JAMES MCBRIDE

Receiving a literary prize from the American Library Association is a kind of homecoming for the essayist-poet Hanif Abdurraqib.

Lauren Groff’s novel “Matrix” is among the finalists for an Andrew Carnegie Medal for fiction.

James McBride’s latest honor for the novel “Deacon King Kong” is a real New York story.

This year's winners of the Anisfield-Wolf awards include novelist James McBride, former U.S. poet laureate Natasha Trethewey and science fiction great Samuel R.

This combination image shows "Deacon King Kong" by James McBride, left, and "Fathoms: The World in the Whale" by Rebecca Giggs. The American Library Association has announced its winners of the Carnegie medals for literary excellence, awarding McBride in the fiction category and Giggs in nonfiction. (Riverhead Books, left, and Simon & Schuster via AP)NEW YORK – This year's winners of the Carnegie medals for fiction and nonfiction, presented by the American Library Association, have each checked out a few books in their time. But in Philly, you can,” explained McBride, whose novel last year was chosen by Oprah Winfrey for her book club. With a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the library association established the award in 2012, with winners in each category receiving $5,000.

NEW YORK – Author James McBride and editor Chris Jackson were among those honored Thursday night by the Center for Fiction. Jackson, whose authors range from Ta-Nehisi Coates to Bryan Stevenson, was given the Medal for Editorial Excellence Award. Jackson runs the One World imprint of Penguin Random House. The Center for Fiction awarded its First Novel Prize to Raven Leilani for “Luster,” the story of a young Black woman's affair with a married, middle-aged white man. Finalists included this year's Booker Prize winner, Douglas Stuart's “Shuggie Bain.”

NEW YORK – James McBride's latest novel and nonfiction by poets Claudia Rankine and Natasha Trethewey are among the finalists for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for fiction and nonfiction. The American Library Association announced Tuesday that McBride's “Deacon King Kong" was a fiction nominee, along with Ayad Akhtar's novel “Homeland Elegies” and an acclaimed debut novel, Megha Majumdar's “A Burning.” The nonfiction finalists are Trethewey's “Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir," Rankine's “Just Us,” which combines poetry, prose and photography, and Rebecca Giggs' “Fathoms: The World in the Whale." Winners in each category will be receive $5,000, and will be announced Feb. 4, 2021. The awards are supported, in part, by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

NEW YORK – When she learned that Ethan Hawke was working on a special audio edition of her acclaimed novel “Gilead,” Marilynne Robinson's response was to get a better idea of who he was. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2005, ”Gilead” is the first of four Robinson novels set in a rural Iowa community in the 1950s. Hawke has recorded an abridged narrative of “Gilead” that was commissioned by Manhattan's 92nd Street Y and can he heard Oct. 19-29 via www.92y.org/gilead. “In ‘Gilead,’ the Reverend John Ames contemplates ‘grace as a sort of ecstatic fire that takes things down to essentials,'" he said. ‘Gilead' is a great American novel, and Ethan Hawke is a great American actor."

NEW YORK Elena Ferrante, James McBride and Isabel Wilkerson are among the nominees for the Kirkus Prize, a $50,000 honor for the best fiction, nonfiction and children's books. The nominees, six each in the three categories, were chosen by panels of writers, critics, booksellers and librarians. Other nominees were Tola Rotimi's Black Sunday," Juliana Delgado Lopera's Fiebre Tropical," Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain" and Raven Leilani's Luster." Wilkerson is a nonfiction finalist for another Winfrey pick, her study of racism in the U.S., Caste." In young people's literature, nominees include a children's version of Ibram X, Kendi's award-winning study of race, Stamped from the Beginning," co-authored with Jason Reynolds.

This cover image released by Riverhead Books shows "Deacon King Kong," a novel by James McBride. Oprah Winfrey has chosen McBrides Deacon King Kong for her book club. (Riverhead Books via AP)NEW YORK Oprah Winfrey has chosen James McBride's Deacon King Kong for her book club. But it also pays tribute to community and to McBride's own childhood in a Brooklyn project. Then she said she liked Deacon King Kong' and had been a fan of my previous work.