National Book Awards Names 2019 Finalists

The National Book Foundation announced the National Book Award finalists today. Each category—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, young people’s literature, and translated literature—has been narrowed down from the longlist 10 to the shortlist five. While many of the finalists have made the NBA shortlist before, none of them have won of a National Book Award in these categories.

Here’s a list of the finalists in all five categories, with bonus links where available:

Fiction:

• Trust Exercise by Susan Choi (Read our 2019 interview with Choi)
• Sabrina & Corinas by Kali Fajardo-Anstine (Featured in our Great First-Half 2019 Book Preview)
• Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James (Read a profile of James)
• The Other Americans by Laila Lalami (Read Lalami’s 2018 Year in Reading entry)
• Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips (Featured in our Great First-Half 2019 Book Preview)

Nonfiction:

• The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom (Featured in our Great Second-Half 2019 Book Preview)
• Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom (Featured in our Great First-Half 2019 Book Preview)
• What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forché
• The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer
• Solitary by Albert Woodfox with Leslie George

Poetry:

• The Tradition by Jericho Brown (Read an excerpt from Brown’s collection)
• “I”: New and Selected Poems by Toi Derricotte (Read our 2019 interview with Derricotte)
• Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky (Featured in March’s Must-Read Poetry roundup)
• Be Recorder by Carmen Giménez Smith (Read an excerpt from Smith’s collection)
• Sight Lines by Arthur Sze

Translated Literature

• Death Is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa, translated by Leri Price
• Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming by László Krasznahorkai, translated by Ottilie Mulzet (Read our review)
• The Barefoot Woman by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated by Jordan Stump
• The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder (Featured in our Great Second-Half 2019 Book Preview)
• Crossing by Pajtim Statovci, translated by David Hackston

Young People’s Literature:

• Pet by Akwaeke Emezi (Featured in our Great Second-Half 2019 Book Preview)
• Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks by Jason Reynolds
• Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay
• Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All by Laura Ruby
• 1919: The Year That Changed America by Martin W. Sandler

The awards will be revealed in New York City on November 20.