The longlist nominees across all four categories have been announced for the 2016 National Books Awards. Five finalists in each category will be announced on October 13, and winners will be announced in New York City on November 16. Here's a look at PW's complete coverage of the nominees, including reviews, interviews, and essays.
Fiction
- The Throwback Special by Chris Bachelder (Norton)
- What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett (Little, Brown)
- News of the World by Paulette Jiles (Morrow)
- The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan (Viking)
- The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie (Penguin Press)
- Sweet Lamb of Heaven by Lydia Millet (Norton)
- Miss Jane by Brad Watson (Norton)
- The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)
- Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson (Amistad)
Nonfiction
- America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History by Andrew J. Bacevich (Random House)
- The Firebrand and the First Lady, Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Struggle for Social Justice by Patricia Bell-Scott (Knopf)
- Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck by Adam Cohen (Penguin Press)
- Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild (New Press)
- Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi (Nation)
- Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Harvard Univ.)
- Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil (Crown)
- The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez (HMH)
- The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition by Manisha Sinha (Yale Univ.)
- Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson (Pantheon)
Poetry
- The Performance of Becoming Human by Daniel Borzutzky (Brooklyn Arts Press)
- Collected Poems 1974–2004 by Rita Dove (Norton)
- Archeophonics by Peter Gizzi (Wesleyan)
- The Selected Poems of Donald Hall by Donald Hall (HMH)
- The Abridged History of Rainfall by Jay Hopler (McSweeney's)
- Bestiary by Donika Kelly (Graywolf)
- World of Made and Unmade by Jane Mead (Alice James)
- Look by Solmaz Sharif (Graywolf)
- Blackacre by Monica Youn (Graywolf)
- Blue Laws by Kevin Young (Knopf)
Young People's Literature
- Booked by Kwame Alexander (HMH)
- Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo (Candlewick)
- March: Book Three by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, illus. by Nate Powell (Top Shelf)
- When the Sea Turned to Silver by Grace Lin (Little, Brown)
- When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore (St. Martin’s/Thomas Dunne)
- Burn Baby Burn by Meg Medina (Candlewick)
- Pax by Sara Pennypacker, illus. by Jon Klassen (HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray)
- Ghost by Jason Reynolds (Atheneum)
- Sachiko: A Nagasaki Bomb Survivor’s Story by Caren Stelson (Lerner/Carolrhoda)
- The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon (Delacorte)
