Karen Tei Yamashita to receive honorary National Book Award

The National Book Foundation announced Friday that Karen Tei Yamashita has been awarded its medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a $10,000 honor previously given to Toni Morrison, Robert Caro and Isabel Allende among others

NEW YORK -- Karen Tei Yamashita, this year's recipient of a National Book Award for literary achievement, is in some ways a departure from previous winners. The National Book Foundation announced Friday that Yamashita has been awarded its medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a prize with a $10,000 cash award. Previous winners include Toni Morrison, Robert Caro and Walter Mosley. Yamashita will be honored during the annual National Book Award ceremony, which the foundation plans to hold as an in-person event in Manhattan on Nov. 17. Last year's awards were handed out virtually because of the pandemic. The 70-year-old Yamashita is an author and playwright who in such fiction (and meta-fiction) as “I Hotel” and “Tropic of Orange” employs multiple perspectives and narrative styles. She is little known to the general public when compared to Morrison, Caro and other medal winners, but she is deeply admired by those who read her work. The foundation praised her work as “expansive and innovative" and "genre-defying.”