The winners of the US National Book Awards 2020 were announced
a virtual ceremony streaming online on November 18, 2020.
Th
e US National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two-lifetime achievement awards to authors every November. The longlisted nominees for 2020 were announced in September and the shortlist revealed on October 6./he winners for the year were announced in a virtual ceremony hosted by Jason Reynolds on November 8. The event, the last year with National Book Foundation Executive Director Lisa Lucas in charge, centred Black lives with a film showing their importance to the organisation. Ms. Lucas, in an evening gown and crocs, also showed the work that they had been doing in the community during a pandemic year.
The awards handed out on the evening were fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people’s literature. The African American winners of the awards were;
Nonfiction: Les Payne and Tamara Payne, The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X, Liveright / W. W. Norton & Company.
Young People’s Literature: Kacen Callender, King and the Dragonflies, Scholastic Press / Scholastic Inc.
Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters: Walter Mosley
