Jesmyn Ward Wins National Book Award for ‘Sing, Unburied, Sing’

Jesmyn Ward won the National Book Award for fiction on Wednesday night for “Sing, Unburied, Sing,” a dark, fablelike family epic set in contemporary Mississippi that grapples with race, poverty and the psychic scars of past violence.

The novel, which critics compared to works by William Faulkner and Toni Morrison, features a 13-year-old boy named Jojo, whose drug-addicted mother takes him and his toddler sister on a road trip to pick up their white father when he is released from prison. The judges called the book “a narrative so beautifully taut and heartbreakingly eloquent that it stops the breath.”

Ms. Ward, a Mississippi native who received a grant from the MacArthur Foundation this year, is now a two-time National Book Award winner: She previously won the fiction award in 2011 for her novel “Salvage the Bones.”

In her acceptance speech, she noted that occasionally in her career, she has faced skepticism from people who doubted that there was a commercial audience for fiction about poor black Southerners.

“They said, ‘Why should I read about a 13-year-old poor black boy or his neglectful, drug-addicted mother?’” she said.

The award for nonfiction went to Masha Gessen for “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,” which chronicles the return of authoritarianism under Vladimir V. Putin through the lives of four Russians born in the 1980s.

“I never thought that a Russia book could ever be longlisted or shortlisted for the National Book Award, but of course things have changed,” Ms. Gessen said in her acceptance speech, alluding to Russia’s interference in the 2016 American presidential election.

The National Book Awards, which were established in 1950 and are presented by the National Book Foundation, have gone to some of the most revered writers in the United States, including William Faulkner, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Ralph Ellison, Susan Sontag and Flannery O’Connor. This year’s awards were open to American authors who published books between Dec. 1, 2016, and Nov. 30, 2017.

The awards, which were given at a black-tie dinner with close to 800 guests at Cipriani Wall Street in Manhattan, are typically the most glamorous literary event of the year, drawing the industry’s biggest names and players. This year’s ceremony had additional star power, with the actress Cynthia Nixon hosting the ceremony, and former President Bill Clinton and the actress Anne Hathaway presenting awards.

“It’s a privilege to be in this room full of huge nerds, I feel right at home,” Ms. Nixon said in her opening remarks.

This year’s ceremony came at a relatively optimistic moment in the publishing industry, as print sales have risen and the once-explosive growth of e-books has fallen off. Publishers’ revenues grew by 3.5 percent in the first half of 2017 compared with the same period last year, according to a recent report from the Association of American Publishers, and hardcover print sales rose by nearly 10 percent.

Robin Benway’s young adult novel “Far From the Tree,” a coming-of-age story about an adopted only child who reconnects with her siblings, won the award for young people’s literature.

The poetry prize went to Frank Bidart for “Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016,” which the judges in their citation called “an investigation of selfhood that spans five decades of work and several hundred years of concerns.”

The Literarian Award, for “outstanding service to the American literary community,” was given to Richard Robinson, the chairman, president and chief executive of Scholastic, the children’s publishing company. Mr. Clinton, who presented the award, praised Mr. Robinson’s efforts to boost literacy rates and access to books among children through Scholastic’s school-based book clubs and book fairs and nonprofit partnerships. “Because of people like Dick, the gap by race and ethnicity and income, in their readiness to start school, is closing rapidly,” Mr. Clinton said. “All over this country there are people who are forming new neural networks at the speed of light, stimulated by books that would not be there were it not for his day job at Scholastic and his commitment to this kind of philanthropic work.”

Mr. Clinton added that he was personally grateful to Mr. Robinson because “he sent Hillary and me copies of the Harry Potter books so we didn’t have to wait in line at bookstores.”

In his acceptance speech, Mr. Robinson noted that best-selling Scholastic titles, like “The Hunger Games,” “Harry Potter” and “Captain Underpants,” have “converted nonreaders into readers and made reading available to all.”

Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of “The Shipping News,” “Barkskins” and other works, received the foundation’s medal for distinguished contribution to American letters. Ms. Hathaway, who appeared in a film adaptation of Ms. Proulx’s short story “Brokeback Mountain” and presented the award, praised Ms. Proulx’s ability to create “worlds that feel desolate and full, bleak and hopeful.”

“We are richer because of the deceptively simple, precise, devastating poetry of Ms. Proulx,” she said.

Ms. Proulx, who was born in 1935, joked about the fact that she was getting a lifetime achievement award even though she didn’t start writing until she was in her 50s. “I kept thinking about it and putting it off,” she said.

In a forceful speech, Ms. Proulx expressed alarm at the current state of the world, citing the recent spate of mass shootings, the destruction of the environment, the spread of misinformation over social media, threats of nuclear war and revelations in the media about sexual harassment. “We don’t live in the best of all possible worlds,” she said. “This is a Kafkaesque time.”

Women dominated the list of finalists this year, making up 15 of the 20 finalists in four categories. Four out of five fiction finalists were women: The fiction finalists included Min Jin Lee’s novel “Pachinko,” Lisa Ko’s debut novel “The Leavers,” Carmen Maria Machado’s debut short story collection “Her Body and Other Parties,” and Elliot Ackerman’s novel “Dark at the Crossing.”

“Don’t get me wrong, the men’s books are wonderful too,” Ms. Nixon said after noting the prevalence of female authors this year. “But shout out to the ladies.”