To-read lists everywhere may have scribbled new additions this week, as the 2012 National Book Award winners were announced at the National Book Award dinner in Manhattan Wednesday night.
Of the four categories, William Alexander’s “Goblin Secrets” won in young people’s literature, David Ferry’s “Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations” won in poetry, Katherine Boo’s “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity” won in nonfiction and Louise Erdrich’s “The Round House” won in fiction.
According to The New York Times, Erdrich’s winner is “a novel about a teenage boy’s effort to investigate an attack on his mother on a North Dakota reservation and his struggle to come to terms with violence in their culture.” The Timessaid Erdirch, in her acceptance speech in both English and her Native American language, said of her novel:
“This is a book about a huge case of injustice ongoing on reservations. Thank you for giving it a wider audience.”
Erdrich emerged victorious among highly lauded competition; the finalists in the fiction category included former Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz’s “This Is How You Lose Her,” Dave Eggers’s “A Hologram for the King,” Ben Fountain’s “Billy Flynn’s Long Halftime Walk” and Kevin Powers’s “The Yellow Birds.” The high profile nature of this year’s fiction category follows on the heels of criticism of previous nominee pools: critics have claimed that little-known authors have garnered the majority of nominations in years past, according to TheTimes. Continuing that trajectory, the nonfiction category was also spilling with recognized talent, including biographer Robert Caro and late journalist Anthony Shadid, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and The New York Timesand Washington Post writer.
For the 63rd year of the National Book Award, the dinner was treated a little differently. In attempts to increase the impact of the awards, the Times said, the ceremony included a red carpet for the entrance of high profile guests like brat pack actress Molly Ringwald, who now adds authorship to her repertoire; a Brooklyn disc jockey provided tunes and the event was transplanted to a Wall Street location.
While the ceremony takes place many miles from Starkville, threads tied to Mississippi weave throughout the history of the National Book Award. William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty are among the Mississippi writers who have been graced with the award for fiction. Even more recently, last year’s fiction winner, “Salvage the Bones,” was Mississippi native Jesmyn Ward’s second novel. The book details 12 days leading up to (and briefly following) Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of the small Mississippi coastal town of Bois Sauvage, told by 15-year-old Esch as she and her family prepare for and confront the storm.
For more information on the National Book Award Foundation, current and past winners and nominees, visit nationalbook.org.