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NBA awards Gordon-Reed
Annette Gordon-Reed won the National Book Award for non-fiction for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (W W Norton), a biography of three generations of a slave family owned by Thomas Jefferson.
Gordon-Reed was the first African-American author to win the prize for non-fiction since Orlando Patterson won for Freedom in 1991. “I can’t say what a wonderful November this has been,” she said. “It’s sort of wonderful to have the book come out at this time. People ask me if I planned it this way; I didn’t. All of America — we’re on a great journey now and I look forward to the years to come.”
Peter Matthiessen won the fiction prize at the ceremony yesterday (19th November) for Shadow Country (Modern Library), while Mark Doty won in poetry for Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems (HarperCollins); and Judy Blundell took the young people's literature prize for What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic).
