Sabaa Tahir accepts her award. 
Photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan

WINNERS OF THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS ANNOUNCED

Winners of the National Book Awards in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature announced at the 73rd National Book Awards Ceremony

New York City, November 16, 2022: The five Winners of the 2022 National Book Awards were announced tonight at the 73^rd National Book Awards Ceremony, hosted by Padma Lakshmi. The five National Book Awards categories are Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature. Two lifetime achievement awards were also presented at the ceremony: Art Spiegelman was recognized with the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, presented by Neil Gaiman; and Tracie D. Hall received the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community, presented by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi. The Ceremony was held in-person at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City, and broadcast live for readers everywhere on the Foundation’s website , YouTube , and Facebook .

Publishers submitted a total of 1,772 books for this year’s National Book Awards: 463 in Fiction, 607 in Nonfiction, 260 in Poetry, 146 in Translated Literature, and 296 in Young People’s Literature. Judges’ decisions are made independently of the National Book Foundation staff and Board of Directors, and deliberations are strictly confidential.

Winner for Fiction:

Tess Gunty, The Rabbit Hutch

Alfred A. Knopf / Penguin Random House

Tess Gunty earned an MFA in creative writing from NYU, where she was a Lillian Vernon Fellow. Her work has appeared in The Iowa Review, Joyland, Los Angeles Review of Books, No Tokens, Flash , and elsewhere. She was raised in South Bend, Indiana, and lives in Los Angeles.

Winner for Nonfiction:

Imani Perry, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation

Ecco / HarperCollins Publishers

Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. Perry is the New York Times bestselling author of South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation. She is also the author of Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry , winner of the 2019 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography;Breathe: A Letter to My Sons; Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation; and May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem. Perry, a native of Birmingham, Alabama, who grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Chicago, lives outside Philadelphia with her two sons.

Winner for Poetry:

John Keene, Punks: New & Selected Poems

The Song Cave

John Keene is the author, co-author, and translator of a handful of books, including the poetry collection Punks: New & Selected Poems, which received a 2022 Thom Gunn Award from the Publishing Triangle and a 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and is longlisted for the 2022 Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize; and Counternarratives, which received an American Book Award, a Lannan Literary Award and a Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction. A 2018 MacArthur Fellow, he is Distinguished Professor and serves as department chair at Rutgers University-Newark.

Winner for Translated Literature:

Samanta Schweblin, Seven Empty Houses

Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell

Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House

Samanta Schweblin is the author of the novel Fever Dream, a finalist for the International Booker Prize, and the story collectionA Mouthful of Birds, longlisted for the same prize. Chosen by Granta as one of the 22 best writers in Spanish under the age of 35, she has won numerous prestigious awards around the world. Her books have been translated into 25 languages, and her work has appeared in English in The New Yorker and Harper’s. Originally from Buenos Aires, Schweblin lives in Berlin.

Megan McDowell has translated books by many contemporary South American and Spanish authors; her translations have been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, Words Without Borders, and Vice, among other publications. She lives in Chile.

Winner for Young People’s Literature:

Sabaa Tahir,  All My Rage

Razorbill / Penguin Random House

Sabaa Tahir grew up in California’s Mojave Desert at her family’s eighteen-room motel. There, she spent her time devouring fantasy novels, listening to thunderous indie rock, and playing guitar and piano badly. She began writing her #1 New York Times bestselling An Ember in the Ashes series while working nights as a newspaper editor. The series has been translated into over thirty-five languages, and the first book was named one of TIME’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time. Tahir’s most recent novel, All My Rage, has received eight starred reviews and the 2022 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Fiction and Poetry.

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The mission of the National Book Foundation, presenter of the National Book Awards, is to celebrate the best literature published in the United States, expand its audience, and ensure that books have a prominent place in our culture. The Foundation approaches this work from four programmatic angles: Awards & Honors recognize exceptional authors, advocates, literature, and literary programs; Education & Access initiatives foster a lifelong passion for books in young and adult readers; Public Programs bring acclaimed authors to communities nationwide to engage in conversations about books and showcase the power of literature as a tool for understanding our world; and Service to the Literary Field, provides support to the national literary ecosystem. Information on all of the Foundation’s programs can be found online at nationalbook.org .

The National Book Awards, established in 1950, is one of the nation's most prestigious literary prizes and has a stellar record of identifying and rewarding quality writing. Many previous Winners of the National Book Awards are now firmly established in the canon of American literature, including Elizabeth Acevedo, Robert A. Caro, Ralph Ellison, Louise Erdrich, Nikky Finney, Ibram X. Kendi, Adrienne Rich, Arthur Sze, Maurice Sendak, and Jesmyn Ward.