The finalists for the 2015 National Book Awards include two Pulitzer Prize winners, a two-time NBA finalist, the son of an African American publisher/printer and a 23-year-old female cartoonist nominated for her first solo graphic novel. Penguin Random House led all publishers with eight of its titles named finalists and there were only four finalists that did not come one of the Big 5 houses. presses.
Finalists for Fiction
Karen E. Bender, Refund (Counterpoint Press)
Angela Flournoy, The Turner House (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies (Riverhead Books)
Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles (Random House)
Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life (Doubleday)
Finalists for Nonfiction
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau)
Sally Mann, Hold Still (Little, Brown)
Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus (Atria Books)
Carla Power, If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran (Henry Holt)
Tracy K. Smith, Ordinary Light, published by Alfred A. Knopf
Finalists for Poetry
Ross Gay, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Terrance Hayes, How to Be Drawn (Penguin)
Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus (Knopf)
Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions)
Patrick Phillips, Elegy for a Broken Machine (Alfred A. Knopf)
Finalists for Young People’s Literature
Ali Benjamin, The Thing About Jellyfish (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Laura Ruby, Bone Gap (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins Children's Books)
Steve Sheinkin, Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War (Roaring Brook Press)
Neal Shusterman, Challenger Deep (HarperCollins Children's Books)
Noelle Stevenson, Nimona (HarperTeen/HarperCollins Children's Books)
The Winners will be announced on Wednesday, November 18 at the 66th National Book Awards Benefit Dinner and Ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City, which will be streamed live on the Foundation’s website, www.nationalbook.org.
