Paul Fussell won the National Book Award in 1976 in the Arts and Letters category for his landmark study of WWI, The Great War and Modern Memory. In his acceptance speech, Fussell said, “I would like to think that your award to this book of mine might be taken as an action inviting criticism to return to its time-honored tasks―tasks, after all, which Matthew Arnold and T.S. Eliot did not disdain to perform. Not transforming literary texts into mathematical formulas, but reading the humanity back into them. Recovering the actual pulse of life that beats everywhere in literature and that constantly solicits us to listen for it.”
Photo by Elaine Miller
Peter Matthiessen won the National Book Award three times: in 1979 and 1980 for The Snow Leopard, and in 2008 for Shadow Country. He was also a Finalist in 1966 for At Play in the Fields of the Lord, and in 1973 with Eliot Porter for The Tree Where Man Was Born/The African Experience.
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Photo by John Dugdale
“I gratefully accept this award and wish to thank my editor and best friend, Ursula Nordstrom, along with William Blake, Randolph Caldecott, Jean de Brunhoff, and all those grand masters of the picture book―that delectable, bright, and beautiful form that has yet to be recognized as more than a form proper only to books for children. Hail to the glorious picture book! And thank you.”
-Maurice Sendak accepts the 1982 National Book Award for Children’s Books (Picture Books).
Beverly Cleary won the National Book Award for Children’s Books (Paperback) in 1981 for Ramona and Her Mother. The following year, she was a Finalist in the Children’s Books (Hardcover) category for Ramona Quimby, Age 8.
Adrienne Rich’s history-making 1974 National Book Award acceptance speech
