The winners of the National Book Awards were announced on Wednesday, November 17 at the National Book Foundation’s 61st National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City.  This year, there were 1,115 books submitted for the National Book Awards, but these 4 rose above the rest.

The winner of the fiction category is Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon, the author of three previous novels and a Fellow of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the Bunting (now Radcliffe) Institute at Harvard. Her award-winning book follows five characters, scarred but desperate to survive in the dirty business of cheap horse racing.  Horseman Tommy Handle has a scheme in the works to save his dying stable where he plans to race four new horses at long odds and reap the profits before anyone else notices. But of course, in the small incestuous community of horse racing, everyone notices.  What no one accounted for, however, is Tommy’s girlfriend, who has just enough heart to turn things around.

The big winner in nonfiction is Just Kids by Patti Smith.  Patti Smith is a jack of all trades whose albums of rock and poetry have been hailed as “one of the top 100 albums of all time,” whose drawings have appeared in the Robert Miller Gallery for over 30 years, and whose books have now won a National Book Award.  She appears in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and holds the title of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres from the French Minister of Culture.  In Just Kids, Smith lyrically shares her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe during the late sixties and seventies in the infamous Chelsea Hotel.  This woman is a force to be reckoned with.

The poetry award goes to Terrance Hayes for Lighthead. Hayes holds about a billion awards, and his previous poetry collection, Wind in a Box, was named one of the Best 100 Books of 2006 by Publishers Weekly. This new collection examines the light-headedness of mind while struggling against time and gravity. His poems combine dream and reality into something both dark and uplifting that leaves the reader illuminated but in recovery for days.

And finally, the winner in young people’s literature is Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine. Erskine is a relatively new author after working as a lawyer for 15 years, but her debut novel, Quaking, was one of YALSA’s Top Ten Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. In Mockingbird, Erskine beautifully lets readers into the world of an eleven-year-old girl with Asperger’s.  In Caitlin’s search for closure after her brother’s death, she learns that nothing is black and white, but life is a messy and beautiful world full of colors.

Congratulations to all the winners!  Check out more information about The National Book Awards and read excerpts of the winning books on the website.