2011 National Book Award Winners to Be Announced Tonight

Tonight, at 8:00 p.m. ET, the winners of the 2011 National Book Award will be announced. For the first time ever it will be webcast live from New York City.

The awards began in 1950 when a consortium of book publishing groups sponsored the first ceremony and dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. The founding mission was to enhance the public's awareness of exceptional books written by fellow Americans and to increase the popularity of reading in general. The Awards are given to recognize achievements in four genres: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people's literature. The winners which are selected by five-member, independent judging panels for each genre, receive a $10,000 cash award and a crystal sculpture.

On the evening before the Awards Ceremony, the finalists are celebrated in an evening of readings from all the nominated books.  You can hear the fiction finalists read from their works on NPR.

This year there were 1,223 books submitted for the National Book Awards. There were 315 in fiction, 441 in nonfiction, 189 in poetry, and 278 in young people's literature. The 2011 finalists are:

FICTION

The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

NONFICTION

The Convert: a tale of exile and extremism by Deborah Baker

Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the birth of a revolution by Mary Gabriel

The Swerve: how the world became modern by Stephen Greenblatt

Malcolm X: a life of reinvention by Manning Marable

Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, a tale of love and fallout by Lauren Redniss

POETRY

Head Off & Split by Nikky Finney

The Chameleon Couch by Yusef Komunyadaa

Double Shadow by Carl Phillips

Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: poems 2007-2010 by Adrienne Rich

Devotions by Bruce Smith

YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE

Chime by Franny Billingsley

My Name is Not Easy by Debby Dahl Edwardson

Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai

Flesh & Blood So Cheap: the triangle fire and its legacy by Albert Marrin

Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt


Congratulations to all of the finalists!

Angela