The National Book Foundation announced the winners of the 2015 National Book Awards in a moving ceremony Tuesday night.
MC’d by The New Yorker’s Andy Borowitz, the evening was a celebration of great new books published over the past year.
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Among the night's big winners were Ta-Nehisi Coates and Neal Shusterman, both of whom used their acceptance speeches as an opportunity to speak out on behalf of the social issues that inspired them to write their books.
Shusterman, the winner of the 2015 National Book Award in Young People’s Literature, used addressed the stigma surrounding mental illness.
“In the depth of my son’s illness, he said to me, ‘Dad, sometimes it fees like I am at the bottom of the ocean, screaming at the top of my lungs and no one can hear me,’" he said. "Hopefully, this book can open up a dialogue about mental illness, to remove the stigma around mental illness and to show people who are suffering that they are not alone."
Later, Shusterman brought his son Brendan, who inspired his book Challenger Deep, onto the stage with him, telling Brendan that the prize was "yours as much as it is mine.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates, who won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, spoke out against police brutality and racism in his speech.
“At the heart of our country is the notion that we are okay with the presumption that black people somehow have an angle, somehow have a predisposition towards criminality,” said Coates.
Coates went on to dedicate his award to Prince Jones, a friend killed by a police officer.
“I have waited for 15 years for this moment. Because when Prince Jones died, there were no cameras. Nobody was looking. I’m a black man in America," he said. "I can’t punish that officer. I can't secure the safety of my son. I just don’t have that power. What I do have is the power to say ‘You won’t enroll me in this lie. You won’t make me a part of it.'”
Check out the list of winners and runners up from the ceremony below.
National Book Award for Young People’s Literature: Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman
Runners up:
The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin
Bone Gap by Laura Ruby
Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War by Steve Sheinkin
Nimona Noelle Stevenson
National Book Award for Poetry: Voyage of the Sable Venus by Robin Coste Lewis
Runners Up:
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay
How to Be Drawn by Terrance Hayes
Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón
Elegy for a Broken Machine by Patrick Phillips
National Book Award for Nonfiction: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Runners up:
Hold Still by Sally Man
The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery
If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran by Carla Power
Ordinary Light by Tracy K Smith
National Book Award for Fiction: Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson
Runners up:
Refund by Karen E. Bender
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara