National Book Foundation

Last updated

National Book Foundation
FoundedJuly 1989;35 years ago (1989-07)
TypeNon-profit
Headquarters New York City, New York, U.S.
ServicesCelebrating literary achievements
FieldsLiterary Prize
Key people
Ruth Dickey, Executive Director, David Steinberger, Chairman
Staff
8 staff, 18 board members
Website nationalbook.org

The National Book Foundation (NBF) is an American nonprofit organization established with the goal "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America." [1] Established in 1989 by National Book Awards, Inc., [2] the foundation is the administrator and sponsor of the National Book Awards, a set of literary awards inaugurated in 1936 and continuous from 1950. It also organizes and sponsors public and educational programs. [3]

Contents

The National Book Foundation's board of directors comprises representatives of American literary institutions and the book industry. In 2009, the board included the president of the New York Public Library, the chief merchandising officer of Barnes & Noble, the President/publisher of Grove/Atlantic, Inc., and others. [4] In 2021, Ruth Dickey succeeded Lisa Lucas as the foundation's fourth executive director. [5]

Awards

National Book Awards

Founded in 1950, the National Book Awards are a series of annual literary prizes awarded to recognize outstanding American literature. Although other categories have been recognized in the past, the awards currently recognize the best Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People's Literature published each year. Non-citizens of the United States were ineligible for the National Book Award until 2018, when a petition process was introduced. [6]

The honored titles in each category are decided by an independent panel of writers, librarians, booksellers, and critics. These panels of five judges in each category select a longlist of ten titles per category, which is then narrowed down to five finalists. Winners are announced at the National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner in November.

Lifetime Achievement

In addition to the five National Book Awards presented each year, the foundation presents two lifetime achievement awards: the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. [7] [8]

5 Under 35

The 5 Under 35 program was started in 2005 in order to honor five debut fiction writers, all under the age of thirty-five. The honorees are all chosen by previous National Book Awards–honored writers or 5 Under 35 honorees. [9] Each award comes with a cash prize of $1,000. [10] The 5 Under 35 Ceremony has been hosted by Questlove, Carrie Brownstein, LeVar Burton [11] and others.

Other programs

Education programs

BookUp

BookUp, the National Book Foundation's flagship educational program, connects middle- and high-school students with local authors and runs free reading groups. Since its start in 2007, BookUp has given away over 35,000 free books. The program currently serves students at over 20 different sites in New York City, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Huntsville, TX, helping approximately 500 students to build their home libraries as well as their literacy skills each year.

Book Rich Environments

The Book Rich Environments initiative connects families living in public housing communities with reading-related resources including free, high-quality books, library activities, and educational programming. The program is conducted in 37 HUD-assisted communities nationwide. Since 2017, the program has distributed over two million free books to children and families. [12]

NBF Teacher Fellowship

The National Book Foundation (NBF) Teacher Fellowship aims to support 6th-12th grade public school teachers "using innovative methods to make reading for pleasure a part of their students' school day experience" through professional development, a book buying budget, and a small stipend.

Public programs

NBF Presents

NBF Presents programs bring National Book Awards honorees a to libraries, colleges, book festivals, and performance venues across the country for a series of readings and other literary events. The series is partially modeled after the long-running National Book Awards on Campus program, which began in 2005. National Book Awards on Campus brought National Book Award winners and finalists to college campuses at Sam Houston State University, [13] Concordia College, [14] Amherst College, [15] and Rollins College, [16] all of which continue to host NBF Presents events each year.

Literature for Justice

Literature for Justice (LFJ) is a campaign that seeks "to contextualize and humanize the experiences of incarcerated people in the United States" by selecting and promoting a list of five books, chosen annually by a group of authors and advocates for the incarcerated to the American reading public.

Past Programs

Recent past programs include Author in Focus; Eat, Drink & Be Literary; the Innovations in Reading Prize; Notes from the Reading Life; Raising Readers; and Why Reading Matters.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Book Award</span> American literary awards

The National Book Awards (NBA) are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The National Book Awards were established in 1936 by the American Booksellers Association, abandoned during World War II, and re-established by three book industry organizations in 1950. Non-U.S. authors and publishers were eligible for the pre-war awards. Since then they are presented to U.S. authors for books published in the United States roughly during the award year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katherine Paterson</span> American author (born 1932)

Katherine Womeldorf Paterson is an American writer best known for children's novels, including Bridge to Terabithia. For four different books published 1975–1980, she won two Newbery Medals and two National Book Awards. She is one of four people to win the two major international awards; for "lasting contribution to children's literature" she won the biennial Hans Christian Andersen Award for Writing in 1998 and for her career contribution to "children's and young adult literature in the broadest sense" she won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award from the Swedish Arts Council in 2006, the biggest monetary prize in children's literature. Also for her body of work she was awarded the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature in 2007 and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal from the American Library Association in 2013. She was the second US National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, serving 2010 and 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joyce Carol Oates</span> American author (born 1938)

Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel Them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lambda Literary Awards</span> Award for published works that celebrate or explore LGBT themes

Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys", are awarded yearly by Lambda Literary to recognize the crucial role LGBTQ writers play in shaping the world. The Lammys celebrate the very best in LGBTQ literature. The awards were instituted in 1989.

