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Gordon-Reed and Matthiessen Claim Top Prizes at National Book Awards
20-Nov-2008
Written by: Kristin Hunt
A nonfiction account of a slave family and a retelling of an outlaw’s life are the big winners for 2008.
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family and Shadow Country claimed the Nonfiction and Fiction Awards, respectively, at the 59th annual National Book Awards on Wednesday.
The Hemingses of Monticello, written by Annette Gordon-Reed, tells the story of the Hemings slave family. Thomas Jefferson infamously fathered several children with Sally Hemings, as proven by DNA testing and discussed in an earlier book by Gordon-Reed. Gordon-Reed is the first African-American author to win this prize since 1991, the New York Times reports.
Peter Matthiessen tells a reimagined version of the legend of E. J. Watson, an Everglades sugar planter and supposed serial killer, in Shadow Country. The novel is a one-volume version of three previously published books on the same subject, also by Matthiessen, a previous winner in nonfiction for his 1979 book, The Snow Leopard.
Other winners included Judith Blundell’s What I Saw and How I Lied for Young People’s Literature and Mark Doty’s Fire to Fire for Poetry. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, each winner also received $10,000.
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