South Alabama professor wins prestigious National Book Award for Fiction

On Wednesday, the National Book Foundation announced the 2011 National Book Award Winners.

This year’s slate of winners, in four categories, included:

Fiction - “Salvage the Bones” by Jesmyn Ward

Nonfiction - “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern” by Stephen Greenblatt

Young People’s Literature - “Inside Out & Back Again” by Thanhha Lai

Poetry - “Head Off & Split” by Nikky Finney

These four books were selected from 1,223 books nominated for the National Book Awards, including 315 in the fiction category, 441 in nonfiction, 189 in poetry and 278 in young people’s literature.

From these books, judges narrowed them down to five finalists in each category. The non-winning finalists in each category included the following books.

Fiction:
- The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak
- The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht
- The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
- Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman

Nonfiction:
- The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism
- Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution by Mary Gabriel
- Malcolm X: A Life of Revolution by Manning Marable
- Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss

Poetry:
- The Chameleon Couch by Yusef Komunyakaa
- Double Shadow by Carl Phillips
- Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010
- Devotions by Bruce Smith

Young People’s Literature:
- Chime by Franny Billingsley
- My Name Is Not Easy by Debby Dahl Edwardson
- Flesh & Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and its Legacy by Albert Marrin
- Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt

This year, I found the National Book Awards to be particularly interesting because Jesmyn Ward, the winner in the Fiction category, is a creative writing professor nearby at the University of South Alabama in Mobile. She grew up in DeLisle, Miss. and still lives there today. Her debut novel, “Where the Line Bleeds,” was published in 2008 and won a number of awards. Check out her blog at www.jesmimi.blogspot.com.

Many of you will be familiar with some of the past National Book Award Winners, especially from the fiction category. Past NBA fiction winners include “From Here to Eternity” by James Jones, “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, “The World According to Garp” by John Irving, “Rabbit is Rich” by John Updike, “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker, “All the Pretty Horses” by Cormac McCarthy and “Cold Mountain” by Charles Frazier.

For more information about the National Book Foundation and the National Book Awards, visit www.nationalbook.org.