I happily admit to having a special soft spot in my heart for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, but that shouldn’t detract from the other book awards out there–particularly because they offer so many great reading recommendations to us hungry readers looking for something new to try!
As we discussed last year, the National Book Awards have (and continue to have) some identity issues. They were originally imagined to be some kind of rival to the Academy Awards, before making the realization that, and I quote, “Book people are really not actors”. And while the award committee are very much trying to reinvent the award into something to rival the Man Booker in terms of prestige and gravitas, there is still a fairly high reliance on celebrity and flashy parties, rather than on the books.
We, at the Free For All, however, are always All About the Books, so let’s focus on the best part of the National Book Awards, and get to the long-lists for Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature, which was announced last Friday. A reminder: the National Book Award is only for books written in English and published by American publishers, so this list usually looks much different to other fiction award lists. The short list will be announced on October 13, and the Winners will be announced on November 16:
FICTION:
- Chris Bachelder: The Throwback Special
- Garth Greenwell, What Belongs to You
- Adam Haslett, Imagine Me Gone
- Paulette Jiles, News of the World
- Karan Mahajan, The Association of Small Bombs
- Elizabeth McKenzie, The Portable Veblen (Also a Finalist for the Baileys Prize for Women’s Fiction!)
- Lydia Millet, Sweet Lamb of Heaven
- Brad Watson, Miss Jane
- Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad
- Jacqueline Woodson, Another Brooklyn
NON-FICTION:
- Andrew J. Bacevich, America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History
- Patricia Bell-Scott, The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice
- Adam Cohen, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck
- Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
- Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
- Viet Thanh Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War
- Cathy O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
- Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America
- Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition
- Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy
POETRY:
- Daniel Borzutzky, The Performance of Becoming Human
- Rita Dove, Collected Poems 1974 – 2004
- Peter Gizzi, Archeophonics
- Donald Hall, The Selected Poems of Donald Hall
- Jay Hopler, The Abridged History of Rainfall
- Donika Kelly, Bestiary
- Jane Mead, World of Made and Unmade
- Solmaz Sharif, Look
- Monica Youn, Blackacre
- Kevin Young, Blue Laws
YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE:
- Kwame Alexander, Booked
- Kate DiCamillo, Raymie Nightingale
- John Lewis, Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell (Artist), March: Book Three
- Grace Lin, When the Sea Turned to Silver
- Anna-Marie McLemore, When the Moon Was Ours
- Meg Medina, Burn Baby Burn
- Sara Pennypacker & Jon Klassen (Illustrator), Pax
- Jason Reynolds, Ghost
- Caren Stelson, Sachiko: A Nagasaki Bomb Survivor’s Story
- Nicola Yoon, The Sun Is Also a Star