That's one reason the book won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for non-fiction.

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Her works include A Changed Man and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

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The 63-year-old received the National Book Award for non-fiction for her work, which chronicles her youth in 1960s New York.

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It's good for you, says Robert Hass, Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997, two-time winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner in 1984 of a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant.

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Little known to the general public but regarded fondly by critics, Mr. Connell was a National Book award finalist, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a finalist in 2009 for the International Man Booker Award for lifetime achievement.

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The event began last year as a way of celebrating Spain's National Book Day, but it also coincides with the award of the Cervantes Prize for Literature, the Spanish-speaking world's equivalent of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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