The National Book Award finalists were announced early today, and with them a renewed resolve to read as much as humanly possible before the winners are declared in November. A huge congrats to all of the finalists--especially our very own Eliot Schrefer (Threatened) and Deborah Wiles (Revolution).
The five finalists in each category are:
Fiction:
- Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman (Grove Press)
- Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See (Scribner)
- Phil Klay, Redeployment (The Penguin Press)
- Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven (Alfred A. Knopf)
- Marilynne Robinson, Lila (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Nonfiction:
- Roz Chast, Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Bloomsbury) (side note: Ms. Chast is also a past juror of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards!)
- Anand Gopal, No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes (Henry Holt)
- John Lahr, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (W.W. Norton & Co.)
- Evan Osnos, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Edward O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence (W.W. Norton & Co.)
Poetry:
- Louise Glück, Faithful and Virtuous Night (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Fanny Howe, Second Childhood (Graywolf Press)
- Maureen N. McLane, This Blue (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Fred Moten, The Feel Trio (Letter Machine Editions)
- Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press)
Young People's Literature:
- Eliot Schrefer, Threatened (Scholastic Press)
- Steve Sheinkin, The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights (Roaring Brook Press)
- John Corey Whaley, Noggin (Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
- Deborah Wiles, Revolution: The Sixties Trilogy, Book Two (Scholastic Press)
- Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming (Nancy Paulsen Books)
As Scholastic's Suzanne McCabe writes on our education blog, frizzle, "The titles delve into unsettling topics that we often prefer to turn away from, including war, racism and aging. But therein lies the comfort."
