Percival Everett and Jason De León win National Book Awards

NEW YORK (AP) — Percival Everett's “James,” a daring reworking of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” has won the National Book Award for fiction. Jason De León’s “Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling” won for nonfiction, where finalists included Salman Rushdie's memoir about his brutal stabbing in 2022, “Knife.”

The prize for young people's literature was given Wednesday night to Shifa Saltagi Safadi’s coming of age story “Kareem Between,” and the poetry award went to Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s “Something About Living.” In the translation category, the winner was Yáng Shuāng-zǐ’s “Taiwan Travelogue,” translated from the Mandarin Chinese by Lin King.

Judging panels, made up of writers, critics, booksellers and others in the literary community, made their selections from hundreds of submissions, with publishers nominating more than 1,900 books in all. Each of the winners in the five competitive categories received $10,000.

Everett’s win continues his remarkable rise in the past few years. Little known to general readers for decades, the 67-year-old has been a Booker Prize and Pulitzer Prize finalist for such novels as “Trees” and “Dr. No” and has seen the novel “Erasure” adapted into the Oscar-nominated “American Fiction.”

In taking on Mark Twain’s classic about the wayward Southern boy Huck and the enslaved Jim, Everett tells the story from the latter's perspective and emphasizes how differently Jim behaves and even speaks when whites are not around. The novel was a Booker finalist and last month won the Kirkus Prize for fiction.

“James” has been nicely received,” Everett noted during his acceptance speech.

“Demon Copperhead” novelist Barbara Kingsolver and Black Classic Press publisher W. Paul Coates received lifetime achievement medals from the National Book Foundation, which presents the awards.

Speakers praised diversity, disruption and autonomy, whether Taiwanese independence or the rights of immigrants in the U.S. Two winners, Safadi and Tuffaha, condemned the year-old Gaza war and U.S. military support for Israel. Neither mentioned Israel by name, but both called the conflict “genocide” and were met with cheers — and more subdued responses — after calling for support of the Palestinians.

Tuffaha, who is Palestinian American, dedicated her award in part to “to all the deeply beautiful Palestinians that this world has lost and all those miraculous ones who endured, waiting for us, waiting for us to wake up.”

Last year publisher Zibby Owens withdrew support for the awards after hearing that finalists were planning to condemn the Gaza war. This year the World Jewish Congress was among those criticizing Coates’ award, citing in part his reissue of the essay “The Jewish Onslaught,” which has been called anti-Semitic.

National Book Foundation Executive Director Ruth Dickey said in a recent statement that Coates was being honored for a body of work rather than any individual book, and added that while the foundation condemns anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry, it also believes in free expression.

“Anyone examining the work of any publisher, over the course of almost five decades, will find individual works or opinions with which they disagree or find offensive,” she added.

The National Book Awards have long taken place in mid-November, shortly after the elections, and they're an early snapshot of the book world's reaction: Hopeful after Barack Obama's victory in 2008, when publisher and honorary winner Barney Rosset anticipated “a new and uplifting agenda”; grim but determined in 2016, after Donald Trump's first victory, with fiction winner Colson Whitehead urging the audience to “be kind to everybody, make art, and fight the power.”

This year, as hundreds gathered for the dinner ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street in downtown Manhattan for the awards' 75th anniversary, the mood was one of sobriety, resolve and willed good cheer.

Host Kate McKinnon joked that she was recruited because the National Book Foundation wanted “something fun and light and to distract from the fact that the world is a bonfire.” Musical guest Jon Batiste led the audience in a round of “When the Saints Go Marching In” and sang a few lines from “Hallelujah,” the Leonard Cohen standard which McKinnon somberly performed at the start of the first “Saturday Night Live” after the 2016 election.

Kingsolver acknowledged feeling “smacked down, at the moment,” but added that she has known despair before. She likened truth and love to forces of nature, like gravity and the sun, always there whether you see them or not. The writer's job is to imagine “a better ending than the one we've been given," she said.

At a Tuesday night reading by awards finalists, some spoke of community and support. Everett began his turn by confiding that he really “needed this kind of inspiration after the last couple of weeks. We kind of need each other right now.” After warning that “hope is not a strategy,” he paused and said, “Never had a situation felt so absurd, surreal and ridiculous.”

It took a moment to realize he wasn't discussing current events, but rather reading from “James.”

Musician Jon Batiste attends the 75th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

Actor Kate McKinnon attends the 75th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

Musician Jon Batiste, left, and author Suleika Jaouad attend the 75th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

Actor Kate McKinnon attends the 75th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

Publisher W. Paul Coates attends the 75th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

Author Barbara Kingsolver attends the 75th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

Author Walter Mosley attends the 75th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

Author Salman Rushdie attends the 75th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

Author Miranda July attends the 75th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

Translator Lin King, left, and author Yang Shuang-zi attend the 75th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

Poet Lena Khalaf Tuffaha attends the 75th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

Author Shifa Saltagi Safadi attends the 75th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

Author Jason De Leon attends the 75th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

Author Percival Everett attends the 75th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

This combo image shows authors Percival Everett, left, and Jason De Leon as they attend the 75th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)