By Hillel Italie
The Associated Press

Weakened by pneumonia and still limping from a 1999 road accident, Stephen King received a standing ovation after accepting an honorary National Book Award.

But not everyone cheered his speech, in which he made a case for embracing popular writers. Among the dissenters Wednesday night in New York was Shirley Hazzard, whose novel The Great Fire, a sophisticated romantic novel set just after World War II, took the coveted fiction prize.

King, 56, whose many best sellers include Carrie and The Shining, acknowledged that some thought him unworthy of a prize previously won by Philip Roth and Arthur Miller among others. He called for publishing people to spend more time reading writers like himself.

Hazzard, who writes in longhand on legal pads and took more than a decade to complete her novel, rejected the notion.

"I don't think giving us a reading list of those who are most read at this moment is much of a satisfaction," said Hazzard.

Other winners included Carlos Eire for the nonfiction Waiting for Snow in Havana; Polly Horvath, winner in the young people's category for The Canning Season, and C.K. Williams, the poetry winner for The Singing.

Each winner received $10,000, and finalists took home $1,000.

For the most part, it was King's kind of crowd. At $12,000 a table, the horror author had bought five, and several of the night's nominees praised him as a gifted storyteller and a friend to fellow writers.

King's speech was humorous, sentimental and defiant. He remembered his early years of writing, the typewriter sandwiched in the laundry room between the washer and dryer.

While King and Hazzard both celebrated the diversity of literature, you couldn't ask for two more different writers. King has written dozens of novels. Before The Great Fire, Hazzard had not completed a work of fiction since the early 1980s. King was an early champion of the e-book. Hazzard does not own a television and has never read a book written by King.