published by knopf, penguin random house. believers. lisa ko, algonquin books. pachinko. machado. grey wolf press. sing, unburied sing. jesmyn ward. published by scribner. simon & schuster. we're at the end of the night. and i am so happy to be happy to be here. and i am so happy to tell you who the winner is. sing, unburied, sing. jesmyn ward. ♪ ♪ >> i am my speech is on my phone. i'm not being rude, i have to read it, because i don't even know what to say. let's see. so, throughout my career, when i have received, when i have been rejected, there was some times subtext, right? it was this. people will not read your work because these are not universal stories. i don't know whether some door coopers felt this way because i wrote about poor people or wrote about black people or i wrote about southerners. as my career progressed and as i, i got some affirmation i still encountered that mind-set every now and again. i still find myself having uncomfortable conversations with reluctant readers who initially didn't want to read my work because they said, what do i have in com

thank you to s scholastic, barns and noble, penguin random house come publishing papers, thank you alsorcollins, google, the lovinger foundation, thank you for all of you making this possible. [applause] thank you also to our dinner committee for the amazing evening, to my fellow board members, to the 2017 national book award judges who do an incredible amount of work, and thank you to the national book foundation staff and especially the executive director. thank you. [applause] [cheering] >> also thank you to the board of directors thank you for letting me continue to have a job and for coming here and supporting us it has been an honor to put tonight together and all the work that we do together. but there's just seven of us. we are tiny but mighty and it wouldn't be possible without the group of people that i call team books. [applause] so a shout out to them. this is her last award with us. tonight is about the power of story and recognition, celebration and innovation, stories we are incredibly proud of and extremely invested in growing. a story of connecting books to readers youn