Booker Prize-winning Indian author Kiran Desai is a favorite to win the prestigious fiction award again.

South African writer Damon Galgut has won the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction with his story of racism and reckoning “The Promise.”.

NEW YORK – Author James McBride and editor Chris Jackson were among those honored Thursday night by the Center for Fiction. Jackson, whose authors range from Ta-Nehisi Coates to Bryan Stevenson, was given the Medal for Editorial Excellence Award. Jackson runs the One World imprint of Penguin Random House. The Center for Fiction awarded its First Novel Prize to Raven Leilani for “Luster,” the story of a young Black woman's affair with a married, middle-aged white man. Finalists included this year's Booker Prize winner, Douglas Stuart's “Shuggie Bain.”

FILE - In this Thursday, Nov. 19, 2020 file photo, Douglas Stuart speaks at The 2020 Booker Prize Awards Ceremony, at the Roundhouse in London. The Scottish writer was at home on Manhattans Lower East Side when he was announced as the winner of the 2020 Booker Prize last week. The Scottish writer was at home in Manhattan when he was announced as the winner of the 2020 Booker Prize last week. Glasgow-born Stuart is only the second Scottish Booker winner in the 51-year history of the prize, open to English-language novels from around the world. Stuart thinks it’s important — and overdue — that a working-class writer has won the Booker Prize.

LONDON – Scottish writer Douglas Stuart won the Booker Prize for fiction Thursday for “Shuggie Bain,” a novel about a boy’s turbulent coming of age in hardscrabble 1980s Glasgow that was turned down by 32 publishers before being picked up. Stuart, 44, won the prestigious 50,000 pound ($66,000) award for his first published novel, the product of a decade of work. Stuart dedicated the book to own mother, who died when he was 16. Though there have been many British winners of the Booker Prize, most of them English, Stuart is the first Scottish victor since James Kelman took the 1994 prize with “How Late it Was, How Late” — a book Stuart has called an inspiration. Mantel won the Booker for both its predecessors, “Wolf Hall” and “Bring up the Bodies,” and had been widely tipped for the hat trick.

NEW YORK – Stories of race, class and climate change were among the fiction finalists Tuesday for the 71st annual National Book Awards. The National Book Foundation, which presents the awards, announced five works in each of five categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translation and young people's literature. None of the authors have been finalists before, although novelist Lydia Millet has been on the fiction longlist of 10. In 2011, Manning Marable died just before the release of “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,” a National Book Award finalist and winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Judging panels of authors, critics and others in the bookselling community selected finalists from nearly 1,700 books submitted by publishers.

FILE - In this July 22, 2020, file photo, Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga demonstrates for the release of Zimbabwe Journalist Hopewell Chin'ono in Harare. Dangarembga who was arrested during anti-government protests is among six finalists announced Tuesday, Sept, 15, 2020 for the Booker Prize for fiction. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi, File)LONDON – A Zimbabwean writer who was arrested during anti-government protests is among six finalists announced Tuesday on a diverse list of contenders for the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction. Founded in 1969, the prize is open to English-language authors from around the world, but until 2014 only British, Irish and Commonwealth writers were eligible. Mantel won the Booker for both its predecessors, “Wolf Hall” and “Bring up the Bodies” and had been widely tipped for a third victory.