National Book Award Winners 2017

Happy after-Thanksgiving! Looking for something to read? Why not choose from the recently minted National Book Award winners. Jesmyn Ward took home the ficion award for Sing, Unburied, Sing (Scribner/Simon & Schuster). This is the second time Ward's writing has been recognzied by the National Book Foundation; her Salvage the Bones won in 2011. Sing, Unburied, Sing explores the life if a young boy raised by his grandparents in Mississippi and how he navigates the gritty path into adulthood.                                                

Masha Gessen won the nonfiction prize for The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (Riverhead Books/Penguin Random House). A Russian-American journalist, Gessen explores how the return of totalitarinism impacts the lives of four Russians.                                                                                

                                                                                                                                                                                                   Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 by Frank Bidart won for poetry (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux), and Robin Benway's Far from the Tree was recognized as the winner for young people's literature.                           

                                                                                                                                                                                              Recoginzed for her contribution to American letters, Annie Proulx said in her acceptance speech that though we may live in troubled times, it's great books like those recognized by the National Book Foundation that give us hope for the future.                                                                                                                     

A complete list of winners and finalists may be found here.