Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and writer Katherine Boo won the national book award for nonfiction for "Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity," which sheds light on the lives of India's poor as well as government corruption.

Author Louise Erdrich took the top fiction award for her moving novel "The Round House," about a woman raped in a Native American community, at the annual national book awards in New York on Wednesday.

David Ferry's "Bewilderment" won for poetry and William Alexander's "Goblin Secrets" won the young people's literature award.

The National Book Foundation, which administers the awards, nominated five writers in each of four categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people's literature.