The National Book Foundation has announced the finalists for the 2019 National Book Awards. The winner in each category will be announced at a ceremony in New York City on November 20.
The finalists are as follows:
Fiction
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)
Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips (Knopf)
Nonfiction
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 Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer (Riverhead)
Solitary by Albert Woodfox with Leslie George (Grove)
Poetry
The Tradition by Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon)
“I”: New and Selected Poems by Toi Derricotte (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky (Graywolf)
Be Recorder by Carmen Giménez Smith (Graywolf)
Sight Lines by Arthur Sze (Copper Canyon)
Translated Literature
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)
Young People’s Literature
Pet by Akwaeke Emezi (Random House/Make Me a World)
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)
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. Four of the five shortlisted books were published by Penguin Random House.
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 Twin Cities dominated the list this year, with two titles each from Minneapolis-based Graywolf Press and Copper Canyon Press.
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. Three of the five longlisted titles are from small presses; the other two are from Penguin Random House's Pantheon imprint.
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.
