The Jewish Book Council has announced the winners of the annual National Jewish Book Awards, given annually to “outstanding English language books of Jewish interest.”
Michael W. Twitty won the Jewish book of the year prize for KosherSoul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew. A critic for Kirkus gave the book a starred review, calling it “a thoughtful, inspiring book that will have readers pondering their own ancestors and their presence in the kitchen.”
The fiction award went to Dani Shapiro for her novel Signal Fires, while Ashley Goldberg took home the debut fiction prize for his novel, Abomination.
Michael Frank was named the winner in two categories—Holocaust memoir and Sephardic culture—for his book One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World. Also winning two prizes was Jonathan Freedland, who took home prizes in the biography and Holocaust categories for The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz To Warn the World.
The first-ever winner in the new children’s picture book category went to The Very Best Sukkah: A Story from Uganda, written by Shoshana Nambi and illustrated by Moran Yogev. The young adult literature prize went to Susan Wider for It’s My Whole Life: Charlotte Salomon: An Artist in Hiding During World War II, while Stacy Nockowitz won in the middle-grade category for The Prince of Steel Pier.
The National Jewish Book Awards were established in 1950. A full list of this year’s winners is available on the Jewish Book Council website.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
