Phil Klay was visibly moved and briefly without words when he took the podium Wednesday evening to accept the 2014 National Book Award in Fiction for "Redeployment," his collection of stories about war and post traumatic stress.
"For me, writing this book" [long pause] "I can't think of a more important conversation to be having," he said. "War is too strange to be processed alone. And so I want to thank everyone who picked up my book and joined the conversation."
Klay was a surprise winner, besting Marilynne Robinson's "Lila," Rabih Alameddine's "An Unnecessary Woman," Anthony Doerr's "All the Light We Cannot See," and Emily St. John Mandel's futuristic novel, "Station Eleven."
In poetry, a weeping, grateful Louise Glück won for "Faithful and Virtuous Night."
"It takes time to cry, so I'm not going to do that," she said. "I did not expect this. It's very difficult to lose; I've lost many times. And it's also difficult to win."
Minnesota's Graywolf Press had two books among the poetry finalists, Fanny Howe's "Second Childhood," and Claudia Rankine's "Citizen." A Graywolf book, "Incarnadine," by Mary Szybist, won last year's National Book Award, and another Graywolf book, "Three Sections," poems by Vijay Seshadri, won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize. But a three-peat was not in the cards.
The prize for young people's literature went to Jacqueline Woodson for "Brown Girl Dreaming," and the nonfiction award went to Evan Osnos for "Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China."
The 65th National Book Awards ceremony was moderated by writer Daniel Handler, who also writes under the name Lemony Snicket. The ceremony was streamed live on the Web.
