On the evening of November 19, attendees to the 76th National Book Awards crowded into Cipriani Wall Street in Manhattan in their black-tie best to witness the announcement of publishing’s highest honors. Grammy Award–winning songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae opened the night with a pared-down rendition of her hit song “Put Your Records On,” setting an intimate tone for the ceremony.
The night’s emcee, author, comedian, and Emmy Award–winning actor Jeff Heller kicked things off with brief and occasionally self-effacing remarks. Bidding a “good evening to the gliterati of the literati,” Hiller said that “surely they could have gotten someone cooler than me, like Patricia Lockwood or Ocean Vuong or a drag queen named something literary, like Elena Ferrante.” (To prove just how minor of a celebrity he is, Hiller confessed that there was a typo in the title printed on the spine of his debut memoir, Actress of a Certain Age.)
Hiller concluded by thanking just about every member of the publishing ecosystem—authors, editors, marketers, designers, publicists, rights managers, copyeditors, the Big Five, small publishers, micropresses, audiobook producers, celebrities with book clubs, indie bookstores—“for giving us books.”
Author Jacqueline Woodson then took the stage to present Roxane Gay with the night’s first lifetime achievement award, the Literarian Award, which recognizes outstanding service to the American literary community. Woodson lauded Gay for “walking through the world with a deep understanding of the assignment,” citing her eponymous imprint at Grove Atlantic, her mentorship of aspiring publishing professionals, and her newsletter, the Audacity, which she uses to spotlight emerging writers.
Gay received a standing ovation from much of the audience as she walked onto the stage, where, after handing down thank-yous, she used her time to call on those in the audience to amend the inequalities that have historically beset the book business.
Acknowledging the oft-repeated refrain that white male authors are struggling for recognition, Gay focused instead on the many writers of color who have been dismissed whenever they have “tried to articulate the biases that we face in the publishing industry, to say nothing of the world writ large.” Gay, by contrast, called herself the “rare bird” who has had “nothing but” good experiences in the industry as a Black woman, and described how she has used that privilege to advocate on her peers’ behalf. In closing, Gay did not mince her words, saying that inequity “really does not have to be the case in publishing,” before directly addressing the audience.
“I hope that the people gathered here tonight for this wonderful celebration,” she said, “recognize that you have the power to create the change that the publishing industry so desperately needs, and you will be remembered for how you use that power, or how you don’t.”
New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman presented the evening’s second lifetime achievement award, the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, to George Saunders, who Treisman said “has done enough for several lifetimes, [but] I don’t think he has finished achieving.”
In his speech, Saunders, the author of 13 books and a past National Book Award finalist for his 2013 story collection Tenth of December (Random House), reflected on the pleasures and possibilities of writing, which he called “a kind of sacrament.”
“Literature,” he said, “isn’t some quaint, outdated, artsy thing,” but something we do every day, while writing is a “secret, truth-seeking, anti-suffering practice.” He admitted that in his youth, he believed “a life of literature was going to be this kind of glamorous lone wolf thing,” but realized that in fact he has spent the last several decades “wandering around into the orbits of people who for some reason care about me and want the best for me.” He thanked those people—including his editors and agent, Esther Newberg at CAA—as well as those who had read his work and “those who had planned to read it but never quite got around to it.”
National Book Foundation chairman David Steinberger then took the stage to introduce a video about the scope of the foundation’s work, which he noted extends far beyond the National Book Awards. Though the NBF was initially founded to present the awards, he said, today “we reach readers of all ages, all across the country, every day of the year.” Steinberger was followed by NBF executive director Ruth Dickey, who encouraged donations to the foundation, which she noted is “standing up loudly and bravely in support of books” amid “book bans at the local, state, and now federal level” as well as “the erosion of government funding to support the literary ecosystem.”
The first award of the evening was the prize for Young People’s Literature, presented by panel chair David Bowles to The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story by Daniel Nayeri (Levine Querido).
