As Sarah and I were making our way up to the press gallery after the opening reception, she chastised me for not getting a picture of fiction judge Jonathan Lethem and former nominee Christopher Sorrentino in their tuxes. Luckily, I redeemed myself during the intermission. Shortly after this picture was taken, New School creative writing director Robert Polito came over and put Sorrentino in a headlock, undoubtedly for a good reason. I'd asked Lethem early on if he was going to be doing any more profile pieces for Rolling Stone, as he's given the magazine some of its best (IMO) articles in recent years. Unfortunately, he said, there were no plans for any in the immediate future: "I got to write about James Brown and Bob Dylan—where do you go from there?" He also revealed that he's halfway through the scripts for his Marvel revival of the '70s title Omega the Unknown, and enjoying his collaboration with Farel Dalrymple and Paul Hornschemeier. "It's like being Kubrick's screenwriter," he said of their pages. "I'm just making up excuses for them to draw interesting stuff."

While most of the nominees were able to enter the reception with a minimum of hubbub, Judith Regan's arrival instigated a media swarm, with reporters eager to get her talking about that O.J. Simpson thing. It was a far cry from the quiet lunch she'd hosted that afternoon at Lever House for her author, fiction nominee, Jess Walter, where she talked about how she took the manuscript for The Zero to a day spa, started reading, and quickly decided to skip her afternoon's appointments. She also jokingly convinced him to wear the nominee's medal ("literary bling," she quipped) at the table, telling the small group, "Jess is the National Book Award winner in my mind."

A few more shots taken as folks mingled during intermission: Former nominee René Steinke (left) catches up with Amity Gaige, one of Monday's "5 Under 35" writers; the host of that event, Amanda Stern (right), poses with Adah Nuchi of the National Book Foundation.

After all the winners had been announced, and I was wandering from table to table picking up the books that people had left behind, suddenly somebody ran up to me and tapped my arm. I thought I'd swiped a book from her stash, but it turned out to be Jude Watson of the young people's fiction judging committee, who simply wanted to tell me that she was a huge fan of GalleyCat, even though it distracted her from her own writing every morning. (The corsage commemorates her role as judge; the male judges all got little flowers for their lapels.)