The National Book Foundation has revealed the finalists for the 2014 National Book Awards for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People's Literature. The fiction shortlist includes 2014 "5 Under 35" honoree Phil Klay, along with two-time National Book Award finalist and a Pulitzer Prize winner, Marilynne Robinson. Also shortlisted, for nonfiction, is Roz Chast, the first cartoonist to be honored by the National Book Awards in the adult categories.
The winners will be announced on November 19 at a ceremony in New York City, emceed by Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket). That night, Neil Gaiman will present the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to Ursula K. Le Guin. Kyle Zimmer, co-founder, CEO, and president of First Book, will be presented the Foundation’s Literarian Award for Outstanding Contribution to the American Literary Community.
Finalists for Fiction
Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman (Grove Press/ Grove/Atlantic)
Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See (Scribner/ Simon & Schuster)
Phil Klay, Redeployment (The Penguin Press/ Penguin Group (USA))
Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven (Alfred A. Knopf/ Random House)
Marilynne Robinson, Lila (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Finalists for Nonfiction
Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Bloomsbury)
Anand Gopal, No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes (Metropolitan Books/ Henry Holt and Company)
John Lahr, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (W.W. Norton & Company)
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 (Liveright Publishing Corporation/ W.W. Norton & Company)
Finalists for 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)
Finalists for 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/ Macmillan Publishers)
John Corey Whaley, Noggin (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/ Simon & Schuster)
Deborah Wiles, Revolution: The Sixties Trilogy, Book Two (Scholastic Press)
Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming (Nancy Paulsen Books/ Penguin Group (USA))
