The winners of the National Book Award, including a punk rocker, a poet influenced by music and memory, and a dark horse indie press author, were announced last night at a ceremony in New York City. Terrance Hayes won in poetry for Lighthead (Penguin); Jaimy Gordon won in fiction for her horseracing novel, Lord of Misrule, published by independent publisher McPherson; and Patti Smith won in nonfiction for Just Kids (Ecco), a memoir of her life as a young songwriter in New York City and her friendship with the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

This year's judges were Rae Armantrout, Cornelius Eady, Linda Gregerson, Jeffrey McDaniel, Brenda Shaughnessy in poetry; Andrei Codrescu, Samuel R. Delany, Sabina Murray, Joanna Scott, Carolyn See in fiction; and Blake Bailey, Marjorie Garber, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Seth Lerer, Sallie Tisdale in nonfiction.

Each winner received ten thousand dollars, and the finalists in each category, including poet C. D. Wright, novelist Nicole Krauss, and nonfiction writer Megan K. Stack, each received one thousand dollars.

In the video below, Smith reads from her winning book and performs her classic song, "Because the Night."

From Henry James to A. S. Byatt, literary authors have long conjured spirits from beyond the grave, and as the weather cools and the shadows grow longer, the Daily Telegraph is honoring the form of the ghost story with a writing contest. Until Saturday, November 20, the British newspaper will accept short story entries, and on December 11 will publish the winning story along with illustrations.

"To be any good, a ghost story needs a structure, characters, a narrative line—dialogue is optional," says judge Susan Hill, author of literary novels such as The Beacon (Chatto and Windus, 2008) as well as crime fiction and ghost stories, most recently The Small Hand (Chatto and Windus, 2010). "Above all, the ghost must have a purpose. It may be revenge for harm suffered. It may be to explain some past incident. It may be to protest, to offer information—the whereabouts or contents of a will, a murdered body or the identity of a killer."

The Telegraph's Lorna Bradbury and Andrew Franklin of Profile Books will also judge. Their shortlist will be announced on December 4, and the finalists' stories will appear on the Telegraph's Web site on that date.

Stories should be no longer than two thousand words may be e-mailed or sent via postal mail to the Telegraph's offices. Full guidelines appear at the end of Hill's article on literary ghost stories on the Telegraph's Web site.

In the video below, Hill's The Small Hand is introduced in an eerie book trailer.