The publishing industry flocked to Cipriani Wall Street on November 19 for the 76th annual National Book Award ceremony. Comedian, actor, and author Jeff Hiller, host of the evening’s event, took to the stage and welcomed the “glitterati of the literati.” As the awards are about celebrating books and reading, Hiller thanked a list of writers, albeit controversial ones such as J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, and Alice Munro, a joke that hit with the audience.
Hiller went on to note that “everyone in this room already believes that books change lives because you are the people that bring books to the world in order to change,” and thanked the many people who make up the publishing industry, ranging from writers “who labored alone for years to create these stories,” to “the assistants [who] probably aren’t here tonight,” and many more.
The National Book Award for Young People’s Literature was introduced by Grammy Award-winner Laufey via an audio recording. Then author David Bowles, chair of the Young People’s Literature panel, took to the stage to announce the winner of the award.
Bowles thanked his fellow judges on the Young People’s panel, Cathy Berner, candice iloh, Jung Kim, and Maulik Pancholy for “their insight, generosity, and deep education through this process.” Bowles said that the panel was seeking books “that reflect the real lives of young people that don’t shy away from complexity, controversy, or urgency.” He added, “Literature has never mattered more. Teen readers are looking for stories that see them, that validate their questions, their fears, their longings.”
Then he announced the winner of the 2025 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature: is The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story by Daniel Nayeri (Levine Querido) and Nayeri made his way to the stage to accept the award.
Nayeri, who is also a Printz Award winner and Newbery Honoree, began his remarks by expressing how “distinctly lucky [I am] that there are so many people in this room that I can call friend.” He then reminisced about his time as an editor in New York a decade ago, where he looked down from his office window at the nearby federal immigration center, watching asylum seekers lined up outside, and reflected on how his own family had been through that same experience just 20 years prior. There was a feeling of being on “probation,” different than those who were waiting for freedom as he worked in the building across the street. That dissonance was a theme that came up in his book.
In The Teacher of Nomad Land, set in 1941 Iran, 13-year-old Babak attempts to become a teacher following the sudden death of his father. Nayeri said that often the first sentence one learns in Farsi is “father gave water” and “father gave bread.” He believes it is “a reflection that what we need most in this life was given to us and given to us freely.”
In closing, Nayeri thanked his agent, Joanna Volpe, publisher Arthur A. Levine, and his wife, Alexandra, “the only one I’ve been trying to impress all these years.”
