The twenty finalists for the National Book Awards were announced this morning. Each finalist gets $1,000, a plaque and a burst for their book cover. The awards, given by the National Book Foundation in mid-November, are in four categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people’s literature.
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
