Authors Jason Mott and Tiya Miles Win 2021 National Book Awards for Fiction and Non-Fiction

The National Book Foundation announced the 2021 National Book Awards winners list yesterday. Author and poet Jason Mott won the fiction prize for Hell of a Book, while author and historian Tiya Miles garnered the nonfiction prize for All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake.Mott’s Hell of a Book tells the story of an author on a promotional tour and his haunted past and present in a surreal, narrative style.

“I would like to dedicate this award to all the other mad kids, to all the outsiders, the weirdos, the bullied,” he said in his acceptance speech. “The ones so strange they had no choice but to be misunderstood by the world and by those around them. The ones who, in spite of this, refuse to outgrow their imagination, refuse to abandon their dreams and refuse to deny, diminish their identity, or their truth, or their loves, unlike so many others.”

Miles’ All That She Carried traces the history of an American family through a cotton sack an enslaved ancestor gave to her daughter in the 19th century as they were about to be separated and sold apart.

In her acceptance speech, Miles thanked her editor Molly Turpin for championing her decision to write a book about “an old bag.” “Your face lit up,” Miles said. “You were so curious. You were so receptive. You were the perfect editor for this project.”

Other winners include Malinda Lo for young people’s literature with Last Night at the Telegraph Club — a story of same-sex, cross-cultural love set in the 1950s.

Martín Espada took the poetry prize with Floaters, and best translation went to Elisa Shua Dusapin‘s Winter in Sokcho, translated from French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins.

Winners in competitive categories each receive $10,000.

Established in 1950, the National Book Awards are intended to celebrate the following core beliefs:

• Books are essential to a thriving cultural landscape
• Books and literature provide a depth of engagement that helps to protect, stimulate, and promote discourse in American society
• Books and literature are for everyone, no matter where the reader is situated geographically, economically, racially, or otherwise

Judging panels looked through more than 1,800 submitted books. This year’s judges included  acclaimed authors such as Eula Biss, Ilya Kaminsky and Charles Yu, winner in 2020 of the National Book Award for fiction.

[Photos: Tiya Miles via tiyamiles.com; Jason Mott via jasonmottauthor.com]