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In this Late Night With Seth Meyers interview, Percival Everett talks about how Mark Twain, among others, influenced the sense of irony in his writing and how a game of tennis impacted the premise of his novel James (Doubleday, 2024), for which he won the 2024 National Book Award in fiction.
In this video, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha accepts the 2024 National Book Award in poetry for her collection Something About Living (University of Akron Press, 2024). “I’m proud to stand here today, and to accept this honor as a Palestinian American on behalf of all the deeply beautiful Palestinians that this world has lost and in honor of those miraculous ones who endure.”
“Artificial intelligence is no substitute for the real thing,” says Percival Everett in his acceptance speech for the 2024 National Book Award in fiction, which he won for his novel James (Doubleday, 2024).
In this episode of the Yale University Press Podcast, director of Yale University Press John Donatich speaks with author and historian Ned Blackhawk about his book The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History, for which he won the 2023 National Book Award in nonfiction.
“Praise your capacity for birth / fluid currents and trenchant darkness.” In this short film directed by Justyn Ah Chong, poet Craig Santos Perez reads “Praise Song for Oceania,” which appears in his collection Habitat Threshold (Omnidawn, 2020). Perez’s latest collection, from unincorporated territory [lukao] (Omnidawn, 2023), the fourth in an ongoing series about his homeland of the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam), won the National Book Award in poetry.
Justin Torres reads from his second novel, Blackouts (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), and joins Melissa Febos for a conversation in this event hosted by the Chicago Public Library and the Women & Children First bookstore. Torres won the 2023 National Book Award in fiction for Blackouts. (This video has been removed by its host.)
“When you think you’re getting good, be humble. There’s no end to the learning.” In this video, Arthur Sze visits his high school, the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, and offers advice from his years of experience as a poet. Sze is the recipient of the 2013 Jackson Poetry Prize and won the 2019 National Book Award in poetry for his collection Sight Lines (Copper Canyon Press, 2019).
“Books sustain us. Books inspire us. Books fortify us. Books help us become who we are,” says poet John Keene in this video featuring National Book Award–winning authors—including Tess Gunty, Megan McDowell, Imani Perry, Samanta Schweblin, and Sabaa Tahir—speaking about why they believe books matter for the National Book Foundation’s Read With NBF program.
“It came to me one night as I was falling asleep / that I had finished with those amorous adventures / to which I had long been a slave.” In this video from the 2014 National Book Award finalists reading, Louise Glück reads her poem “An Adventure,” which appears in her National Book Award–winning collection Faithful and Virtuous Night (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014).
In this PBS NewsHour video, National Book Award-winning poet and professor Nikky Finney discusses the work of social justice activism and preservation in her community of Columbia, South Carolina, which includes opening a cultural arts center honoring her father’s legacy as the first Black chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court since the Reconstruction era.
