The National Book Awards are a group of yearly literary honours given out in the United States. The National Book Foundation rewards authors with two lifetime achievement awards in addition to the National Book Awards during the final National Book Awards Ceremony held each November.
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How National Book Award/American Literary Award was started - History
The American Booksellers Association founded the National Book Awards in 1936. They were discontinued during World War II and reinstituted by three groups representing the book business in 1950. The pre-war awards were open to publishers and authors from other countries. They are now given to American authors for works that were released in the country roughly during the award year.
The National Book Foundation is a non-profit organisation that was founded in 1988 to oversee the National Book Awards, improve them, and “go beyond [them] into the realms of education and literacy,” notably through funding authors’ public appearances. To “celebrate the best literature in America, increase its readership, and ensure that books have a prominent position in American culture,” according to its mission statement.
Nomination Process for National Book Awards
Currently, one book (author) receives a National Book Award every year in each of the following five categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translation, and children’s literature. Numerous more categories have received prizes, but they have since been retired or merged into the present five. The “Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters” and the “Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community” are two further lifetime achievement honours given out annually by the National Book Foundation.
The National Book Awards are open to publishers alone, however panels may request specific publisher nominations. The five judges on each panel are authors, librarians, booksellers, and literary critics. Along with seasoned authors, the judging panels were enlarged in 2013 to include professionals in the literary world.
Every year, each panel evaluates hundreds of novels from each of the five categories. The National Book Awards Foundation added a longlist in 2013, which was announced in September and featured ten titles each category before the finalists list, which was revealed in October and featured five titles per category.
The National Book Award for Translated Literature, a fifth category, was added in 2018 to honour translations for the first time since 1983. The chair of each judging panel announces the winners of the National Book Awards at the ceremony and dinner held in New York City each November. All finalists are given $1,000, a medal, and a written recommendation from the jury; the winners are given a bronze sculpture and $10,000.
National Book Awards Winners 2021
In 2021, Jason Mott won the National Book Award for fiction for his book “Hell of a Book”; Tiya Miles received a National Book Award in Non-fiction category for her book ‘All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake’; Martin Espada in the Poetry category for ‘Floaters’; Malinda Lo in the Yong People’s literature category for ‘Late Night at the Telegraph Club’; and Aneesa Abbass Higgins in Translated Fiction category for Elisa Shua Dusapin’s ‘Winter in Sokcho’.
Jason Mott National Book Award Winner 2021
The National Book Foundation’s goals are to promote American literature, increase readership, and guarantee that books play a significant role in American culture. The core convictions that serve as guidelines for the National Book Foundation that for a culture to flourish, books are necessary.
The depth of participation that books and literature offer contributes to the preservation, stimulation, and advancement of dialogue in American culture. No matter where the reader is located in terms of geography, economics, race, or anything else, books and literature are for everyone.
BlueRose Publishers have an award called BlueRose Awards for the authors who publish with us. Regardless of their genre, language, or geographic location, the prize aspires to recognise significant literary luminaries in the world of literature. The goal of the BlueRose Book Awards is to honour published authors who have consistently worked to improve society.
The goal of BlueRoseONE is to bring together under one roof the many true stories of well-known and up-and-coming authors. This area will provide readers and writers with a platform to explain and investigate the various shades of an author’s journey.
