 On October 12, 2011, "Head Off & Split" was announced as a finalist for the 2011 National Book Awards, with Finney honored as the 2011 winner of the National Book Award for Poetry on November 16, 2011.Her acceptance speech at the awards ceremony, touching on race, reading and writing, was judged by host John Lithgow as "the best acceptance speech for anything that I've ever heard in my life".