The 2019 National Book Award Winners Are All Instant Must-Reads

Photo credit: Grove Press - Instagram
Photo credit: Grove Press - Instagram

From Oprah Magazine


Established in 1950, the National Book Awards are essentially the Oscars of American literature. The prestigious awards honor exemplary books released within the last year within the categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, young people’s literature, and translated literature.

On Wednesday, the winners of the 70th National Book Awards were announced in a ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street in New York. Fittingly, the black-tie event was hosted by Reading Rainbow's LeVar Burton, patron saint of good books. “It is storytelling that holds our civilization together," Burton said at the event.

We couldn't agree with Burton more—and for many book lovers, storytelling is what holds our lives together. Below, find a complete list of the 25 nominees and five winners of this year's National Book Awards. Your TBR list will thank you.

Fiction

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi (Winner!)

Sabrina & Corina: Stories by Kali Fajardo-Anstine

Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

The Other Americans by Laila Lalami

Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips

Nonfiction

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom (Winner!)

Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom

What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forché

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer

Solitary by Albert Woodfox and Leslie George

Young People's Literature

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks by Jason Reynolds

Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay

Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All by Laura Ruby

1919: The Year that Changed America by Martin W. Sandler (Winner!)

Translated Literature

Death Is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa
Translated from the Arabic by Leri Price

Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming by László Krasznahorkai (Winner!)
Translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet

The Barefoot Woman by Scholastique Mukasonga
Translated from the French by Jordan Stump

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
Translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder

Crossing by Pajtim Statovci
Translated from the Finnish by David Hackston

Poetry

The Tradition by Jericho Brown

I: New and Selected Poems by Toi Derricotte

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

Be Recorder by Carmen Gimenez Smith

Sight Lines by Arthur Sze (Winner!)


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