The National Book Foundation presented the 2011 National Book Awards at a ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City with John Lithgow as the master of ceremonies. The Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters was presented to poet John Ashbery and The Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community to Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Books & Books bookstore and co-founder of the Miami Book Fair International. The Fiction award went to Jesmyn Ward for Salvage the Bones; Nonfiction to Stephen Greenblatt for The Swerve: How the World Became Modern; Poetry to Nikky Finney for Head Off & Split ; and Young People’s Literature to Thanhha Lai for Inside Out & Back Again. Each made an acceptance speech.
Prior to the awards ceremony, several of the evening’s participants, including the non-fiction finalists or their representatives, were interviewed.