The National Book Awards has announced its 25 finalists!
The authors — a majority of whom will be first-time honorees — were announced with The New York Times on Tuesday, Oct. 1, and were selected from a distinguished panel of judges from a longlist published in September with The New Yorker, according to a press release.
The list is a noteworthy one this year as only two authors out of the list of 25 were previously honored by the National Book Foundation. All of its finalists in the fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people’s literature categories are being honored for the first time, per the release. A total of 1,917 books were submitted for this year’s National Book Awards.
The finalists in the fiction category include authors ’Pemi Aguda and Kaveh Akbar who each made their debut with Ghostroots and Martyr!, respectively.
Author Percival Everett was also selected for his novel James, Miranda July was chosen for her book All Fours and Hisham Matar rounds out the category with his novel My Friends.
The finalists for the nonfiction category are: Jason De León for Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling, Eliza Griswold for Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church, Kate Manne for Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia, Salman Rushdie for Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder and Deborah Jackson Taffa for Whiskey Tender.
Anne Carson and Fady Joudah are among the finalists for the poetry category with their collection of poems, Wrong Norma and ..., respectively. Author m.s. RedCherries has also been honored with her debut collection mother. Other finalists include Diane Seuss for Modern Poetry and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha for Something About Living.
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The finalists for young people’s literature, who will go on to connect with middle and high school students for Teens Read the 2024 National Book Awards on Nov. 19, include Violet Duncan for Buffalo Dreamer, Josh Galarza for The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky, Erin Entrada Kelly for The First State of Being, Shifa Saltagi Safadi for Kareem Between and Angela Shanté for The Unboxing of a Black Girl.
The finalists for the translated literature category features the return of Leri Price and Samar Yazbek, who were finalists in 2021 for Planet of Clay. Bothayna Al-Essa and Linnea Axelsson are also honored in this category for their respective translations of The Book Censor’s Library and Ædnan. Fiston Mwanza Mujila is also being honored for The Villain's Dance and Yáng Shuāng-zǐ is honored for Taiwan Travelogue.
The 2024 National Book Awards finalists will read from their work on Tuesday, Nov. 19 at the annual NYU Skirball event, which will be livestreamed and hosted by award-winning journalist and host of NPR’s It's Been a Minute Brittany Luse.
They will gather again the following night at the 75th National Book Awards Ceremony & Benefit Dinner at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City, where the winners will be announced. Winners will receive $10,000, along with a bronze medal and statue while finalists will receive $1,000 and a bronze medal.
The ceremony will also honor Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Kingsolver with the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters while W. Paul Coates, publisher and founder of Black Classic Press, will be honored with the Foundation’s Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.
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