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.
Barbara Ellen Kingsolver is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, essayist, and poet. Her widely known works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a nonfiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally. In 2023, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the novel Demon Copperhead. Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity, and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments.
Alice McDermott is an American writer and university professor. She is the author of nine novels and a collection of essays. For her 1998 novel Charming Billy she won an American Book Award and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the International Dublin Literary Award and the Orange Prize. That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Her most recent novel, Absolution was awarded the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.
The Daily Pennsylvanian, Inc. is the independent student media organization of the University of Pennsylvania. The DP, Inc. publishes The Daily Pennsylvanian newspaper, 34th Street magazine, and Under the Button satirical publication, as well as four newsletters: Daybreak, The Toast, Quaker Nation, and Penn, Unbuttoned.
Katherine Sherar Pannill Center is an American author of contemporary fiction.
Ann Patchett is an American author. She received the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction in the same year, for her novel Bel Canto. Patchett's other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars (1992), Taft (1994), The Magician's Assistant (1997), Run (2007), State of Wonder (2011), Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023). The Dutch House was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Colum McCann is an Irish writer of literary fiction. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, and now lives in New York. He is known as an international writer who believes in the "democracy of storytelling." He has won numerous awards, including the U.S. National Book Award and the International Dublin Literary Award, and his work has been published in over 40 languages as well as being published in many American and international publications. He also is the co-founder and president of Narrative 4, an international empathy education nonprofit.
Stephen Harrigan is an American novelist, journalist and screenwriter. He is best known as the author of the bestselling The Gates of the Alamo, for other novels such as Remember Ben Clayton and A Friend of Mr. Lincoln, and for his magazine work in Texas Monthly.
Yiyun Li is a Chinese-born writer and professor in the United States. Her short stories and novels have won several awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award and Guardian First Book Award for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for Where Reasons End, and the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for The Book of Goose. Her short story collection Wednesday's Child was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She is an editor of the Brooklyn-based literary magazine A Public Space.
Katherine Sherar Pannill Center is an American author of contemporary fiction.
Marissa Meyer is an American novelist. A large portion of her bibliography is centered on retellings of fairy tales. She is best known for her series The Lunar Chronicles, which includes her 2012 debut novel, Cinder.
Emma Cline is an American writer and novelist from California. She published her first novel, The Girls, in 2016, to positive reviews. The book was shortlisted for the John Leonard Prize from the National Book Critics Circle and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her story collection, Daddy, was published in 2020, and her second novel, The Guest, was published in 2023. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, Tin House, Granta, and The Paris Review. In 2017, Cline was named one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists, and Forbes named her one of their "30 Under 30 in Media". She is a recipient of the Plimpton Prize and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Amor Towles is an American novelist. He is best known for his bestselling novels Rules of Civility (2011), A Gentleman in Moscow (2016), and The Lincoln Highway (2021). Towles began writing following a career in investment banking.
Omar El Akkad is an Egyptian-Canadian novelist and journalist, whose novel What Strange Paradise was the winner of the 2021 Giller Prize.
C Pam Zhang is an American writer. Her debut novel, How Much of These Hills Is Gold, was released by Riverhead Books in 2020 and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction and longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize; she was named a "5 Under 35" writer by the National Book Foundation subsequent to its release. Her second novel, Land of Milk and Honey, was released in 2023.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2021.
Hernan Diaz is an Argentine-American writer. His 2023 novel, Trust, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His 2017 novel In the Distance was a finalist for the same Pulitzer Prize, as well as the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He also received a Whiting Award.
Brother Alive is American writer Zain Khalid's debut novel. It received the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize for best first book in any genre. It was also awarded the CLMP Firecracker Award for Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize. Khalid was named the recipient of the 2024 Bard Fiction Prize, and was awarded the National Book Foundation's "5 Under 35" prize.
Remarkably Bright Creatures is a novel by American author Shelby Van Pelt. It was published in May 2022 by Ecco Press. It has been on the New York Times hardcover fiction best-seller list multiple times.
