HUGE congratulations to our friend Gene Luen Yang, whose marvelous graphic novel Boxers & Saints has been nominated for the prestigious National Book Award. The finalists for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people's literature were announced this morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe, and Gene made the cut!
Boxers & Saints is an epic, two-volume historical graphic novel set during China's violent Boxer Rebellion, and told from the perspective two young people on opposite sides of the conflict. If you've reading this blog over the last two months, you know I'm a fan. It's an incredible work and the nomination is well deserved.This is actually Gene's second nomination for the National Book Award. The first was back in 2006, for American Born Chinese -- the first graphic novel ever to be nominated for the award. Now I guess he's the first author ever to be nominated twice for graphic novels. And Huffington Post predicts he's going to win.
On top of all that, Gene is like the nicest guy.
Congratulations also go to Jhumpa Lahiri, nominated in the Fiction category for her novel The Lowland, and Cynthia Kadohata, also nominated in Young People's Literature for her The Thing About Love.
To see the full list of finalists, go to the National Book Foundation website.