What to read next: the National Book Award longlists
This is the time of year for bickering and arguments — at least, if you care about literary works and who gets which award. We probably shouldn’t care, but we do.
The National Book Foundation announced its longlists this week in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people’s literature, and as always, the omissions are eliciting a grumble or two, if only from me. (Where’s Louise Erdrich’s gorgeous “LaRose” in the fiction category? Where?!)
But I digress. There are plenty of books here to keep us all busy for a good long time.
Why does this matter to Miami? These lists are a quick preview of who we might see at Miami Book Fair’s “Evening with the National Book Award Winners and Nominees.” Of course the schedule is set at this point, and Ms. Erdrich probably wasn’t coming anyway. This is don’t-miss night at the fair, if the past two years are any indication. You can check it out yourself on Nov. 18; the fair kicks off Nov. 13 with the host of “The Daily Show,” Trevor Noah.
Finalists will be announced Oct. 13; winners announced Nov. 16.
Fiction
Chris Bachelder, “The Throwback Special”
Garth Greenwell, “What Belongs to You”
Adam Haslett, “Imagine Me Gone”
Paulette Jiles, “News of the World”
Karan Mahajan, “The Association of Small Bombs”
Elizabeth McKenzie, “The Portable Veblen”
Lydia Millet, “Sweet Lamb of Heaven”
Brad Watson, “Miss Jane”
Colson Whitehead, “The Underground Railroad”
Jacqueline Woodson, “Another Brooklyn”
Nonfiction
Andrew J. Bacevich, “America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History”
Patricia Bell-Scott, “The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice”
Adam Cohen, “Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck”
Arlie Russell Hochschild, “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right”
Ibram X. Kendi, “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America”
Viet Thanh Nguyen, “Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War”
Cathy O’Neil, “Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy”
Andrés Reséndez, “The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America”
Manisha Sinha, “The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition”
Heather Ann Thompson, “Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy”
Poetry
Daniel Borzutzky, “The Performance of Becoming Human”
Rita Dove, “Collected Poems 1974 — 2004”
Peter Gizzi, “Archeophonic”
Donald Hall, “The Selected Poems of Donald Hall”
Jay Hopler, “The Abridged History of Rainfall”
Donika Kelly, “Bestiary”
Jane Mead, “World of Made and Unmade”
Solmaz Sharif, “Look”
Monica Youn, “Blackacre”
Kevin Young, “Blue Laws”
Young People’s Literature
Kwame Alexander, “Booked”
Kate DiCamillo, “Raymie Nightingale”
John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell (Artist) “March: Book Three”
Grace Lin, “When the Sea Turned to Silver”
Anna-Marie McLemore, “When the Moon Was Ours”
Meg Medina, “Burn Baby Burn”
Sara Pennypacker & Jon Klassen (Illustrator), “Pax”
Jason Reynolds, “Ghost”
Caren Stelson, “Sachiko: A Nagasaki Bomb Survivor’s Story”
Nicola Yoon, “The Sun Is Also A Star”
This story was originally published September 15, 2016 at 1:08 PM with the headline "What to read next: the National Book Award longlists."