Although no Norton authors walked away with a National Book Award last night, the house made an impressive showing and has signed one nominee to a new deal. Right off the bat, the independent publisher was represented in both Fiction, with Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, and in Young People's Literature, with David Small’s graphic memoir, Stitches.

The house also managed a late addition in Fiction by buying trade paperback reprint rights to the nominated short story collection published by Wayne State University Press, Bonnie Jo Campbell's American Salvage. Norton's Jill Bialosky brokered the deal for reprint rights to that title with agent Ryan Fischer-Harbage; Bialosky also acquired Campbell's next book, in a separate deal struck with Campbell's agent Bill Clegg of William Morris Endeavor, taking North American rights to Once upon a River. River, which is slated for spring 2011, is, per Norton, a “Huck Finn-like story” about a young woman who drifts down the Kalamazoo River after the death of her father.