Books
The National Book Awards Finalists Are Here & Your Reading List Just Got SO Much Longer
Attention book-lovers, can I get a drumroll, please, because the National Book Award finalists are here, and I have a look at all 25 of the lucky books and their authors below.
Since 1950, the National Book Foundation has recognized the best in American literature with its prestigious annual prizes, the National Book Awards. Traditionally, four categories have been recognized — fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young adult literature — but this year, there is a new prize being awarded for translated literature. That's right, the biggest book award in the United States just got even bigger.
Around 1,600 titles were considered for the 2018 National Book Awards, according to Executive Director of the National Book Foundation Lisa Lucas, who announced the 25 finalists on BuzzFeed News' live morning show, AM to DM, alongside hosts Saeed Jones and Isaac Fitzgerald. The winners, which will be announced at the National Awards Ceremony and Benefit dinner in Manhattan on Nov. 14., will join the ranks of famous writers including William Faulkner, Marianne Moore, Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and many more.
There is still over a month to go until we find out which five books will be awarded one of the literary world's most prestigious prizes, but in the meantime, you can get to know each the finalists in each category. Which titles will you be rooting for?
Fiction
- A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley
- Florida by Lauren Groff
- Where the Dead Sit Talking by Brandon Hobson
- The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
- The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
Nonfiction
- The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation by Colin G. Calloway
- American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic by Victoria Johnson
- Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh
- The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C. Stewart
- We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights by Adam Winkler
Poetry
- Wobble by Rae Armantrout
- American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes
- Ghost Of by Diane Khoi Nguyen
- Indecency by Justin Phillip Reed
- Eye Level by Jenny Xie
Translated Literature
- Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, translated from the French by Tina Kover
- Love byHanne Ørstavik, translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken
- Trick by Domenico Starnone, translated from the Italian by Jhumpa Lahiri
- The Emissary by Yoko Tawada, translated from the Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani
- Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft
Young People's Literature
- The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
- The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge by M.T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin
- The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle by Leslie Connor
- The Journey of Little Charlie by Christopher Paul Curtis
- Hey, Kiddo by Jarrett J. Krosoczka
