The National Book Awards celebrate the best of American literature and aim to enhance the cultural value of great writing nationwide. The Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau is proud to represent three speakers on the National Book Awards longlist, and one nominee on the shortlist this year. Read more about them below!
2020 National Book Awards Winner
Interior Chinatown - Charles Yu
Shortlisted for the National Book Award in fiction, Interior Chinatown is a genre-bending masterpiece that explores the confining stereotypes of Asian Americans in Hollywood and in American culture more broadly. Both extensively researched and startlingly original, Interior Chinatown is a profound and topical exploration of the weight of stereotypes, racism, and assimilation in American culture.
2020 National Book Awards Longlist
Caste - Isabel Wilkerson
Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of our Discontents examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how a hierarchy of social divisions still defines our lives today. Wilkerson brings the past’s complexities to vivid life through her passionate research and her profound gift for connecting with audiences of all backgrounds.
A Burning - Megha Majumdar
The stunning debut from Megha Majumdar, A Burning, relentlessly traces the lives of three characters whose fates become irrevocably intertwined in the wake of a devastating act of domestic terrorism. Set in a contemporary India, Majumdar ignites a dazzling literary thriller about fate, justice, class, and political turmoil that—despite the specificity of its setting—feels unsettlingly universal.
The Vanishing Half - Brit Bennett
Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half is an engrossing page-turner about inseparable twin sisters, one black and one white, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds. Bennett explores the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person’s decisions, desires, and expectations.
Past Winners – Fiction
2018: The Friend - Sigrid Nunez
A literary sensation and a writer of uncommon talent, Sigrid Nunez is the author of many novels. Her writing spans over a wide range of genres and themes, but the constant is the level of familiarity she achieves with her readers through her intimate and confessional tone.
2016: The Underground Railroad (Pulitzer Prize Winner) (National Book Award Winner) (Oprah's Book Club) - Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead has established himself as one of the most versatile and innovative writers in contemporary literature. The author of eight books, he is a MacArthur fellow and Pulitzer Prize finalist.
2014: Redeployment - Phil Klay
United States Marine Corps veteran Phil Klay wowed critics and readers alike with his short story collection Redeployment, which was named “one of the best debuts of the year” (The Oregonian.)
Past Winners – Non-Fiction
2015: Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates
MacArthur fellow Ta-Nehisi Coates has emerged as an essential voice for our times. His award-winning writing combines reportage, historical analysis, and personal narrative to address some of America’s most complex and challenging issues pertaining to culture and identity. He is also the current author of the Marvel comics The Black Panther and Captain America.
2009: The First Tycoon - T.J. Stiles
T. J. Stiles is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The First Tycoon, a biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Custer’s Trials, a biography of George Armstrong Custer. He has served as a historical adviser and on-screen expert for American Experience programs on PBS.
1997: American Sphinx - Joseph J. Ellis
A leading scholar of American history, Joseph J. Ellis is a Pulitzer Prize winner for his biographies of our nation’s earliest presidents. Ellis is a distinguished professor and seasoned speaker who regales audiences with stories of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other U.S. presidents.
Poetry Winners
2015: Voyage of the Sable Venus - Robin Coste Lewis
Robin Coste Lewis is an electrifying new voice in contemporary poetry. Both tender and arresting in her poems, Lewis is also an astute cultural critic, alert to the complexities of race and the black female voice.
Young People’s Literature Winners
2014: Brown Girl Dreaming - Jacqueline Woodson
Jacqueline Woodson is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a recipient of the NAACP Image Award, and was recently named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. She gives stirring lectures that delve into the inspiration behind her books and explore important issues of race, gender, and bullying.
Past Finalists
Kali Fajardo-Anstine (Fiction, 2019)
David Treuer (Nonfiction, 2019)
Rebecca Makkai (Fiction, 2018)
Jacqueline Woodson (Fiction, 2016)
Lauren Groff (Fiction, 2015, 2018)
Hanya Yanagihara (Fiction, 2015)
Emily St. John Mandel (Fiction, 2014)
Junot Díaz (Fiction, 2012)
Téa Obreht (Fiction, 2011)
Lauren Redniss (Nonfiction, 2011)
Peter Carey (Fiction, 2010)
E. Lockhart (Young People’s Literature, 2008)
Jennifer Egan (Fiction, 2001)
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