The National Book Foundation announced the finalists for this year's National Book Awards. The winning authors, who will be named November 18 at a ceremony held online because of the Covid-19 pandemic, receive $10,000, a bronze medal and a 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.
Among the five categories, there are two writers who have been previously honored by the National Book Foundation: Lydia Millet, who was longlisted in 2016 and Charles Yu, a 2007 5 Under 35 honoree. Eight of the 25 finalists are debuts. This year's NBA finalists are:
Fiction
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam (Ecco)
A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet (Norton)
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw (West Virginia University Press)
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (Grove Press)
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu (Pantheon)
Nonfiction
The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (One World)
The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by Les Payne and Tamara Payne (Liveright)
Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory by Claudio Saunt (Norton)
My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland (Tin House Books)
How to Make a Slave and Other Essays by Jerald Walker (Mad Creek Books/The Ohio State University Press)
Poetry
A Treatise on Stars by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge (New Directions)
Fantasia for the Man in Blue by Tommye Blount (Four Way Books)
DMZ Colony by Don Mee Choi (Wave Books)
Borderland Apocrypha by Anthony Cody (Omnidawn Publishing)
Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz (Graywolf Press)
Translated Literature
High as the Waters Rise by Anja Kampmann, translated from the German by Anne Posten (Catapult)
The Family Clause by Jonas Hassen Khemiri, translated from the Swedish by Alice Menzies (FSG)
Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri, translated from the Japanese by Morgan Giles (Riverhead)
The Bitch by Pilar Quintana, translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman (World Editions)
Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, translated from the Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette (New Directions)
Young People's Literature
King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callender (Scholastic Press)
We Are Not Free by Traci Chee (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Every Body Looking by Candice Iloh (Dutton Books for Young Readers)
When Stars Are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed (Dial Books for Young Readers)
The Way Back by Gavriel Savit (Knopf Books for Young Readers)