Established in 1950, the National Book Award is an American literary prize given to writers by writers and administered by the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization. The mission of the National Book Foundation and the National Book Awards is to celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of good writing in America.
Each year, the Foundation selects a total of twenty Judges, including five in each of the four Award categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature. Judges are published writers who are known to be doing great work in their genre or field, and in some cases, are past NBA Finalists or Winners. One of the five Judges on each panel is selected as the panel chair. This person acts as the voice of the panel and the liaison to the Foundation. The Foundation staff takes no part in the Judges’ deliberations, except to verify a submission’s eligibility.
The night before the Awards, each Finalist receives a prize of $1,000, a medal, and a citation from the panel at a private Medal Ceremony. Immediately following the Medal Ceremony, all twenty Finalists read from their nominated books at the Finalists Reading. The four Winners in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature are announced the following evening at the National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner, where each Winner receives $10,000 and a bronze sculpture.Once an author has been a National Book Award Finalist or Winner, he or she becomes a permanent member of the National Book Foundation family.
Wednesday, 14th November 2012
judges announced
National Book Awards 2012 winners
FICTION
(Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
(Judges in the category of fiction in the year 2012 were: Stacey D’Erasmo, Dinaw Mengestu, Lorrie Moore, Janet Peery)
NONFICTION
(Random House)
(Judges in the category of fiction in the year 2012 were: Brad Gooch, Linda Gordon, Woody Holton, Susan Orlean, Judith Shulevitz)
POETRY
David Ferry, Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations
(University of Chicago Press)
(Judges in the category of poetry in the year 2012 were: Laura Kasischke, Dana Levin, Maurice Manning, Patrick Rosal, Tracy K. Smith)
YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE
(Margaret K. McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing)
(Judges in the category of young people’s literature in the year 2012 were: Susan Cooper, Daniel Ehrenhaft, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Gary D. Schmidt, Marly Youmans)
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