Image: Phil Klay attends 2014 National Book Awards. (Photo by Robin Marchant/Getty Images)
On Wednesday, at a New York City ceremony packed as much with jabs at Amazon as with jazzy entrance music, the National Book Foundation crowned a newcomer: Former Marine Phil Klay took home the National Book Award for fiction, winning the prize for his debut short story collection Redeployment.
Klay, who had been deployed in Iraq, appeared taken aback by the honor on stage.
"I can’t think of a more important conversation to be having — war’s too strange to be processed alone," he said in his acceptance speech. "I want to thank everyone who picked up the book, who read it and decided to join the conversation."
Awards were also handed out to Louise Gluck for her poetry collection Faithful and Virtuous Night, Evan Osnos for his nonfiction book Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China and Jacqueline Woodson for her young adult memoir Brown Girl Dreaming.
More about last night’s announcement here, and more about the nominees — including audio readings from each book — here.