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As I wait in line to get into Cipriani Wall Street, I have one goal in mind: Find out what Miranda July is wearing. July, whose second novel, All fourwhich came out this spring, is one of five authors nominated for a National Book Award for fiction this year; she’s also a Prada collaborator and will probably show up in style. The dress code tonight is formal, and guests at the National Book Foundation’s 75th Annual Awards have mostly followed suit, wearing tuxedos, ball gowns and lots of sequins. For book people, however, black tie includes tote bags.

IN 2023, the run-up to the National Book Awards was filled. Ahead of the event, rumors circulated of finalists planning a “breakout” to protest the war in Gaza; as defense, Zibby Media and Månadens bok both pulled out as sponsors. The actual gesture, a measured statement calling for a truce given on stage by a group of 18 nominees and winners, was far from controversial and hardly disruptive.

This year, despite an impending second Trump administration and a results of book bansthe mood is looser. It is also reflected in the nominated books: Fiction Precursors Jamesby Percival Everett; July All four; and Martyr!by Kaveh Akbar, are deeply funny and brilliant. Everything has a purpose: to perhaps worry or stir something in the reader by making them laugh. “I don’t know if it’s that much humor James – that’s irony. We need irony right now, Everett tells me later that evening.

Inside what used to be the National City Bank Building, people scurry around under 60-foot Greek premiere ceilings. “I am obsessed with Color TV”, I hear someone say at the bar. I see two women standing a few feet apart in the same burgundy dress — a Rent the Runway disaster — and hear some conversation about who might win the fiction award tonight. It seems that is Everett’s price to lose.

The reporters move to a set of bleachers to watch the nominees dine like visitors to a bookish human zoo. Halfway through the courses, the ceremony begins with a speech by presenter Kate McKinnon (she has joked: “Books do so many things. They inspire, they transport, they kill spiders when you can’t find a shoe”). The Lifetime Achievement Awards go to Barbara Kingsolver and W. Paul Coates, who won for “Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.” Coates (Father of Ta-Nehisi Coates) has faced criticism since the announcement of the honor in September after his publisher, Black Classic Press, republished an anti-Semitic novel in 2022 called The Jewish attack which was originally published in 1993. Even so, he, like Kingsolver, gets a standing ovation. “I am not an interpreter. I prefer to let these voices speak to new generations for themselves,” Coates said in his speech. “My mission is recovery.” (The Jewish attack was removed from the Black Classic Press website not long after the backlash.)

A smaller standing ovation happens when Lena Khalaf Tuffaha wins for her book of poems Something about livingpublished by the University of Akron Press. “We are now living in the second November of the American-funded genocide in Palestine,” said Tuffaha, whose father was born in Jerusalem. “I hope each of us can love ourselves enough to stand up and make it stop.”

Everyone sits up a little straighter when Lauren Groff, chair of the fiction judges, appears on stage. Along with Akbar, Everett and July, Nigerian author ‘Pemi Aguda is nominated for Ghost rootsa collection of short stories, which Hisham Matar is for My friendshis third novel, which won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction this year. The winner – and it feels right – is Everett, who takes the stage with a small smile on his face. Everett, aged 67, who has consistently published novels since 1983, is brief but kind in his speech, thanking his publishers and his wife Danzy Senna, along with their two teenage sons, “whose almost complete apathy about my career helps me keep things in perspective.”

During the after party, I scan the crowd and see Anne Carson in a sharp gray suit and wide red tie. No sign of July, but every time I see a woman with short, curly hair, I pay attention. On the upstairs balcony where a DJ is stationed, everyone is doing the Electric Slide. Translator Lin King, who won the prize for translated literature with Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, says she is “stunned” by the win and a little thirsty: “I’ve been looking for water all night.” She’s having a great time. “I laughed so much at Miranda July’s reading yesterday,” she says, “and Percival Everett gave me a hug. It was phenomenal.” Heading out the door in a red scarf, to the roar of “Must Be the Money,” Everett tells me that “it feels great, of course, to talk to these writers.”

I find the crew from Deep Vellum, a Dallas press that was nominated for its first National Book Award this year for Fiston Mwanza Mujilas The villain’s dance. Mujila and Roland Glasser, who are the book’s translators, and Deep Vellum’s publisher, Will Evans, have matching ribbons. New York is like the Congo, says Mujila: Unlike Austria, where he lives now, “the city lives all night – a lot happens at night.”

A wave of younger publishers, not yet powerful enough to get seats at the table but key to the late-night energy, has filtered in to party. Not long after the ceremony, most of the more prominent nominees have left for quieter places, and July is nowhere in sight; someone tells me they heard she wore “white panties, which sounds interesting.” But Barbara Kingsolver is still there, holding court on the upstairs balcony in a long-sleeved red sequin dress. I sneak up on her just after she kicks off her heels. What goes through her mind, I ask? “I feel incredibly encouraged by the courage of the writers here tonight,” she says, but she can’t talk for long—she’s about to hit the dance floor. When the Sugarhill Gang’s “Jump on It” starts playing, she makes a beeline. “She’s dancing! She’s dancing!” I hear someone yelling to a friend, she’s still out there when “212,” by Azealia Banks, starts around midnight, and I decide to leave them to it.