National Book Award 2015 winners announced

In the US, the winners of the 2015 National Book Awards have been announced. The fiction award was presented to Adam Johnson for Fortune Smiles: Stories (Doubleday), a collection of six stories that explore ‘love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal’. Ta-Nehisi Coates won the nonfiction award for Between the World and Me (Text), which examines the history and experience of being black in the US in the form of letter to his teenage son. The young people’s literature award went to Challenger Deep (Neal Shusterman, HarperCollins) and the poetry award went to Voyage of the Sable Venus (Robin Coste Lewis, Knopf). The Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters was awarded to Don DeLillo, and James Patterson was the recipient of the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. The winners in the four major categories each receive a cash prize of US$10,000 (A$14,000) and a bronze sculpture, while the shortlisted finalists each receive US$1000 (A$1400). The annual awards, which are open to books written by a US citizen, aim to ‘enhance the cultural value of great writing in America’. For more information about the award, click here. 

Category: International news