National Book Awards for 2011 have been awarded

Thu, 11/17/2011 - 9:20am by sernabad

The 2011 National Book Awards were announced last night at a gala event at the posh Cipriani Wall Street.

Jesmyn Ward received the NBA for Fiction for her moving Salvage the Bones, a harrowing story of a courageous motherless pregnant teen who, with her alcoholic father and two brothers, prepare their ramshackle home in Bois Sauvage, MS for the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina.

Thanhha Lai captured the Young People's Literature Prize for Inside Out & Back Again. In her first novel, 10-year-old Ha flees war torn South Vietnam with her mother and three brothers. Based on the author's own experiences, Ha and her family struggle to assimilate to Alabama culture.

Stephen Greenblatt, a Harvard literature professor, won the nonfiction category for The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. Library Journal summed up his book thus: "Engaging and enthralling, filled with a large cast of interesting characters, details of book history, and a strong, story-rich frame, this is a tale of books and their power, religion and its fears, and men and their quests."

To see the complete list of winners, check out this link.

The winners, who must all be US citizens, received $10,000 and a bronze statue.