National Book Award Week Retrospective

I’ve been looking forward to this week for months.  Career wise I’ve had a really beautiful year and being invited to the National Book Awards was the icing on the cake. The cherry on top of the icing was being invited to Black List’s inaugural Off Site party hosted by Franklin Leonard and Randy Winston of Black List. Besides the fact that these invitations were two career milestones I also had two chances to get a fit off. Win ^2.

Very serious editorial level pre-pics. Obviously

Off Site’s room was crazy. Bananas. Gayle King walked past me. Roxane Gay, Imani Perry, Jenna Wortham, Yahdon - as the night got later and the number of gin martinis increased I wouldn’t have been surprised if I saw Lorraine Hansberry out of the corner of my eye coming out of the bathroom. I saw my friends who also happen to be geniuses - Robert, Mateo, Cebo - so despite the caliber of folks it all just felt comfortable. A casual invite only kickback where the literary giants of today just happened to convene and conversate. Very chill, no pressure, no big deal.

The National Book Awards delivered the amount of glamour and refinement it teases. The ballroom was beautiful, Jon Batiste’s performance was as polished as one would expect, Kate McKinnon delivered the perfect amount of irreverence. Given that this was a landmark year for the NBA’s there was a delightful amount of retrospection. Previous speeches from Toni Morrison, Ursula K LeGuin and Stephen King all illuminated the room at one point or another always bringing me to tears. I cried a lot.  I cried when Paul Coates received the Literian Award, when Walter Mosley - who was tasked with presenting the award told Paul that he loved him. I cried as the theme of courage rang through the evening, with many speeches pointing to our need for it - when it was practiced in real time on the stage - hands slightly shaking but voice none the less loudly denouncing the genocide in Gaza. Percival Everett closed the night by reminding us that hope is not a substitute for strategy.  Though the night was a celebration of books and literature it seems that we were also getting our marching orders; it’s about to get worse so you’ve got to do *something* and you’ve got to do it with intention.

Courage and hope being unofficial themes against the backdrop of our current state of affairs was jarring for me.  The day after the Off Site party I was walking back from dinner with Traci (the stacks) and Sara (fiction matters) and I saw a man spit on a woman and push her. Call her a bitch. When we went to ask her if she was ok she said she just shouldn’t have asked about the woman that he was hanging out with. She wondered out loud why she was waiting for him to fix her teeth? He promised he would, he’d been the one to knock them out after all. Why couldn’t she just leave? It was really painful to witness. The day of the awards on my way to grab a clutch from Nordstrom I saw a man that appeared to be dead lying in the street. I helped a woman prop him up and then she proceeded to chastise him for lying there. She said she’d been on the phone for two hours and he’d been lying there like that the entire time.

Whenever life presents an experience in such stark dichotomy I try to pay close attention. Witnessing and humanizing pain is always the least I can do.  Make eye contact with the unhoused person as I step over them, at least.  But witnessing and hoping isn’t going to be enough. Neither is chaotic reactive moments of courage unfortunately. Strategy.  Thanks to Sara I’ve been thinking about my Venn diagram of purpose. What am I good at? What does the world need? What do I love? I was in rooms with the most powerful people in publishing this week.  What am I going to do with it? How am I going to help? What needs disruption and how am I going to aide in that? I don’t know, lots to think about as we gear up for the next few years.  Be well.