Now Reading
Here Are the Finalists for the National Book Award

Here Are the Finalists for the National Book Award

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 AckermanDark 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 MachadoHer Body and Other Parties: Stories
(Graywolf Press)

Jesmyn WardSing, Unburied, Sing
(Scribner)

NONFICTION

Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge
(Atria / 37 INK)

Frances FitzGeraldThe 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 BidartHalf-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers)

Leslie Harrison, The Book of Endings
(University of Akron Press)

Layli Long SoldierWHEREAS
(Graywolf Press)

Shane McCraeIn the Language of My Captor 
(Wesleyan University Press)

See Also

Danez SmithDon’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.


© 2021 All Rights Reserved.