Paul Beatty’s “The Sellout” wins critics prize for fiction

By HILLEL ITALIE
AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) – Paul Beatty’s “The Sellout,” a blunt and satirical novel on race and class, has won the National Book Critics Circle award for fiction.

Margo Jefferson’s “Negroland” was cited for autobiography and Charlotte Gordon’s “Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley” for biography. Other winners announced Thursday were Maggie Nelson’s “The Argonauts” for criticism, Sam Quinones’ “Dreamland: The True Story of America’s Opiate Epidemic” and Ross Gay’s “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” for poetry.

Also Thursday, Kirstin Valdez Quade’s “Night at the Fiestas” received the John Leonard Prize for a debut book.

Finalists included such notable works as Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me,” winner last fall of the National Book Award; and Mary Beard’s best-selling “SPQR: A History of Rome.”