The winners of the 2022 National Book Awards were announced Wednesday evening, with Tess Gunty, Imani Perry, and Sabaa Tahir among the authors taking home the prestigious literary prizes.

The ceremony was held in Manhattan, the first in-person event since 2019, and emceed by television host and author Padma Lakshmi. In her opening remarks, Lakshmi addressed the rise of book bans in America during the past year, calling it an attack an “our children’s first amendment rights.”

Gunty took home the fiction prize for her debut novel, The Rabbit Hutch, the story of an ensemble of oddballs living in a dilapidated building in a Midwestern city; the book is one of Kirkus’ best fiction titles of 2022. “Attention is the most scared resource we have on this planet,” Gunty told the audience, “and books are the last place where we spend this resource freely.”

Imani Perry won in the nonfiction category for South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon To Understand the Soul of a Nation, a mix of memoir, travel narrative, and history. “I write for my people,” Perry said in accepting the award. “I write because I love sentences and I love freedom more.”

Taking home the poetry prize was John Keene for his collection, Punks: New & Selected Poems. Keene dedicated the award to his “ancestors,” including “Black, gay, queer, and trans writers, especially those we lost to HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and ’90s.”

The prize for translated literature went to Seven Empty Houses by Samanta Schweblin, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell.

The winner in the young people’s literature category was Sabaa Tahir’s YA novel All My Rage, about two working-class high school students who face racism in their small California town. “I am the first Muslim and Pakistani American woman to win the award in this category,” Tahir observed, dedicating the award to her “oppressed sisters around the world.”

The National Book Foundation also presented two special awards: the Literarian Award, which went to Tracie D. Hall, the first Black woman to serve as executive director of the American Library Association, and the Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Medal, given to author and illustrator Art Spiegelman, known for his groundbreaking graphic novel Maus.

In an unusual footnote to the evening’s festivities, members of the HarperCollins union leafleted guests as they arrived at the venue. The union, representing 250 employees of the Big Five publisher, has been on strike since Nov. 10, demanding a fair contract. Their presence was felt inside the hall as well: Lakshmi took the stage wearing a HarperCollins Union button pinned to her gown.

Tom Beer is the editor-in-chief.