National Book Awards Ceremony Reflects Hope for the Future

National Book Award winners, left to right: Mark Doty, Annette Gordon-Reed, Judy Blundell, Peter Matthiessen (click for larger image) Photo: Sonja Shield

The winners of the 59th National Book Awards were announced last night at a black-tie ceremony in New York City. Approximately 700 people packed the Cipriani Wall Street Grand Ballroom for the formal dinner, which benefited the National Book Foundation, the sponsor of the awards. Peter Matthiessen, a previous National Book Award winner in the nonfiction category, won this year's fiction prize for Shadow Country (Modern Library). Annette Gordon-Reed became the first African-American woman to win in the nonfiction category, for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (Norton). Mark Doty's Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems (HarperCollins) took the poetry prize, and Judy Blundell won in the young people's literature category for What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic). Also honored were Maxine Hong Kingston, who received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and publisher Barney Rosset, who received a Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.

Matthiessen told the audience of publishers, authors, and media that he hadn't prepared a speech. "What do you do with that pathetic little speech in your pocket if you don't win?" he queried. But he then ably went on to thank his agent, family, and friends, including John Irving, for supporting him in constructing the novel that took 30 years and "was quite a trial for everybody, including me."

Following the awards ceremony, Matthiessen talked about independent booksellers' role in literature in the U.S. "All my life I've favored independent booksellers," he said. "They are the heart of American readership."

With heavy brass prize in hand, Gordon-Reed told the audience that she was reaping an "autumn harvest" -- celebrating her 50th birthday on the same day she won the National Book Award and following the election of Barack Obama to the U.S. presidency. Reed said it was wonderful for her book of Thomas Jefferson's slave family to have been published at this time. "All Americans," she said, "we are on a great journey now."

In acknowledgement of the poet greats in attendance, including Robert Pinsky, Frank Bidart, and Richard Howard, Doty said he was honored to accept the poetry award "in the company of my makers." Quoting feminist writer and human rights activist Tillie Olsen, who died last year, Doty said, "'Literature is a place for generosity and affection and hunger for equals -- not a prize-fight ring. We are increased, confirmed in our medium, roused to do our best, by every good writer, every fine achievement.' That is exactly how I feel about this list of finalists."

Noting that he could now officially call Paul Lisicky his husband rather than his partner, Doty said that despite the recent passage of Proposition 8 in California, "it is plain that were on a path of equality for all Americans."

Judy Blundell told the crowd that she had probably worked for many of the publishing houses in the room and had "joyfully" written well over a hundred books under names other then her own. What I Saw and How I Lied, however, was "the first book I put my name on," she said, and credited David Levithan, the Scholastic editor with whom she'd worked on many of those titles, for suggesting that she write one of her own. "So thank you," she said, "to David, my brilliant editor, for giving me back my voice."

At the post-awards photo session, Blundell told BTW that she "haunts independent bookstores" and wishes someone would open one in her hometown of Katonah, New York.

Publishing legend and defender of the First Amendment, Barney Rossett, who famously fought for and won the right to publish Henry Miller and D.H. Lawrence, said upon being presented with the National Book Foundation's Literarian Award, "No one has the right to tell us what we can and cannot read." He added that it seemed, almost impossibly, this country has "turned its gaze back" toward progressive ideals and that the country "looks like it may emerge from dark decades with a new and uplifting agenda."

Maxine Hong Kingston, who was being recognized for her life's work, also alluded to an era of new possibility ushered in by the Obama election. In fact, despite another day of bad economic news, and the location of the venue on Wall Street, the mood of the evening reflected more hope for the future than troubled financial times. Kingston, whose works include The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of Girlhood Among Ghosts, said, "I've changed from being a warrior to being a pacifist. The task now is to invent a language of peace." --Karen Schechner