Your Predictions vs. the National Book Awards Winners
How did your predictions stack up against this year's winners?
The winners of the National Book Awards have been announced! If you’d like to read about last night’s star-studded awards ceremony, you can find a recap here, but today I’m comparing the winner predictions we made back when the finalists were announced to the actual winners. We voted based on what we learned about the history of the awards, past winners, and—let’s be real—our own biases and unscientific hunches.
Well, friends, let’s how our predictions stacked up!
Fiction Prize Winner
Top Prediction: Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (74%)
Winner: Blackouts by Justin Torres
Blackouts only received 4% of the vote, and it too was a surprise win in my eyes mainly because I hadn’t heard much about this novel. Based on the description, Torres’s work sounds like a fresh and experimental examination of queerness and queer erasure. While I made no secret of the fact that I hoped Adjei-Brenyah’s novel would win this category, and Chain-Gang polled higher than any other finalist, I’m intrigued by this book about a book and look forward to reading it.
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