2019 National Book Awards Finalists Announced
The National Book Foundation announced the 2019 National Book Awards finalists! It’s a fascinating list, with a range of debut authors and notable names like Marlon James, Laila Lalami, and László Krasznahorkai. None of the 25 finalists have previously won a National Book Award, and the majority of the finalists are first time nominees!
The winners in each of the five categories—Young People’s Literature, Translated Literature, Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction—will be announced November 20, 2019, at the 70th National Book Awards Ceremony. Edmund White will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award. Acclaimed actor, producer, and television veteran LeVar Burton will host the ceremony.
Young People’s Literature
Pet by Akwaeke Emezi
Make Me a World / Penguin Random House
Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks by Jason Reynolds
Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books / Simon & Schuster
Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay
Kokila / Penguin Random House
Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All by Laura Ruby
1919 The Year That Changed America by Martin W. Sandler
Bloomsbury Children’s Books / Bloomsbury Publishing
Translated Literature
Death Is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa
Translated from the Arabic by Leri Price
Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers
Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming by László Krasznahorkai
Translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet
New Directions
The Barefoot Woman by Scholastique Mukasonga
Translated from the French by Jordan Stump
Archipelago Books
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
Translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder
Pantheon Books / Penguin Random House
Crossing by Pajtim Statovci
Translated from the Finnish by David Hackston
Pantheon Books / Penguin Random House
Poetry
The Tradition by Jericho Brown
Copper Canyon Press
I: New and Selected Poems by Toi Derricotte
University of Pittsburgh Press
Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky
Graywolf Press
Be Recorder by Carmen Giménez Smith
Graywolf Press
Sight Lines by Arthur Sze
Copper Canyon Press
Nonfiction
The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom
Grove Press / Grove Atlantic
Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom
The New Press
What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forché
Penguin Press / Penguin Random House
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer
Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House