In his remarks, Nayeri reminisced about his time as an editor in New York a decade ago, where from his window he could see asylum seekers queued up at a federal immigration center, calling to mind how his own family had been through the same experience 25 years earlier. There was a feeling, he said, of being on “probation,” unlike those he could see as he worked in the building across the street—and that dissonance, he noted, was a theme that comes up in his book. In closing, Nayeri thanked his agent Joanna Volpe, Arthur A. Levine, and Alexandra, his wife, “the only one I’ve been trying to impress all these years.”
This award for Translated Literature—introduced by panel chair Stesha Brandon, who opined that literary translations “invite us to build bridges in the face of closing borders and geopolitical unrest”—went to We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers (New Directions).
Upon taking the stage, the Argentine author declared, in Spanish, “I’m going to speak in Spanish because I know there are fascists who don’t like it.” She went on to thank Argentina’s public education system, without which, she said “the people of the working class, like me, would never be here.” Myers then took the mic to translate Cabezón Cámara’s remarks, and called the book “the privilege of my career to translate.” She also commented that she translated the book while in Mexico and Argentina, two nations that she noted were marred by the legacy of colonialism, and added that her country of origin, the U.S., is currently persecuting migrants and “continues to perpetrate the genocide of Israel against the Palestinian people.”
The National Book Award for Poetry went to Patricia Smith for her collection The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems (S&S). After panel chair and 2010 National Book Award winner Terrance Hayes announced the honor, Smith devoted her speech to her mother, who died in 2024.
Recounting her painful experiences interacting with her mom during her illness, Smith said, “You’re probably wondering what this has to do with poetry—I’ll tell you.” As the audience listened closely, Smith offered that poetry helps one to “look at where you are”—her mother did not recognize her in her final years, she said, but poetry told her, “look how pretty she is anyway.” Smith acknowledged the tradition of Black women writers and poets—including Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde—she has inherited, before walking off to a standing ovation.
The award for Nonfiction was presented by panel member Raj Patel, who opined that nonfiction inspires profound noticing, “not because learn facts, though we do, but because we are confronted with a world seen with a writer’s light.” When Patel announced One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad (Knopf) as the winner, much of the room rose to their feet in a standing ovation.
El Akkad thanked his mother, wife, and two children, “who, and I cannot stress this enough, didn’t sign up for any of this shit,” commending them for having to “deal with the many ways the publication of this book has upended our lives.” “It’s very difficult to think in celebratory terms about a book that was written in response to a genocide,” he continued, adding that he is “nonetheless deeply grateful to the writers who have spoken out, and there are many of them in this room.” He concluded by declaring, “If we are to do this work of language we have an obligation to stand in opposition to any force, including those enacted by our own government, that if left unchecked would happily decimate every principle of free expression and connection that we come here to celebrate.”
To cap off the night, Fiction panel chair Rumaan Alam prefaced the winner announcement with the assertion that “it is an absurd enterprise” to sum up the best in contemporary American fiction with a single award, but nonetheless a “worthy” one. The prize for fiction went to Rabih Alameddine for The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) (Grove).
Alameddine began on a somber note following El Akkad’s speech, thanking the nonfiction winner for addressing the political climate, citing both the recent raids by ICE and the conflict in Gaza. “Sometimes as writers, we have to say, ‘enough,’ ” Alameddine stated. Quickly, the novelist turned to his own speech, which included a sincere and humor-tinged list of thank-you’s for the support system that makes writing possible. Alameddine mentioned the usual suspects—production staff, editors, and his agent (whom he affectionately called his “dominatrix”)—before moving onto the “drug dealers,” “gastrointestinal doctors,” and other individuals who made his book possible, behind the scenes.
“I do not write my books all by myself. It takes a family, and I am grateful,” he said to the crowd, closing out the ceremony and kicking off a celebration of the written word that would continue into the early hours of Thursday.
