NEW YORK — Washington state author Sherman Alexie won a National Book Award on Wednesday for young people’s literature for “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.”
Alexie, best known for such adult novels as “Ten Little Indians” and “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,” won for his semi-autobiographical story of an American Indian at an all-white high school. A member of the Spokane and Coeur d’Alene tribes, he gave an emotional speech at the award ceremony in New York in which he remembered Ezra Jack Keats’ classic “The Snowy Day,” the first book Alexie read that included characters who resembled him both physically and in all his “gorgeous loneliness” and “splendid isolation.”
Writing about young people, of course, isn’t the same as being with them. Alexie, who has two children, was asked after the ceremony if he had told his family the good news.
“Yes,” said Alexie, “I called them right away and they wanted to know when I was coming home.”
Other winners announced at the 58th annual National Book Awards included:
Denis Johnson’s “Tree of Smoke,” a 600-page journey through the physical, moral and spiritual extremes of the Vietnam War, won the fiction award Wednesday night.
Tim Weiner’s “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA,” won in nonfiction.
Robert Hass’ “Time and Materials,” which includes several poems critical of the Iraq war and the Bush administration, won for poetry. Each of the winners received $10,000. Runners-up received $1,000.
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