1950 National Book Award Winners William Carlos William (left), Nelson Algren (second from right), and
Ralph L. Rusk (far right), with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt at the first National Book Awards Ceremony.

On March 16, 1950, publishers, editors, writers, and critics gathered at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City to celebrate the first annual National Book Awards, an award given to writers by writers. The American Book Publisher’s Council, The Book Manufacturers’ Institute, and The American Booksellers’ Association jointly sponsored the Awards, bringing together the American literary community for the first time to honor the year’s best work in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. As the Boston Herald reported the following day, “literary history was indeed in the making.”

The National Book Awards (NBA) quickly established a reputation for recognizing literary excellence, awarding William Carlos Williams the first poetry prize for Paterson: Book III and Selected Poems. Within a mere decade the NBA would acknowledge the work of writers such as William Faulkner, Saul Bellow, Wallace Stevens, Rachel Carson, Ralph Ellison, W.H. Auden, Marianne Moore, and Bernard Malamud – authors who have helped shape the foundation of American literature.

From the mid-sixties through the seventies, the NBA expanded, adding new award categories for Science, Philosophy and Religion, History and Biography, Arts and Letters, Translation, Contemporary Thought, Autobiography, First Novel, Original Paperback, and Children’s Books.

In 1980, various publishers who sponsored the event sought to broaden further the audience for American literature by honoring an even wider range of American writers. As a result, the 30-year-old National Book Awards was discontinued and The American Book Awards (TABA) established. TABA gave a total of 28 prizes in 16 separate categories, recognizing a hardcover and paperback Winner in most categories. Winners and Finalists were chosen by a committee of publishers, booksellers and distributors, librarians, and authors and critics.

With its expanded scope, it soon became obvious that so many categories diffused the Awards’ impact. By 1984 the Board had reduced the number of awards categories to three and, in 1987, reestablished the National Book Awards with an emphasis that the Awards are given by writers to writers. Since 1996, independent panels of five writers have chosen the National Book Award Winners in four categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature.

Now, over a half-century since its inception, the National Book Awards continues to recognize the best of American literature, raising the cultural appreciation of great writing in the country while advancing the careers of both established and emerging writers like Richard Powers, Jonathan Franzen, and Lily Tuck.