Posted by Juliet Linderman

While everybody is psyched Patti Smith won at the National Book Awards (for good reason), I’d just like to point out that three of the four categories were swept by ladies in literature.  Jaimy Gordon won the fiction award for Lords of Misrule (published by an indie press!) and Kathryn Erskine dominated the Young Person’s Literature category with Mockingbird.

And it doesn’t stop there. One could argue that being nominated for a National Book Award is even more important for a writer’s career than actually winning, and the ladies really represented this year: Four out of five (!) finalists in fiction, and three out of five finalists in all other categories, were women. Whaddup to the ladies in letters!