Colson Whitehead wins National Book Award for The Underground Railroad

Colson Whitehead has won the 2016 National Book Award for fiction for his historical novel The Underground Railroad. The annual American literary prize comes with a $10,000 U.S. ($13,429 Cdn) award.

Whitehead's critically acclaimed book envisions a past where the Underground Railroad was a literal railroad operated by engineers and conductors. Whitehead's protagonist is a teenage slave named Cora, who flees from a cotton plantation in Georgia and takes a harrowing journey on the Underground Railroad in search of freedom.

In a September interview with Writers & Company host Eleanor Wachtel, Whitehead commented that the toughest part about writing The Underground Railroad was researching and writing about the brutality of slavery.

"It's horrifying to think that people went through that. It's horrifying enough to know that people in my family went through it, and I don't know their names," said Whitehead in his interview.

The National Book Foundation also announced the winners of their nonfiction, poetry and young people's literature awards.

U.S. politician and civil rights activist John Lewis won the $10,000 U.S. ($13,429 Cdn) young people's literature category along with co-author Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell. March: Book Three is the trio's third graphic memoir about Lewis' experience in the American civil rights movement of the 1960s.

The Guardian reports that Lewis was emotional when accepting the prize and recounted a story about being turned away from the library as a teenager.

"When I was 16 years old, some of my brothers and sisters and cousins [were] going down to the public library trying to get public library cards, and we were told the library was for whites only, not for coloureds," said Lewis. "To come here and receive this award this honour is too much. Thank you."

The $10,000 U.S. ($13,429 Cdn) nonfiction prize was awarded to Ibram X. Kendi for Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. The University of Florida historian discusses the origins of anti-black ideas and the prominent intellectuals who have - sometimes unwittingly - contributed to ongoing racism.

Daniel Borzutzky won the $10,000 U.S. ($13,429 Cdn) poetry prize for his book The Performance of Becoming Human. The Chicago-based poet has five other acclaimed collections under his belt, as well as a number of translations.