National Book Awards Finalists Announced

Our colleagues at Oregon Public Broadcasting's Think Out Loud hosted today's announcement of the 20 finalists for this year's National Book Awards.

They report that the nominees are:

National Book Awards Finalists

Young People's Literature

Author — Title — Publisher

-- Debby Dahl Edwardson — My Name is Not Easy — Marshall Cavendish

-- Thanhha Lai — Inside Out & Back Again --Harper/HarperCollins

-- Albert Marrin — Flesh & Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and Its Legacy / Alfred A. Knopf

-- Lauren Myracle — Shine — Amulet/Abrams

-- Gary D. Schmidt — Okay for Now — Clarion/HMH

Poetry

Author — Title — Publisher

-- Nikky Finney — Head Off & Split — Triquarterly/Northwestern University

-- Yusef Komunyakaa — The Chameleon Couch — FSG

-- Carl Phillips — Double Shadow — FSG

-- Adrienne Rich — Tonight No Poetry Will Serve — W.W. Norton & Company

-- Bruce Smith — Devotions — University of Chicago Press

Non-Fiction

Author — Title — Publisher

-- Deborah Baker — The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism — Graywolf Press

-- Mary Gabriel — Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution — Little, Brown

-- Stephen Greenblatt — The Swerve: How the World Became Modern --- W.W. Norton

-- Manning Marable — Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention — Viking

-- Lauren Redniss — Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout — It: HarperCollins

Fiction

Author — Title — Publisher

-- Andrew Krivak — The Sojourn — Bellevue Literary Press

-- Tea Obreht — The Tiger's Wife -- Random House

-- Julie Otsuka — The Buddha in the Attic — Knopf

-- Edith Pearlman — Binocular Vision — Lookout

-- Jesmyn Ward — Salvage the Bones — Bloomsbury USA

The awards are administered by the nonprofit National Book Foundation. The winners are due to be announced in mid-November.

There's an Oregon Public Broadcasting slideshow about the awards' history, here.

The Associated Press sums up this year's nomination news with this:

"Debut novelist Tea Obreht, longtime poet Adrienne Rich and Malcolm X biographer Manning Marable, who died on the eve of his book's publication, were among the National Book Award finalists announced Wednesday.

"The list of 20 nominees, five each in four categories, included several published by small presses, from TriQuarterly to Graywolf. Fiction finalist Edith Pearlman's story collection Binocular Vision was released through Lookout Books in Wilmington, N.C., while Andrew Krivak's The Sojourn came out from Bellevue Literary Press, based at the famous hospital in New York and the publisher of Paul Harding's Pulitzer Prize-winning Tinkers."

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