The National Book Awards are amongst America's most significant literary prizes, rivalling the Pulitzer Prizes for their impact. They have been running since 1950 and are open to American citizens for books published in the United States in the period between December of the previous year and the following November.
Currently, there are four categories: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry and Young People's Literature, each of which carries a prize of $10,000. Shortlists are announced each October and winners in November.
There are five judges for each category, all of whom are authors who have been previously published in the category being judged. As with the Man Booker Prize, the panels can call in titles that they feel were important omissions from publishers' submissions. Unusually, the judges are left to decide the crtieria for awarding the prizes for themselves, with the administrators only ruling over matters of eligibility for submission.
The list of categories has changed repeatedly during the Awards' history: a total of 48 differently named prizes have been awarded at least once, with the 30th anniversary Awards in 1980 seeing a raft of prizes for categories such as Western, Autobiography and Current Affairs, as well as prizes split between hardback and paperback editions, most of which were never featured again.
Saul Bellow is the only three-time winner; Philip Roth and John Updike have both won the Fiction Award twice and Wallace Stevens took the Poetry Award in both 1951 and 1955. John Updike in 1982, Alice Walker in 1983 and Annie Proulx in 1994 are the only authors to win both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for the same work.
Walter Percy's surprise victory in 1962 for The Moviegoer was attended by the bizarre sight of his publisher, the legendary Alfred A Knopf, storming out in disgust at the decision: he was also the publisher of William Maxwell's The Château, which had seemed a more likely winner. (The judges also chose Percy's book over Joseph Heller's Catch-22 and J D Salinger's Franny and Zooey.)
Thomas Pynchon refused to acknowledge the Award in 1974, made jointly to Gravity's Rainbow and Isaac Bashevis Singer's A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories, authorising comic Professor Irwin Corey to collect it on behalf of 'Richard Python'. Corey's surreally comic speech was further enlivened by what remains the only known instance of a streaker at a literary awards ceremony; Corey ad-libbed that the nude man was presumably Alfred A Knopf. It is widely believed that these incidents, along with the novel's more controversial aspects, were behind the Pulitzer Prize Board's subsequent refusal that year to make any award despite the Fiction Committee's unanimous recommendation of Pynchon's book.
The furore that resulted from the decison to award the 1979 Fiction prize to Tim O'Brien's Going after Cacciato, over the hot favourite The World according to Garp by John Irving, resulted in the withdrawal of much funding from American publishers and the subsequent setting up of the rival PEN/Faulkner Award.
Two lifetime achievement awards, the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and the Literarian Award, are also made each year. The former has been won by such diverse names such as Ray Bradbury, Toni Morrison, Stephen King, Oprah Winfrey, Arthur Miller, Judy Blume, Gore Vidal and, in 2012, Elmore Leonard.
2012 Fiction Winner
2012 Non-Fiction Winner
2012 Poetry Winner
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2012 Young People's Winner
FICTION WINNERS SINCE 1980
2011: Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
2010: Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon
2009: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
2008: Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen
2007: Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
2006: The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
2005: Europe Central by William Vollmann (currently out of print)
2004: The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck
2003: The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
2002: Three Junes by Julia Glass
2001: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
2000: In America by Susan Sontag
1999: Waiting by Ha Jin
1998: Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
1997: Cold Mounatin by Charles Frazier
1996: Ship Fever and Other Stories by Andrea Barrett
1995: Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth
1994: A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis
1993: The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
1992: All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
1991: Mating by Norman Rush
1990: Middle Passage by Charles Johnson (currently out of print)
1988: Spartina by John Casey (currently out of print)
1987: Paris Trout by Pete Dexter
1986: Paco’s Story by Larry Heinemann (currently out of print)
1985: World’s Fair by E L Doctorow (currently out of print)
1985: White Noise by Don DeLillo
1984: Victory over Japan: A Book of Stories by Ellen Gilchrist (currently out of print)
1983: The Color Purple by Alice Walker AND Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty (currently out of print)
1982: Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike AND So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
1981: Plains Song (currently out of print) by Wright Morris AND The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
1980: Sophie’s Choice by William Styron AND The World According to Garp by John Irving
POETRY WINNERS SINCE 2000
2010: Lighthead by Terrance Hayes
2009: Transcendental Studies by Keith Waldrop
2008: Fire to Fire by Mark Doty
2007: Time and Materials by Robert Hass
2006: Splay Anthem by Natahaniel Mackay
2005: Migration by W S Merwin (No UK edition)
2004: Door in the Mountain by Jean Valentine
2003: The Singing by C K Williams (currently out of print)
2002: In the Next Galaxy by Ruth Stone (currently out of print)
2001: Poems Seven by Alan Dugan
2000: Blessing the Boats by Lucille Clifton (currently out of print)
NON-FICTION WINNERS SINCE 2000
2011: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
2010: Just Kids by Patti Smith
2009: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T J Stiles
2008: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Anette Gordon-Reed
2007: Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner
2006 The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan (no UK edition)
2005: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
2004: Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle (currently out of print)
2003: Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy by Carlos Eire
2002: Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro (currently out of print)
2001: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon
2000: In the Heart of the Sea: The Tregedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE WINNERS SINCE 2000
2011: Head Off & Split by Nikky Finney
2010: Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine
2009: Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose
2008: What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell
2007: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
2006: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1 by M T Anderson
2005: The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits and a Very Interesting Boy by Jeanne Birdsall (no UK edition)
2004: Godless by Pete Hautman (no UK edition)
2003: The Canning Season by Polly Horvath (currently out of print)
2002: The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
2001: True Believer by Virginia Euwer Wolff
2000: Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan
A full list of previous winners and categories can be found at the official website