Percival Everett won the National Book Award for his novel James, a retelling of the Mark Twain novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the slave, Jim’s, perspective.

A longtime summer visitor to the Vineyard, Mr. Everett accepted the award in New York on Wednesday.

Mr. Everett took part in the Martha’s Vineyard Author series this past season, discussing his career and the novel.

In an interview with the Gazette just before the author series event, he talked about his creative decision to have Jim use two types of language — a more erudite one that enslaved people use with each other, and an uneducated caricature style Jim uses to speak with Huck and other white people.

“Jim is not rendered fully in Twain’s novel,” Mr. Everett said in the interview. “Twain wasn’t trying to tell his story. And he was...ill-equipped to tell Jim’s story. So I decided I would tell it from Jim’s point of view, and allow his agency to come through.”

“I had to divorce myself from Twain and his language,” Mr. Everett continued. “I wanted to inhabit the world of Huck Finn, but not the text.”

James was published by Doubleday/Penguin Random House. During his acceptance speech at Wednesday’s ceremony, Mr. Everett thanked his publisher, editor, publicist, agent and his wife, the writer Danzy Senna.

He also thanked his two teenage sons, “whose near complete apathy about my career helps me keep things in perspective,” he said to a round of laughter.

Mr. Everett has been coming to the Vineyard for decades and spends much of his time on the Island writing.

“I just like being alone,” he said. “The Island is a comfortable place to be. If I’m not comfortable I can’t write.”