'Hell of a Book': UNCW graduate Jason Mott wins prestigious National Book Award

A writer from Southeastern North Carolina has won the National Book Award for fiction.

Jason Mott, a native of Bolton in Columbus County and a graduate of the University of North Carolina Wilmington's Department of Creative Writing, won the award, one of the literary world's most prestigious, on Wednesday night for his novel "Hell of a Book."

"A lifetime of work, dreams, and tears that somehow led to, and is magically bound within, a single, wonderful little sticker," Mott tweeted out Thursday morning. 

"Hell of a Book" alternates chapters between a Black writer on tour to promote a novel titled "Hell of a Book" and a young Black boy called Soot who's growing up in the rural South. A third character, called The Kid, appears in visions to the writer. 

The book appears to be at least somewhat autobiographical. Both the novel's writer character and Mott hail from Bolton, and the character of Soot lives near Whiteville, also in Columbus County.

More:Wilmington-area author uses Black experience to pen 'Hell of a Book'

In his review of "Hell of a Book" for the StarNews, Ben Steelman wrote that Mott delves into "Black self-loathing, the issues of the Black Lives Matter movement and the question of whether minority writers should only write about 'Black' issues."

Members and graduates of UNCW's creative writing department were thrilled by the win as well. 

"Well deserved," said department chair Mark Cox. "We are pleased for him and proud of him. It's a very big deal."

Mott has both bachelor's and master's degrees from UNCW's creative writing department and also teaches classes there as a distinguished visiting professor. His win is also a win for the department in that "it highlights the work we do here on all sorts of levels," Cox said. 

The National Book Award for fiction has been won by such acclaimed writers as Colson Whitehead, Susan Sontag, Cormac McCarthy, John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates and Ralph Ellison. It confers a measure of prestige and renown upon those who receive it, with the added bonus of increasing book sales. 

During the National Book Awards broadcast, "Hell of a Book" was described as "a structurally and conceptually daring examination of art, fame, family and being Black in America" and "playful, insightful and moving, all at the same time."

In his speech accepting the award, Mott said he "would like to dedicate this award to all the other mad kids, to all the outsiders, the weirdos, the bullied ... The ones so strange they had no choice but to be misunderstood by the world and by those around them. The ones who, in spite of this, refuse to outgrow their imagination, refuse to abandon their dreams and refuse to deny, diminish their identity, or their truth, or their loves, unlike so many others.”

"Hell of a Book" is Mott's fourth novel. The previous three are "The Crossing," "The Wonder of All Things" and "The Returned," which was a New York Times best-seller and was made into a TV series called "Resurrection."

Contact John Staton at 910-343-2343 or John.Staton@StarNewsOnline.com.