Hemings Saga Wins National Book Prize

"Compared to the world around us, where everyone cannot see the bottom," said Priddle's Public Affairs colleague Peter Osnos, "publishers are in a space that they recognize." And hey, unlike other media, "we don't have advertising to lose, and we don't have subscribers."

And there was hopeful talk of Obama as well.

Master of ceremonies Eric Bogosian spoke of the president-elect as both a reader and a writer, which he called "great news for everyone here tonight" -- to sustained applause.

Gordon-Reed said she had been asked repeatedly about the possibility of Obama's election as she toured for "The Hemingses of Monticello." She's still amazed at the Nov. 4 results. "I'm writing about this era when blacks were totally out of civil society -- which was not that long ago," she said. "It hasn't sunk in yet."

Gordon-Reed said she's been a Thomas Jefferson buff since third grade but didn't learn about Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings until a few years later, when she got hold of a copy of Winthrop Jordan's "White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812" -- which sparked her life's work.

In poetry, the other finalists were Frank Bidart ("Watching the Spring Festival"), Reginald Gibbons ("Creatures of the Day"), Richard Howard ("Without Saying") and Patricia Smith ("Blood Dazzler").

Finalists in young people's literature included Laurie Halse Anderson ("Chains"), Kathi Appelt ("The Underneath"), E. Lockhart ("The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks") and Tim Tharp ("The Spectacular Now").

Maxine Hong Kingston, groundbreaking author of "The Woman Warrior" and "China Men," accepted a medal for "distinguished contribution to American letters." Legendary Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset, who fought and won court battles in the 1950s and '60s for the right to publish D.H. Lawrence and Henry Miller, was honored for "outstanding service to the American literary community."

"It's an additional privilege to receive this award," Rosset said, at a time when, "in the midst of a prevailing economic, moral and environmental sense of doom, a dynamic leader has appeared." And it makes him optimistic about the book business as well.

"Perhaps publishing, that grand, battered and essential institution that I've worked in for more than half a century, will go through a similar renewal," he said.