National Book Awards: Rumaan Alam, Lydia Millet and Douglas Stuart among finalists
Finalists have been unveiled in the fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people’s literature categories
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Finalists for the National Book Awards have been unveiled, featuring eight debuts out of 25 selected works.
In the fiction category, Rumaan Alam was selected for his freshly published novel Leave the World Behind.
Lydia Millet’s A Children’s Bible, Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain, and Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown round out the category.
On the nonfiction side, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is up for The Undocumented Americans. Les Payne and Tamara Payne are finalists for The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X, while Claudio Saunt was selected for Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory.
My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland, as well as How to Make a Slave and Other Essays by Jerald Walker are also in the running.
Nominees in the poetry category are Mei-mei Berssenbrugge for A Treatise on Stars, Tommye Blount for Fantasia for the Man in Blue, Don Mee Choi for DMZ Colony, Anthony Cody for Borderland Apocrypha, and Natalie Diaz for Postcolonial Love Poem.
Kacen Callender is among the finalists in the young people’s literature category, for their novel King and the Dragonflies. Traci Chee is nominated for We Are Not Free, Candice Iloh for Every Body Looking, Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed for When Stars Are Scattered, and Gavriel Savit for The Way Back.
In the translated literature category, the finalists are Anja Kampmann for High as the Waters Rise, Jonas Hassen Khemiri for The Family Clause, Yu Miri for Tokyo Ueno Station, Pilar Quintana for The Bitch, and Adania Shibli for Minor Detail.
Winners will be announced on 18 November during an online ceremony. Walter Mosley and Carolyn Reidy will each receive a lifetime achievement award as part of the event.
Finalists were picked out of a total of 1,692 books submitted by publishers for this year’s awards. There were 609 contenders in the nonfiction category, 388 in fiction, 311 in young people’s literature, 254 in poetry, and 130 in translated literature.
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