Tess Gunty and Imani Perry were the big winners at the 73rd National Book Awards, taking home honors in fiction and nonfiction, respectively, as the prestigious literary prizes were announced at a gala at Cipriani Wall Street in New York for the first time since 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic put a pause on live events.
But the great champion of Wednesday's ceremony — subject of speeches by lifetime achievement winners, Art Spiegelman and Tracie D. Hall, and host Padma Lakshmi — was the freedom of speech and expression in a time of book bans and violence against writers.
Gunty won for her debut novel, "The Rabbit Hutch," a kaleidoscopic epic set in a failed Indiana industrial town; Perry was awarded for "South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon Line to Understand the Soul of Our Nation." Among the other winners was Sabaa Tahir, for young people's literature; Argentinian author Samanta Schweblin for translated literature; and John Keene for poetry.
