Many of the finalists are not new to the literary prize circuit. Two recipients of the MacArthur "Genius" grant made the cut, as did five Pulitzer Prize winners, one National Book Award winner, three previous finalists and a recipient of a National Book Foundation lifetime achievement award. 

And the finalists are....

Fiction

Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her 

Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King

Louise Erdrich, The Round House 

Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds 

Nonfiction

Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-1956 

Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

Robert A. Caro, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 4

Domingo Martinez, The Boy Kings of Texas 

Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East 

Poetry

David Ferry, Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations

Cynthia Huntington, Heavenly Bodies 

Tim Seibles, Fast Animal

Alan Shapiro, Night of the Republic

Susan Wheeler, Meme 

Young People’s Literature

William Alexander, Goblin Secrets

Carrie Arcos, Out of Reach 

Patricia McCormick, Never Fall Down 

Eliot Schrefer, Endangered