win tonight:

Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones and Nikky Finney, Head Off & Split win national Book awards!

http://aalbc.it/nikkyspeech

"Black people were the only people in the United States ever explicitly, forbidden, to become literate."

If you don't do anything else today, listen Nikky Finney, 2011 National Book Awards acceptance speech.

One industry icon said it best, "I was moved and speechless by Finny's acceptance speech... the woman spoke the truth with such grace and elegance....She done herself, and all of us Damn proud!