For books lovers and avid readers everywhere, September is an exciting month.
Recently, the National Book Award Longlists have been announced. Founded in 1936 by the American Booksellers Association, the National Book Awards are presented to U.S. authors who have published their work during the award year. Each November, the National Book Foundation (NBF) presents the awards to finalists at a ceremony in New York City.
This year, NBF is introducing—or rather reintroducing—a category it hasn’t recognized for decades. An award for work in translation has been added to the other four standard categories, which include fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people’s literature.
The prestigious award announces its longlist of 10 writers per category each September, though authors still have a few more week of cuts and waiting ahead. The five-title shortlist will be announced on October 10th, and winners announced at the final ceremony on November 14th. With steep competition in each category, it will be difficult to prioritize these stellar works over one another, though the excitement of book award season keeps both writers and readers on the edge of their seats! Be sure to check out the longlists below.
Fiction
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Jamel Brinkley, A Lucky Man
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Jennifer Clement, Gun Love
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Daniel Gumbiner, The Boatbuilder
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Brandon Hobson, Where the Dead Sit Talking
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Tayari Jones, An American Marriage
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Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers
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Sigrid Nunez, The Friend
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Tommy Orange, There There
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Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Heads of the Colored People
Nonfiction
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Carol Anderson, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy
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Colin G. Calloway, The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation
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Steve Coll, Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan
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Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple, Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War
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Victoria Johnson, American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic
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David Quammen, The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life
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Sarah Smarsh, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
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Rebecca Solnit, Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays)
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Jeffrey C. Stewart, The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke
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Adam Winkler, We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights
Poetry
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Rae Armantrout, Wobble
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Jos Charles, feeld
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Forrest Gander, Be With
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Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
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Michael Martinez, Museum of the Americas
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Diana Khoi Nguyen, Ghost Of
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Justin Phillip Reed, Indecency
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Raquel Salas Rivera, lo terciario / the tertiary
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Natasha Trethewey, Monument: Poems New and Selected
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Jenny Xie, Eye Level
Translated Literature
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Négar Djavadi, Disoriental
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Translated by Tina Kover
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Roque Larraquy, Comemadre
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Translated by Heather Cleary
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Dunya Mikhail, The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq
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Translated by Dunya Mikhail and Max Weiss
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Perumal Murugan, One Part Woman
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Translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan
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Hanne Ørstavik, Love
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Translated by Martin Aitken
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Gunnhild Øyehaug, Wait, Blink: A Perfect Picture of Inner Life
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Translated by Kari Dickson
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Domenico Starnone, Trick
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Translated by Jhumpa Lahiri
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Yoko Tawada, The Emissary
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Translated by Margaret Mitsutani
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Olga Tokarczuk, Flights
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Translated by Jennifer Croft
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Tatyana Tolstaya, Aetherial Worlds
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Translated by Anya Migdal
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Young People’s Literature
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Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X
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M.T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin, The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge
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Bryan Bliss, We’ll Fly Away
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Leslie Connor, The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle
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Christopher Paul Curtis, The Journey of Little Charlie
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Jarrett J. Krosoczka, Hey, Kiddo
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Tahereh Mafi, A Very Large Expanse of Sea
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Joy McCullough, Blood Water Paint
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Elizabeth Partridge, Boots on the Ground: America’s War in Vietnam
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Vesper Stamper, What the Night Sings