This week, the National Book Foundation is announcing the 2019 National Book Award longlists. The five finalists for each award will be named on October 8, and the winner for each will be announced at a ceremony in New York City on November 20.
The longlists are as follows:
Fiction
Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (Random House)
Trust Exercise by Susan Choi (Henry Holt)
Sabrina & Corina: Stories by Kali Fajardo-Anstine (One World)
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James (Riverhead)
The Other Americans by Laila Lalami (Pantheon)
Black Light: Stories by Kimberly King Parsons (Vintage)
The Need by Helen Phillips (Simon & Schuster)
Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips (Knopf)
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (Penguin)
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)
Nonfiction
Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib (University of Texas Press)
The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom (Grove)
Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom (New Press)
What You Have Heard is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forché (Penguin)
The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America by Greg Grandin (Metropolitan)
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe (Doubleday)
Burn the Place: A Memoir by Iliana Regan (Agate Midway)
Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (University of North Carolina Press)
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer (Riverhead)
Solitary by Albert Woodfox with Leslie George (Grove)
Poetry
Variations on Dawn and Dusk by Dan Beachy-Quick (Omnidawn)
The Tradition by Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon)
“I”: New and Selected Poems by Toi Derricotte (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Build Yourself a Boat by Camonghne Felix (Haymarket)
Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky (Graywolf)
A Sand Book by Ariana Reines (Tin House)
Dunce by Mary Ruefle (Wave)
Be Recorder by Carmen Giménez Smith (Graywolf)
Sight Lines by Arthur Sze (Copper Canyon)
Doomstead Days by Brian Teare (Nightboat)
Translated Literature
When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back: Carl’s Book by Naja Marie Aidt and translated by Denise Newman (Coffee House)
The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field Notes on Brazil’s Everyday Insurrections by Eliane Brum and translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty (Graywolf Press)
Space Invaders by Nona Fernández and translated by Natasha Wimmer (Graywolf)
Will and Testament by Vigdis Hjorth and translated by Charlotte Barslund (Verso Fiction)
Death is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa and translated by Leri Price (FSG)
Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming by László Krasznahorkai and translated by Ottilie Mulzet (New Directions)
The Barefoot Woman by Scholastique Mukasonga and translated by Jordan Stump (Archipelago)
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa and translated by Stephen Snyder (Pantheon)
Crossing by Pajtim Statovci and translated by David Hackston (Pantheon)
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk and translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Riverhead)
Young People’s Literature
The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander, illus. by Kadir Nelson (HMH/Versify)
SHOUT by Laurie Halse Anderson (Viking)
Pet by Akwaeke Emezi (Random House/Make Me a World)
A Place to Belong by Cynthia Kadohata, illus. by Julia Kuo (Atheneum/Dlouhy)
Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks by Jason Reynolds, illus. by Alexander Nabaum (Atheneum/Dlouhy)
Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay (Penguin/Kokila)
Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All by Laura Ruby (HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray)
1919: The Year That Changed America by Martin W. Sandler (Bloomsbury)
Out of Salem by Hal Schrieve (Seven Stories)
Kiss Number 8 by Colleen AF Venable, illus. by Ellen T. Crenshaw (First Second)
Publishers submitted a total of 397 books for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction. The judges are Dorothy Allison, Ruth Dickey, Javier Ramirez, chair Danzy Senna, and Jeff VanderMeer. This year's longlist is dominated by Penguin Random House, with eight of the ten titles on the list released by the country's biggest trade publisher.
A total of 600 books were considered for the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction. The judges for are Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Carolyn Kellogg, Mark Laframboise, Kiese Laymon, and chair Jeff Sharlet
Publishers submitted a total of 245 books for the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry. The judges are Jos Charles, John Evans, Vievee Francis, Cathy Park Hong, and chair Mark Wunderlich.
The 10 titles on the Translated Literature Longlist were originally written in 10 different languages: Arabic, Danish, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish. Publishers submitted a total of 145 books for the award. The judges for the category’s second year are Keith Gessen, Elisabeth Jaquette, Katie Kitamura, chair Idra Novey, and Shuchi Saraswat.
A total of 325 books were submitted for this year's National Book Award for Young People's Literature. The judges are chair An Na, Elana K. Arnold, Kristen Gilligan, Varian Johnson, and Deborah Taylor.
