WILLIAM T. VOLLMANN WINS 2005 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD for FICTION

HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS to author William T. Vollmann for winning the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction on Wednesday, November 16, 2005, for his novel, Europe Central (Viking, 2005).

The NBA for Nonfiction went to Joan Didion for her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), an account of her grief and mourning over the death of her novelist husband, John Gregory Dunne, in late 2003.

The NBA for Poetry was awarded to W.S. Merwin for Migration: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2005), the Pulitzer Prize-winner and one of the great American living poets, who had been nominated seven previous times for the National Book Award but never won.

The NBA for Young People’s Literature went to Jeanne Birdsall for her début novel, The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits and a Very Interesting Boy (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005).