NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS

National Book Awards is a tradition since 1950 to accolade the stupendous creation of writing dexterity. The National Book Award initiated on March 15, 1950 when a conglomerate of book publishing groups sponsored the first annual National Book Awards Ceremony. The National Book Awards is one of the paramount literary trophies in the United States that aims to augment the public's awareness of incomparable creations of fellow American authors.

The Winners are selected by five-member independent judging board including a Chairperson chosen by the National Book Foundation. The winner of each genus receives a $10,000 cash award and a crystal sculpture. The genre of the award comprises Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry and Young People's Literature. Sixteen short-listed finalists receive prizes of $1,000.

The eligibility criterion for the acceptance of the award includes

• Complete work on fiction and general nonfiction, collections of short stories, collections of essays, and poems by individual author are entertained if they are published in the United States.
• Traditionally printed books along with eBooks are considered for the National Book Award in the four categories only.

•  U.S. citizenship of the Authors is mandatory

•  English translation of any creation originally written in another language is not eligible. Multiple authors Anthologies are not eligible.

•  Previous winners of this or any other awards are also eligible

Recent winners of National Book Awards [2006]

• For the FICTION category

The Echo Maker (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) - Richard Powers

• For the NONFICTION category

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl -Houghton Mifflin

• For POETRY

Splay Anthem (New Directions) - Nathaniel Mackey

• For YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party (Candlewick Press) - M.T. Anderson