The 68th Annual National Book Awards Ceremony has come and gone and it was a good night for women writers. Hosted by Cynthia Nixon with guests like Bill Clinton, the ceremony celebrated some of the brightest names in 2017 literature. Women nabbed fifteen out of twenty National Book Award nominations and, ultimately, won four out of five. Considering the groups of judges for each category made totally independent decisions, that’s a pretty good sign of the changing times.

 

The winners in each category are:

 

Fiction winner:

 

Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing

 

^{Image Via National Book Foundation}

 

Fiction finalists:

 

Elliot Ackerman, Dark at the Crossing

 

Lisa Ko, The Leavers

 

Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

 

Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

 

Nonfiction winner:

 

Masha Gessen, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

 

^{Image Via Amazon}

 

Nonfiction finalists:

 

Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge

 

Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America

 

David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

 

Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America

 

Poetry winner:

 

Frank Bidart, Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 

 

^{Image Via National Book Foundation}

 

Poetry finalists:

 

Leslie Harrison, The Book of Endings

 

Layli Long Soldier, WHEREAS

 

Shane McCrae, In the Language of My Captor

 

Danez Smith, Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems

 

Young People’s Literature winner:

 

Robin Benway, Far from the Tree

 

^{Image Via National Book Foundation}

 

Young People’s Literature finalists:

 

Elana K. Arnold, What Girls Are Made Of

 

Erika L. Sánchez, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

 

Rita Williams-Garcia, Clayton Byrd Goes Underground

 

Ibi Zoboi, American Street

 

Jesmyn Ward’s last novel, Salvage the Bones, was also a National Book Award-winner. Sing, Unburied, Sing follows thirteen-year-old Mississippi boy Jojo as he reckons with the painful history of America through an inmate ghost that bears the whole history of the South. Though I haven’t read it, it sounds powerful and it’s nice to see socially conscious stories mash-up genres.

 

In terms of media attention, the National Book Awards pales in comparison to other mediums’ award ceremonies (i.e. the Oscars, Grammys, Emmys, etc.). Part of that is the lack of red carpet buzz. Emma Roberts put that to the test this year, though, wearing a beautiful Ulyana Sergeenko dress that’s completely sheer.

 

^{Image Via AOL}

 

The National Book Awards have a great track record, and Executive Director Lisa Lucas has been doing a great job modernizing the National Book Foundation (the ceremony streamed live on Facebook to half a million people!). It’s a bright day for book lovers, especially those wondering what to add to their holiday gift lists!

 

You can watch the full ceremony here (begins at about the 10 minute mark)!

 

 

Feature Images Via AOL and CelebMafia