2015 National Book Award Winners Announced

On Wednesday night, November 18, the winners of the 2015 National Book Awards for fiction, nonfiction, young people’s literature, and poetry were announced in a ceremony in New York City.

This year’s winners are:

Fiction

• Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles (Random House/Penguin Random House)

 Nonfiction

• Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (Spiegel and Grau/Penguin Random House)

Young People’s Literature

• Neal Shusterman, Challenger Deep (HarperTeen/HarperCollins Children’s Books)

 Poetry

• Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus (Alfred A. Knopf)

The National Book Foundation has made the entire National Book Awards ceremony available online.

To be eligible for a 2015 National Book Award, a book must have been written by a U.S. citizen and published in the United States between December 1, 2014, and November 30, 2015. Contenders for the best books of the year were chosen by a group of distinguished judges, consisting of authors, critics, librarians, and booksellers.

Also honored at the ceremony were Don DeLillo, who received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and James Patterson, who was presented with the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.