Independent presses publish some of the most remarkable, surprising, and daring literature, often on shoestring budgets and with small marketing departments. At The New York Public Library, we know small presses publish big books, from alt presses to international indie houses. As we enter the award season for books, we're looking back at a few times that these literary underdogs won big over the last fifty years. 

2011 National Book Award:
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (Bloomsbury)

"Enduring a hardscrabble existence as the children of alcoholic and absent parents, four siblings from a coastal Mississippi town prepare their meager stores for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina while struggling with such challenges as a teen pregnancy and a dying litter of prize puppies."

2010 National Book Award:
Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon (McPherson & Company)

"At the rock-bottom end of the sport of kings sits the ruthless and often violent world of cheap horse racing, where trainers and jockeys, grooms and hotwalkers, loan sharks and touts all struggle to take an edge, or prove their luck, or just survive. Equal parts Nathanael West, Damon Runyon and Eudora Welty, Lord of Misrule follows five characters, scarred and lonely dreamers in the American grain, through a year and four races at Indian Mount Downs, downriver from Wheeling, West Virginia-- from dust jacket."

1997 National Book Award:
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (The Atlantic Monthly Press)

"Inman, an injured and disillusioned Confederate soldier, embarks on a harrowing journey home to his sweetheart, Ada, who herself is struggling to run the farm left her at her father's sudden death."

1996 National Book Award:
Ship Fever and Other Stories by Andrea Barrett (W.W. Norton)

"The elegant short fictions gathered hereabout the love of science and the science of love are often set against the backdrop of the nineteenth century. Interweaving historical and fictional characters, they encompass both past and present as they negotiate the complex territory of ambition, failure, achievement, and shattered dreams."

1985 National Book Award:
Easy in the Islands by Bob Shacochis (Crown Publishing Group)

"A National Book Award-winning collection of short works is set in the Caribbean and incorporates such elements as fleets of fishing boats making their way through remote atolls, reggae bars on narrow islands, sprawling barrios, and yacht-filled Miami marinas. Reprint."

2010 Pulitzer:
Tinkers by Paul Harding (Bellevue Literary Press)

"On his deathbed, surrounded by his family, George Washington Crosby's throughts drift back to his childhood and the father who abandoned him when he was twelve."

1981: Pulitzer
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O'Toole (Louisiana State University Press)

"A New Orleans misanthrope who constantly rebukes society, Ignatius Reilly, gets a job at his mother's urging but ends up leading a worker's revolt."

1996: National Book Critics Circle Award
Women in Their Beds by Gina Berriault (Counterpoint Press)

"A collection of thirty-five stories examining people's behavior and what motivates them."

2011: National Book Critics Circle Award
Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman (Lookout Books)

"Presents a collection of short stories that focus on the trials and tribulations of a group of Northeasterners."