National Book Awards Announced

The National Book Foundation announced the winners of the 2021 National Book Awards on Nov. 17. The live-streamed ceremony was hosted by Phoebe Robinson, author of You Can’t Touch My Hair and Other Things I Still Have to Explain; Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay; and the newly released Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes.

The mission of the National Book Foundation is to celebrate the best literature in America, expand the audience for literature and ensure that books have a prominent place in American culture. Each year the foundation awards $10,000 and a bronze sculpture to the best books in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature and young people’s literature.

The 2021 award recipients are Hell of a Book by Jason Mott (fiction); All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles (nonfiction); Floaters by Martin Espada (poetry); Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin, translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins (translated literature); and Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo (young people’s literature).

Cathryn Mercier was the chair; additional judges were Pablo Cartaya, Traci Chee, Leslie Connor and Ibi Aanu Zoboi.