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Here’s the Poetry Longlist for the National Book Award

Here’s the Poetry Longlist for the National Book Award

The National Book Awards’s longlist for poetry was announced this morning, and as in years past, it’s an impressive roundup of some of the nation’s most vital and thought-provoking poets. Kudos to the many independent and university presses represented in this year’s list:

Among the poets receiving a nomination is Mai Der Vang for her brilliant, award-winning debut collection, Afterland.  In our interview with the poet this past May, she explained the meaning of the title:

The afterland, in its obvious sense refers to the place after death, but it also embodies the after-place or after-country of the refugee.

Here’s the full list:

Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016
By Frank Bidart
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities
By Chen Chen
BOA Editions, Ltd.

The Book of Endings
By Leslie Harrison

University of Akron Press

Magdalene: Poems
By Marie Howe
W. W. Norton & Company

Where Now: New and Selected Poems
By Laura Kasischke
Copper Canyon Press

WHEREAS
Layli Long Soldier
Graywolf Press

See Also

In the Language of My Captor
Shane McCrae
Wesleyan University Press

Square Inch Hours
Sherod Santos
W. W. Norton & Company

Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems
Danez Smith
Graywolf Press

Afterland
Mai Der Vang
Graywolf Press

You can read more about the nominees over at the National Book Foundation’s website. Remember to begin requesting titles from your local bookstores and libraries today! They won’t stay in stock long.


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