Novelist Rabih Alameddine and poet Patricia Smith win National Book Awards

NEW YORK (AP) — National Book Awards judges honored authors worldwide on Wednesday night, from Lebanese novelist Rabih Alameddine’s “The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)" to Chicago-born poet Patricia Smith's “The Intentions of Thunder.”

Alameddine's narrative of intense family bonds within the chaos of modern Lebanon received the fiction prize, while Smith, who has received numerous previous awards for her lyricism and intensity, won for poetry. The nonfiction prize was given to the Canadian Iranian novelist-journalist Omar El Akkad for his fierce indictment of the contemporary West, “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This."

Iranian American Daniel Nayeri’s “The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story" won for young people’s literature and Argentine Gabriela Cabezón Cámara’s “We Are Green and Trembling,” translated from Spanish by Robin Myers, was cited for translated literature.

Winners each receive $10,000.

The awards have often served as a kind of counter voice to current events. The night’s honorees expressed gratitude for prizes bestowed and for literature itself, and horror and disenchantment at the political and social climate, from immigration raids in the U.S. by masked agents to the carnage in the Middle East.

“I’m going to speak in Spanish because there are fascists who don’t like that,” Cabezón Cámara said, her words translated on stage by Myers.

El Akkad said it was “very difficult to to think in celebratory terms about a book that was written in response to a genocide (in Gaza). It’s difficult to think in celebratory terms when I spent two years seeing what shrapnel does to a child’s body.”

Alameddine's speech, like his novel, combined humor and agony. He began with a lament for the bombing of a Palestinian refugee camp, but went on to joke about the demands of his agent, Nicole Aragi, and thank everyone from his gastrointestinal doctor to the “psychiatrist who has been telling me to get over myself for more than 20 years.”

Smith, in a highly emotional speech, offered a litany of racial and social barriers she confronted, including harsh words from her ailing mother, while offering tribute to poetry as a path to transcendence.

Hundreds of writers, publishers, editors and other industry professionals gathered at Cipriani Wall Street in Manhattan. The 76th annual National Book Awards, the so-called Oscars of book publishing, were a celebration, a protest and a performance.

Musical guest Corinne Rae Bailey opened the ceremony with a relaxed, funky “Put Your Records On,” and introduced host Jeff Heller, who greeted the “glitterati of the literati.”

The Emmy-winning actor joked that he wasn’t sure why he was the host, thanked everyone from celebrities who lead book clubs to independent store owners and lamented that a typo in early editions of his recent book, “A Certain Actress,” left some readers thinking he had published “A Cetain Actress.”

“Can you imagine Madeleine L'Engle discovering the cover of her book read ‘A Wrinkle in Tim’?”

Honorary awards were presented to fiction writer George Saunders and author-publisher-mentor Roxane Gay.

Saunders, widely praised for his legacy of dark humor and warm compassion, was this year’s recipient of the medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, previously given to Toni Morrison and Robert Caro among others. He remembered his early growth as a writer, and how revision changed him on the page and in real life, a “truth-seeking” process that sets the artist apart from the dictator and other bullies.

“We’re open to finding out how things actually are, not how we think they are, not how we wish they are, but how they actually are,” he said. “And this puts us in a less delusional relation to reality.”

Gay, given the Literarian medal for her contributions to the book community, noted that writing was a solitary endeavor but that sharing the word was a different challenge. She cited proudly her history of publishing and promoting diverse voices, mocked the idea that “straight white men just can’t catch a break” and urged the industry to change.

“There is room for all of our voices and there are people in this very room who have the power to do better,” she told the audience. “You have the power to abandon old ways of thinking and nonsense metrics like social media followings as a determining factor in buying a manuscript."

The National Book Awards were presented by the nonprofit National Book Foundation. Each competitive category was voted on by judging panels that include writers, booksellers and critics. They select winners from hundreds of books submitted by publishers.

New York Liberty mascot Ellie the Elephant attends the 76th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

Actor Jeff Hiller, left, and singer-songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae attend the 76th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

Author Roxane Gay attends the 76th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

Author George Saunders attends the 76th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

National Book Award in Fiction winning author Rabih Alameddine attends the 76th National Book Awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

FILE - Author George Saunders poses for a portrait on Aug. 20, 2025, in Santa Monica, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, file)

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are climbing worldwide, and oil prices are easing Wednesday as hopes build that the war with Iran could end soon. Some of the moves are tentative, though, after financial markets have already seen similar bouts of optimism get quickly undercut several times.

The S&P 500 rose 0.6% and added to its leap from the day before, which was its best since last spring. That followed even bigger gains for stock markets across Europe and Asia, including an 8.4% surge in South Korea, which were catching up to Wall Street’s rally from Tuesday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 292 points, or 0.6%, as of 10 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1% higher.

Oil prices also fell back toward $100 per barrel after President Donald Trump said shortly before Wall Street began trading that Iran “has just asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE!”

“We will consider when Hormuz Strait is open, free, and clear. Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!”

Trump had said the night before that the U.S. military could end its offensive in two to three weeks. That added to optimism following a couple tenuous signals of hope from earlier Tuesday that Wall Street latched onto, including a news report quoting Iran’s president as saying that it has “the necessary will to end the war” as long as certain requirements are met, including “guarantees to prevent a recurrence of aggression.”

The worry on Wall Street has been that the war may last a long time and keep oil and natural gas from the Persian Gulf out of global markets, which could create a brutal blast of inflation.

But hope has been quick to swing to doubt on Wall Street since the war with Iran began, triggering manic swings back and forth for financial markets. Trump has also made statements that lifted markets, only to see the gains quickly disappear after increasing his military threats against Iran. Investors say Trump’s statements are becoming less impactful for financial markets.

And oil prices remain high, even if they’ve eased so far this week. The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, was sitting at $101.16 following its declines, which is still up from roughly $70 before the war began.

U.S. gas prices rose again overnight to a national average of $4.06, according to the auto club AAA.

Iran hit an oil tanker off the coast of Qatar and Kuwait’s airport on Wednesday while airstrikes battered Tehran as the fighting continued. Iran also continues to hold a grip on the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world’s traded oil passes during peacetime.

“De-escalation hopes have given markets a lift, but we think the effects of the war would, in many cases, persist even if the war did end soon,” Thomas Mathews, head of markets, Asia Pacific at Capital Economics, said in a research note Wednesday.

“It’s worth thinking through how markets might fare if the war were to end ‘very soon,’” he wrote. “Do markets have further to recover if sentiment continues to improve? The answer is almost certainly yes.”

The White House said Trump will deliver a public address Wednesday evening on the Iran war.

On Wall Street, the majority of stocks rose, with Big Tech powering the move higher. Gains of 2.8% for Alphabet and 0.8% for Nvidia were two of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500.

They helped offset a 13.1% drop for Nike, which fell even though it reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than expected. Analysts said it gave some lackluster financial forecasts.

Hasbro fell 3.6% after the toy company found someone had gained unauthorized access to its computer network and is working to see what the full impact was.

In stock markets abroad, indexes leaped more than 1% in France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Asian markets had even bigger gains.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 jumped 5.2% after a survey by Japan’s central bank showed business sentiment for major Japanese manufacturers improved despite Iran war worries.

In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady after a report said U.S. retailers made more money in February than economists expected. A separate report said U.S. manufacturing growth last month was slightly faster than economists expected. The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.32% from 4.30% late Tuesday.

AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott contributed.

James Conti works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Philip Finale works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top center, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center left, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Currency traders work at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A currency trader reacts near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), right, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A screen displays financial information on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)