A shot from the usual setting of the National Book Awards ceremony at New York City’s Cipriani Wall Street. Image: National Book Foundation
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Shortlists Are To Be Announced October 6
Released sequentially to a distracted world over the course of several days, a National Book Awards tradition, the longlists for the National Book Foundation’s 71st awards cycle can today (September 18) be seen together in all four categories.
As Publishing Perspectives readers know, the program’s two special awards were announced first. The late Carolyn Reidy has been named to receive the Literarian Award posthumously, and author Walter Mosley will be recognized with the 2020 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
What we list here today are the five book categories in which the awards are presented annually. The newest of the categories is Translated Literature—a welcome addition made under the executive direction of Lisa Lucas and the board leadership of David Steinberger.
The shortlists in all five categories are to be announced on October 6. Winners will be named live in the digital National Book Awards ceremony on November 18.
Winners receive US$10,000. In the case of the Translated Literature award, the author and translator split the money.
National Book Award Longlist: Translated Literature
Publishers submitted a total 130 titles for the Translated Literature award, which was inaugurated in 2018. Jurors for this category are Dinaw Mengestu (chair), Heather Cleary, John Darnielle, Anne Ishii, and Brad Johnson.
| Author | Translator | Title | Publisher, Imprint |
| Shokoofeh Azar | Anonymous | The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree | Europa Editions |
| Linda Boström Knausgård | Rachel Willson-Broyles | The Helios Disaster | World Editions |
| Anja Kampmann | Anne Posten | High as the Waters Rise | Catapult |
| Jonas Hassen Khemiri | Alice Menzies | The Family Clause | Macmillan / Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Fernanda Melchor | Sophie Hughes | Hurricane Season | New Directions |
| Yu Miri | Morgan Giles | Tokyo Ueno Station | Penguin Random House / Riverhead |
| Perumal Murugan | N. Kalyan Raman | The Story of a Goat | Grove Atlantic / Black Cat |
| Cho Nam-Joo | Jamie Chang | Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 | WW Norton / Liveright |
| Pilar Quintana | Lisa Dillman | The Bitch | World Editions |
| Adania Shibli | Elisabeth Jaquette | Minor Detail | New Directions |
National Book Award Longlist: Fiction
Publishers submitted 388 books for consideration in this category. The jurors for this category are Roxane Gay (chair), Cristina Henríquez, Laird Hunt, Rebecca Makkai, and Keaton Patterson.
| Author | Title | Publisher, Imprint |
| Rumaan Alam | Leave the World Behind | HarperCollins / Ecco |
| Christopher Beha | The Index of Self-Destructive Acts | Tin House |
| Brit Bennett | The Vanishing Half | Penguin Random House / Riverhead |
| Randall Kenan | If I Had Two Wings | WW Norton |
| Megha Majumdar | A Burning | Penguin Random House / Knopf |
| Lydia Millet | A Children’s Bible | WW Norton |
| Deesha Philyaw | The Secret Lives of Church Ladies | West Virginia University Press |
| Douglas Stuart | Shuggie Bain | Grove Press / Grove Atlantic |
| Vanessa Veselka | The Great Offshore Grounds | Penguin Random House / Knopf |
| Charles Yu | Interior Chinatown | Penguin Random House / Pantheon |
National Book Award Longlist: Nonfiction
Publishers submitted 609 books for consideration in this category. The jurors for this category are Terry Tempest Williams (chair), James Goodman, Yunte Huang, Hannah Oliver Depp, and David Treuer.
| Author | Title | Publisher, Imprint |
| Michelle Bowdler | Is Rape a Crime?: A Memoir, an Investigation, and a Manifesto | Macmillan / Flatiron |
| Karla Cornejo Villavicencio | The Undocumented Americans | Penguin Random House / One World |
| Jill Lepore | If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future | WW Norton / Liveright |
| Les Payne, Tamara Payne | The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X | WW Norton / Liveright |
| Claudio Saunt | Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory | WW Norton |
| Jenn Shapland | My Autobiography of Carson McCullers | Tin House |
| Jonathan C. Slaght | Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl | Macmillan / Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Jerald Walker | How To Make a Slave and Other Essays | Ohio State University / Mad Creek |
| Frank B. Wilderson III | Afropessimism | WW Norton / Liveright |
| Isabel Wilkerson | Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents | Penguin Random House / Random House |
National Book Award Longlist: Young People’s Literature
Publishers submitted 311 books for consideration in this category. The jurors for this category are Joan Trygg (chair), Randy Ribay, Neal Shusterman, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, and Colleen AF Venable.
| Author | Title | Publisher, Imprint |
| Kacen Callendar | King and the Dragonflies | Scholastic |
| Traci Chee | We Are Not Free | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| Evette Dionne | Lifting as We Climb: Black Women’s Battle for the Ballot Box | Pentuin Random House / Viking for Young Readers |
| Eric Gansworth | Apple (Skin to the Core) | Levine Querido |
| Candice Iloh | Every Body Looking | Penguin Random House / Dutton for Young Readers |
| Victoria Jamieson, Omar Mohamed | When Stars Are Scattered | Penguin Random House / Dial for Young Readers |
| Marcella Pixley | Trowbridge Road | Candlewick Press |
| John Rocco | How We Got to the Moon | Penguin Random House / Crown for Young Readers |
| Gavriel Savit | The Way Back | Penguin Random House / Knopf for Young Readers |
| Aiden Thomas | Cemetery Boys | Macmillan / Swoon |
National Book Award Longlist: Poetry
Publishers submitted 254 books for consideration in this category. The jurors for this category are Layli Long Soldier (Chair), Rigoberto González, John Hennessy, Diana Khoi Nguyen, and Elizabeth Willis.
| Author | Title | Publisher, Imprint |
| Rick Barot | The Galleons | Milkweed Editions |
| Mei-mei Berssenbrugge | A Treatise on Stars | New Directions |
| Lillian-Yvonne Bertram | Travesty Generator | Noemi Press |
| Tommye Blount | Fantasia for the Man in Blue | Four Way Books |
| Victoria Chang | Obit | Copper Canyon Press |
| Don Mee Choi | DMZ Colony | Wave |
| Anthony Cody | Borderland Apocrypha | Omnidawn |
| Eduardo C. Corral | Ghuillotine | Graywolf |
| Natalie Diaz | Postcolonial Love Poem | Graywolf |
| Honorée Fanonne Jeffers | The Age of Phyllis | Wesleyan University Press |
Below is a retrospective video on the first 70 years of the National Book Awards program, from the National Book Foundation.
More from Publishing Perspectives on the National Book Awards is here, and on awards programs in general is here.
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