The Chirbys aren’t the only awards to announce their finalists this week. This morning, the National Book Foundation announced finalists for their annual award categories in poetry, nonfiction, and fiction.
The finalists exemplify some of the publishing world’s finest and most diverse voices — and many of its newest, as well. We’re thrilled to see so many debut writers and independent presses!
Here’s the complete list of finalists:
FICTION
Elliot Ackerman, Dark at the Crossing
(Knopf / Penguin Random House)
Lisa Ko, The Leavers
(Algonquin Books / Workman Publishing)
Min Jin Lee, Pachinko
(Grand Central Publishing / Hachette Book Group)
Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties: Stories
(Graywolf Press)
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing
(Scribner)
NONFICTION
Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge
(Atria / 37 INK)
Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America
(Simon & Schuster)
Masha Gessen, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
(Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House)
David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
(Doubleday / Penguin Random House)
Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
(Viking / Penguin Random House)
POETRY
Frank Bidart, Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers)
Leslie Harrison, The Book of Endings
(University of Akron Press)
Layli Long Soldier, WHEREAS
(Graywolf Press)
Shane McCrae, In the Language of My Captor
(Wesleyan University Press)
Danez Smith, Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems
(Graywolf Press)
YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE
Elana K. Arnold, What Girls Are Made Of
(Carolrhoda Lab / Lerner Publishing Group)
Robin Benway, Far from the Tree
(HarperTeen / HarperCollins Publishers)
Erika L. Sánchez, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
(Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House)
Rita Williams-Garcia, Clayton Byrd Goes Underground
(Amistad / HarperCollins Publishers)
Ibi Zoboi, American Street
(Balzer + Bray / HarperCollins Publishers)
You can read more at the National Book Foundation’s website.
Amy Brady is the Editor-in-Chief of the Chicago Review of Books and Deputy Publisher of Guernica Magazine. Her writing has appeared in Oprah, The Village Voice, Pacific Standard, The New Republic, McSweeney's, and elsewhere. Follow her on Twitter at @ingredient_x.