To celebrate the 60th year of the National Book Awards in 2009, the National Book Foundation presented a book-a-day blog on the 77 Fiction winners from 1950 to 2008.

The blog ran in 2009 from July 7th to September 21st, starting with Nelson Algren’s The Man With the Golden Arm, ending with Peter Matthiessen’s Shadow Country, and including works by Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, and Alice McDermott. Readers discovered lesser known but equally talented National Book Award Fiction Winners such as Conrad Richter, Wright Morris, and Robb Forman Dew. On September 21st, readers had the chance to select The Best of the National Book Awards Fiction and win two tickets to the 2009 National Book Awards, the first time in its history the Awards were opened to a public vote.

The book-a-day blog prompted the Foundation to continue celebrating the Fiction winners by inviting writers to blog about each new winner after 2008.

Click on the active cover images to be taken to the blog entry for that book.