Dahlen selected as judge for National Book Awards

Associate Professor Sarah Park Dahlen has been selected by the National Book Foundation to serve as a judge for the 74th National Book Awards. The foundation chose 25 judges for this year’s awards, which are given in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people’s literature.

This year’s judges include writers, editors, booksellers, academics, critics, directors of educational research centers, and translators from across the country. Dahlen will serve on the Young People’s Literature panel with Claudette S. McLinn, executive director of the Center for the Study of Multicultural Children’s Literature, and authors Kyle Lukoff, justin a. reynolds, and Sabaa Tahir.

“I am honored and humbled to serve alongside such amazing people for this important award,” Dahlen said. “I’ve assigned many National Book Award winners in my classes, and to have the

responsibility of helping to choose yet another winner is a dream come true.”

Dahlen’s research addresses transracially adopted Koreans in youth literature, Asian American youth literature, and diversity in children’s literature and library education. She is cofounder of the open access journal Research on Diversity in Youth Literature, with Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez. Dahlen received her PhD in library and information science from the iSchool at Illinois.

The judges for the 2023 National Book Awards will select 50 longlist titles, 10 per category, which will be announced mid-September, and 25 finalists, to be announced on October 3. Winners in all five categories will be announced at the 74th National Book Awards on November 15, 2023.

Adapted from a National Book Foundation press release