The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) is an organization in the United States dedicated to literary translation. ALTA promotes literary translation through its annual ALTA conference and year-round events structured around the creation of high-quality art. ALTA also administers awards to recognize excellence in translation and provides fellowships and mentorships to support emerging translators.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marilynne Robinson</span> American novelist and essayist (born 1943)

Marilynne Summers Robinson is an American novelist and essayist. Across her writing career, Robinson has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, National Humanities Medal in 2012, and the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. In 2016, Robinson was named in Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people. Robinson began teaching at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1991 and retired in the spring of 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martín Espada</span> Puerto Rican poet

Martín Espada is a Puerto Rican-American poet, and a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he teaches poetry. Puerto Rico has frequently been featured as a theme in his poems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wright Morris</span> American photographer and novelist

Wright Marion Morris was an American novelist, photographer, and essayist. He is known for his portrayals of the people and artifacts of the Great Plains in words and pictures, as well as for experimenting with narrative forms.

Nancy Farmer is an American writer of children's and young adult books and science fiction. She has written three Newbery Honor books and won the U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature for The House of the Scorpion, published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers in 2002.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Doty</span> American poet and memoirist (born 1953)

Mark Doty is an American poet and memoirist best known for his work My Alexandria. He was the winner of the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jewish Book Council</span> Jewish organization

The Jewish Book Council, founded in 1944, is an American organization encouraging and contributing to Jewish literature. The goal of the council, as stated on its website, is "to promote the reading, writing and publishing of quality English language books of Jewish content in North America". The council sponsors the National Jewish Book Awards, the JBC Network, JBC Book Clubs, the Visiting Scribe series, and Jewish Book Month. It previously sponsored the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. It publishes an annual literary journal called Paper Brigade.

Matthew Zapruder (1967) is an American poet, editor, translator, and professor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Min Jin Lee</span> Korean American

Min Jin Lee is a Korean American author and journalist based in Harlem, New York City; her work frequently deals with the Korean diaspora. She is best known for writing Free Food for Millionaires (2007) and Pachinko (2017), a finalist for the National Book Award, and runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

<i>The Massachusetts Review</i> American literary journal

The Massachusetts Review is a literary quarterly founded in 1959 by a group of professors from Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. It receives financial support from Five Colleges, Inc., a consortium which includes Amherst College and four other educational institutions in a short geographical radius.

C. E. Morgan is an American author. She was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Sport of Kings, winner of the 2016 Kirkus Prize and Windham–Campbell Literature Prize, and in 2009 was named a 5 under 35 honoree by the National Book Foundation.

<i>The Common</i> (magazine) Academic journal

The Common is an American nonprofit literary magazine founded in Amherst, Massachusetts by current Editor in Chief Jennifer Acker. The magazine, which has been based at Amherst College since 2011, publishes issues of stories, poems, essays, and images biannually. The magazine focuses its efforts on the motif of "a modern sense of place," and works to give the underrepresented artistic voices a literary space.

The National Book Award for Young People's Literature is one of five annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation (NBF) to recognize outstanding literary work by US citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers". The panelists are five "writers who are known to be doing great work in their genre or field".

References

  1. "Lisa Lucas Wants to Make Reading Fun Again". The New York Times. September 7, 2016.
  2. Edwin McDowell. "Book Notes: 'The Joy Luck Club' is to be in paperback ... The National Book Awards' new foundation". The New York Times, July 5, 1989, page C19.
  3. Kellogg, Carolyn (May 27, 2016). "Lisa Lucas, head of the National Book Foundation, wants you to love reading". Los Angeles Times .
  4. "National Book Foundation Names Two New Board Members". publishersweekly.com.
  5. "National Book Foundation Names Ruth Dickey as New Executive Director". February 10, 2021.
  6. Stochl, Emily (November 2, 2020). "Citizenship is an Outdated Requirement for Literary Prize Eligibility". BOOK RIOT. Retrieved December 28, 2023.
  7. "James Patterson Honored At National Book Awards". Michael Cavacini. November 19, 2015. Retrieved May 17, 2016.
  8. "Robert Caro to receive honorary National Book Award medal". ap.org.
  9. Schaub, Michael (September 29, 2016). "Meet the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35". Los Angeles Times .
  10. "Here Are The 2015 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honorees". BuzzFeed. Retrieved May 17, 2016.
  11. "The National Book Foundation Reveals Its "5 Under 35" Honorees". Flavorwire. September 30, 2015. Retrieved May 17, 2016.
  12. Maher, John (July 24, 2024). "NBF's Book Rich Environments Program Hits Two Million Book Donations". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved July 24, 2024.
  13. University, Sam Houston State. "National Book Awards Festival". SHSU Online.
  14. "NBA History". Concordia College.
  15. "The Common Literary Magazine - National Book Awards on Campus - Amherst College". www.amherst.edu.
  16. "Rollins College Partners with the National Book Awards - Arts & Culture - Rollins College 360 News". 360.rollins.edu.

Citations

National Book Foundation: Presenter of the National Book Awards. This home page retrieved 2014-12-06 carries the internal title "2014 National Book Award Winners".