Justin Torres, Ned Blackhawk among National Book Awards winners

NEW YORK (AP)—Justin Torres’ novel “Blackouts,” a daring and illustrated narrative that blends history and imagination in its recounting of a censored study of gay sexuality, has won the National Book Award for fiction.

On Wednesday night, the nonfiction prize was awarded to Ned Blackhawk’s “The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History” and young people’s literature was won by Dan Santat’s “A First Time for Everything.” Craig Santos Perez’s “from incorporated territory (åmot),” the fifth work in his series about his native Guam, was cited for best poetry, and Stênio Gardel’s “The Words That Remain,” translated from Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato, won for literature in translation.

Torres, whose book imagines a conversation between a dying man and the young friend he educates about a real history called “Sex Variants,” gave a brief acceptance speech before he was joined by more than a dozen nominees who gathered to present a statement about the Israel-Hamas war. Read by fiction nominee Aaliyah Bilal, the statement condemned the “ongoing bombardment of Gaza,” antisemitism, anti-Palestinian sentiments and Islamophobia and called for a humanitarian cease-fire. The authors received a standing ovation after Bilal finished.