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Here Are The Nominees For The 2019 National Book Awards

caption: Fifty books made the cut for the 2019 National Book Award longlists. Winners will be announced in November.
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Fifty books made the cut for the 2019 National Book Award longlists. Winners will be announced in November.
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Ah, fall. That homey season of football, falling leaves — and of course, feting the best books of the year. The National Book Foundation did its part this week, rolling out the 50 nominees — 10 each across five categories — for its annual slate of literary awards.

Among the notable names on this year's National Book Award longlists are previous winners (Colson Whitehead and Cynthia Kadohata) and plenty of newcomers to the prize, especially among the poets and nonfiction writers.

They were winnowed from more than 1,700 submissions in 2019, and they're set for another winnowing in less than a month. Judges will halve the books still in contention when they announce the shortlists of finalists on Oct. 8, and just one book in each category will claim the prize at a ceremony in New York City on Nov. 20.

So, without further ado ...

Fiction

Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Fleishman Is in Trouble

Susan Choi, Trust Exercise

Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Sabrina & Corina: Stories

Marlon James, Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Laila Lalami, The Other Americans

Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light: Stories

Helen Phillips, The Need

Julia Phillips, Disappearing Earth

Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

Nonfiction

Hanif Abdurraqib, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest

Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House

Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays

Carolyn Forché, What You Have Heard is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance

Greg Grandin, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America

Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

Iliana Regan, Burn the Place: A Memoir

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership

David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present

Albert Woodfox with Leslie George, Solitary

Poetry

Dan Beachy-Quick, Variations on Dawn and Dusk

Jericho Brown, The Tradition

Toi Derricotte, "I": New and Selected Poems

Camonghne Felix, Build Yourself a Boat

Ilya Kaminsky, Deaf Republic

Ariana Reines, A Sand Book

Mary Ruefle, Dunce

Carmen Giménez Smith, Be Recorder

Arthur Sze, Sight Lines

Brian Teare, Doomstead Days

Translated Literature

Naja Marie Aidt, When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back: Carl's BookTranslated by Denise Newman

Eliane Brum, The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field Notes on Brazil's Everyday InsurrectionsTranslated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty

Nona Fernández, Space InvadersTranslated by Natasha Wimmer

Vigdis Hjorth, Will and TestamentTranslated by Charlotte Barslund

Khaled Khalifa, Death is Hard WorkTranslated by Leri Price

László Krasznahorkai, Baron Wenckheim's HomecomingTranslated by Ottilie Mulzet

Scholastique Mukasonga, The Barefoot WomanTranslated by Jordan Stump

Yoko Ogawa, The Memory PoliceTranslated by Stephen Snyder

Pajtim Statovci, CrossingTranslated by David Hackston

Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the DeadTranslated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Young People's Literature

Kwame Alexander; illustrations by Kadir Nelson, The Undefeated

Laurie Halse Anderson, SHOUT

Akwaeke Emezi, Pet

Cynthia Kadohata, A Place to Belong With illustrations by Julia Kuo

Jason Reynolds, Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks

Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing

Laura Ruby, Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All

Martin W. Sandler, 1919: The Year That Changed America

Hal Schrieve, Out of Salem

Colleen AF Venable and Ellen T. Crenshaw, Kiss Number 8

[Copyright 2019 NPR]

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