The award recognizes a dedication to book culture both long-standing and outstanding. Past winners have included Studs Terkel, Richard Howard, Pauline Kael, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Leslie Fiedler, Albert Murray, Alfred Kazin, Elizabeth Hardwick, William Maxwell, Donald Keene, James Laughlin, Robert Giroux, The Library of America and Leslie A. Marchand. Ivan Sandrof was the first president of the NBCC (and the man who first told Nicholas Basbanes, his successor as book editor of the Worcester Evening Gazette, not to be shy about having interviewees inscribe their books).

Emilie Buchwald co-founded Milkweed Editions in 1979 with artist Randy Scholes. She guided the press as publisher and editor for nearly twenty-five years before her retirement in 2003. Since retiring, she has founded The Gryphon Press, a publisher of illustrated children's books. In 2002, the McKnight Foundation honored Buchwald as the Distinguished Artist of the year for her work as an editor. In 2007 she won the Kay Sexton Award given at the Minnesota Book Awards.

Congratulations to Emilie for national recognition of her work and the many authors whose books she brought into print. Writers including Susan Straight, Ken Kalfus, Bill Holm, and Larry Watson—to name just a few—were first published by Milkweed Editions under Emilie Buchwald's direction. In addition to nurturing writers, she collaborated with Robert Bly on translations of poetry and brought to US audiences writers from around the world, including Bapsi Sidhwa, now recognized as one of the leading authors of the Indian subcontinent. An activist publisher, she commissioned books on topics she thought were of vital importance and needed articulation by talented, well-informed writers. Transforming a Rape Culture, Toward the Livable City, and a whole series of Thistle books—“short books on thorny subjects”—are evidence of her passion for the vitality of the written word and its ability to shape the world around us.

The awards ceremony will be held in New York in March.