Book award season enters high gear as the National Book Award finalists have been released in a series of four longlists consisting of ten books apiece. Five finalists in each category will be announced on October 14, and winners will be announced in New York City on November 18.
The fiction list seems especially varied this year and includes many newcomers. Alongside highly touted books by Hanya Yanagihara, Lauren Groff, and Adam Johnson. Are “newcomers” like Bill Clegg, Angela Flournoy, and Nell Zink. It’s a great time to be a reader.
You read about nearly all of the books on the Fiction longlist here first, of course, as they appeared in our indispensable first-half and second-half previews.
In the other categories, after last year’s male-dominated Non-Fiction longlist, female authors have captured seven of the spots this year.
Here’s a list of the finalists in all four categories with bonus links and excerpts where available:
Fiction:
- A Cure for Suicide by Jesse Ball (Ball’s Year in Reading, 2009)
- Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg (exerpt)
- Refund by Karen E. Bender (“For What Purpose”)
- The Turner House by Angela Flournoy (Dynamite Detroit Debut: On Angela Flournoy’s The Turner House)
- Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (the book’s opening passage, The Most Joyous Part: The Millions Interviews Lauren Groff, Lauren Groff writing at The Millions)
- Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson (excerpt)
- Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson (excerpt (pdf))
- Honeydew by Edith Pearlman (Overnight Sensation? Edith Pearlman on Fame and the Importance of Short Fiction, Loneliness, Interrupted: Edith Pearlman’s Honeydew)
- A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (Two Lives: On Hanya Yanagihara and Atticus Lish, ‘I Wouldn’tve Had a Biography at All’: The Millions Interviews Hanya Yanagihara)
- Mislaid by Nell Zink
Nonfiction:
- Rain: A Natural and Cultural History by Cynthia Barnett (interview and excerpt)
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (“We Know Less Than We Think We Do”)
- Mourning Lincoln by Martha Hodes (excerpt)
- Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs by Sally Mann (excerpt)
- The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery (excerpt)
- Paradise of the Pacific: Approaching Hawaii by Susanna Moore (essay)
- Love and Other Ways of Dying by Michael Paterniti (excerpt)
- If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran by Carla Power (excerpt)
- Ordinary Light: A Memoir by Tracy K. Smith (A Field Guide to Silences: On Tracy K. Smith’s Ordinary Light)
- Travels in Vermeer: A Memoir by Michael White (excerpt)
Poetry:
- Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay (the title poem)
- Scattered at Sea by Amy Gerstler (excerpt)
- A Stranger’s Mirror: New and Selected Poems, 1994-2014 by Marilyn Hacker (the title poem)
- How to Be Drawn by Terrance Hayes (poem)
- The Beauty by Jane Hirshfield (poem)
- Voyage of the Sable Venus by Robin Coste Lewis (poem)
- Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón (Charring the Page: On Ada Limón’s Bright Dead Things)
- Elegy for a Broken Machine by Patrick Phillips (the title poem)
- Heaven by Rowan Ricardo Phillips (poem)
- Mistaking Each Other for Ghosts by Lawrence Raab (poem)
Young People’s Literature:
- Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli (excerpt)
- Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M.T. Anderson
- The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin (excerpt)
- Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson (excerpt)
- This Side of Wild: Mutts, Mares, and Laughing Dinosaurs by Gary Paulsen
- Bone Gap by Laura Ruby (excerpt)
- X: A Novel by Ilyasah Shabazz with Kekla Magoon (excerpt)
- Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War by Steve Sheinkin (excerpt)
- Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman (excerpt)
- Nimona by Noelle Stevenson (interview)
