Drew Barrymore will host the 74th annual National Book Awards in New York, the National Book Foundation has announced.
Oprah Winfrey, a previous winner of an honorary National Book Award, will be a guest speaker.
Barrymore and Winfrey both have long histories of championing books and reading.
Winfrey’s book club picks have helped dozens of works become bestsellers while Barrymore, whose honours include a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award, has praised books by Tina Fey and David Sedaris, among others.
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“Throughout their careers, Drew Barrymore and Oprah Winfrey have each demonstrated their enduring belief that books have the power to change readers’ lives — by opening doors, sparking conversations and building community,” David Steinberger, chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Book Foundation, said in a statement.
“This belief echoes the mission of the National Book Foundation to ensure that books have a prominent place in our culture.”
The awards ceremony is scheduled for November 15, in Manhattan, with prizes to be handed out in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, literature in translation and young people’s literature.
Barrymore is not the first celebrity host of the US’s National Book Awards, the unofficial “Oscars” of the publishing world. Steve Martin hosted a handful of times in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
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