The National Book Foundation announced the finalists for this year's National Book Awards. Among the five categories, there are five writers who have been previously honored by the NBF: Hanif Abdurraqib, on the 2019 nonfiction longlist; Anthony Doerr, a 2014 fiction finalist; Nona Fernández and Natasha Wimmer, on the 2019 translated literature longlist; Lauren Groff, a finalist for fiction in 2015 and 2018; Kekla Magoon, on the 2015 young people's literature longlist; and Leri Price, a 2019 translated literature finalist. All five of the poetry finalists are first-time NBA honorees. Four of the 25 finalists are debuts.
The winners, who will be named live November 17 at the 72nd National Book Awards Ceremony online, receive $10,000 and a bronze medal and statue. Finalists get $1,000 and a bronze medal. Winners and finalists in the translated literature category split the prize evenly between author and translator.
Two lifetime achievement awards will also be presented: Karen Tei Yamashita will be recognized with the NBF's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters; and Nancy Pearl will receive the foundation's Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community, presented by Ron Charles. This year's NBA finalists are:
Fiction
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (Scribner)
Matrix by Lauren Groff (Riverhead)
Zorrie by Laird Hunt (Bloomsbury)
The Prophets by Robert Jones, Jr. (Putnam)
Hell of a Book by Jason Mott (Dutton)
Nonfiction
A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib (Random House)
Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains by Lucas Bessire (Princeton University Press)
Tastes Like War: A Memoir by Grace M. Cho (Feminist Press)
Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America by Nicole Eustace (Liveright)
All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles (Random House)
Poetry
What Noise Against the Cane by Desiree C. Bailey (Yale University Press)
Floaters by Martín Espada (Norton)
Sho by Douglas Kearney (Wave Books)
A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure by Hoa Nguyen (Wave Books)
The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void by Jackie Wang (Nightboat Books)
Translated Literature
Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin, translated from the French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins (Open Letter)
Peach Blossom Paradise by Ge Fei, translated from the Chinese by Canaan Morse (New York Review Books)
The Twilight Zone by Nona Fernández, translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer (Graywolf Press)
When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut, translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West (New York Review Books)
Planet of Clay by Samar Yazbek, translated from the Arabic by Leri Price (World Editions)
Young People's Literature
The Legend of Auntie Po by Shing Yin Khor (Kokila/PRH)
Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo (Dutton Books for Young Readers)
Too Bright to See by Kyle Lukoff (Dial Books for Young Readers)
Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party's Promise to the People by Kekla Magoon (Candlewick Press)
Me (Moth) by Amber McBride (Feiwel and Friends/Macmillan)
