And the winners of the 69th National Jewish Book Awards are. . .
Today, the Jewish Book Council revealed the winners of the 2019 National Jewish Book Awards, which span 24 categories. Winners include Bari Weiss, whose book How to Fight Anti-Semitism was written in the aftermath of the 2018 attack on a synagogue in Pittsburgh; Dani Shapiro for her bestselling memoir Inheritance; and Ilya Kaminsky for his poetry collection Deaf Republic, which was also a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry.
Biblical historian and translator Robert Alter took home a Lifetime Achievement Award. Alter’s annotated translation of the Hebrew Bible, published in 2018, has been hailed as a landmark achievement that centers the literary qualities of the text. The Alter Bible is also notable for being a one-man translation. Pamela Nadell received the Book of the Year Award for America’s Jewish Women, a 400-year history of Jewish women in the United States.
A selection of this year’s winners are featured below. You can find the full list here.
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Jewish Book of the Year
America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today
Pamela S. Nadell
W. W. Norton & Company
Lifetime Achievement Award
The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary
Robert Alter
W. W. Norton & Company
Autobiography and Memoir
Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love
Dani Shapiro
Alfred A. Knopf
Biography
Touched with Fire: Morris B. Abram and the Battle against Racial and Religious Discrimination
David E. Lowe
Potomac Books
Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice
How to Fight Anti-Semitism
Bari Weiss
Crown
Debut Fiction
Naamah
Sarah Blake
Riverhead Books
Fiction
Fly Already: Stories
Etgar Keret
Riverhead Books
History
The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America
Daniel Okrent
Scribner
Poetry
Deaf Republic
Ilya Kaminsky
Graywolf Press
