The 2021 National Book Awards Longlist Is Here
The Biggest Night in Books is fast approaching, and now, we know who made the longlist. The National Book Awards has announced the longlisted nominees in all five of its categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature. This year’s nominees are a fine blend of authors both established and emerging, with some of the year’s biggest books receiving the highest honor, and some of the year’s most underrated gems at last receiving the pomp and circumstance they deserve.
Finalists will be announced October 5th, and we’ll find out the winners on November 17, when the National Book Foundation hosts its usual star-studded literary gala in downtown Manhattan (a departure from last year, when the awards went virtual for the first time ever). For those who can’t make it, the event will stream live online. The jury’s out on who will win in the five main categories, but we do know one thing for sure: the Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award (the National Book Awards’ lifetime achievement prize) will be given to Karen Tei Yamashita, author of the Esquire Book Club pick Sansei & Sensibility. Read on for the full breakdown of who’s longlisted, and start making your predictions of who will take home the top prizes.
Fiction
Clock Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr
Matrix, by Lauren Groff
Abundance, by Jakob Guanzon
Zorrie, by Laird Hunt
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
The Prophets, by Robert Jones, Jr.
Intimacies, by Katie Kitamura
The Souvenir Museum, by Elizabeth McCracken
Hell of a Book, by Jason Mott
Bewilderment, by Richard Powers
Nonfiction
A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance, by Hanif Abdurraqib
Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains, by Lucas Bessire
Tastes Like War: A Memoir, by Grace M. Cho
The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice, by Scott Ellsworth
Covered With Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America, by Nicole Eustace
The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper, by Heather McGhee
The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, by Louis Menand
All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake, by Tiya Miles
How the Word is Passed, by Clint Smith
The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship, by Deborah Willis
Poetry
The Wild Fox of Yemen, by Threa Almontaser
Ghost Letters, by Bada Badji
What Noise Against the Cane, by Desiree C. Bailey
Master Suffering, by CM Burroughs
The Vault, by Andrés Cerpa
Floaters, by Martín Espada
Twice Alive, by Forrest Gander
Sho, by Douglas Kearney
A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure, by Hoa Nguyen
The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us From the Void, by Jackie Wang
Translated Literature
Waiting For the Waters to Rise, by Maryse Condé, translated from the French by Richard Philcox
Winter in Sokcho, by Elisa Shua Dusapin, translated from the French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins
Peach Blossom Paradise, by Ge Fei, translated from the Chinese by Canaan Morse
The Twilight Zone, by Nona Fernández, translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer
On the Origin of Species and Other Stories, by Bo-Young Kim, translated from the Korean by Joungmin Lee Comfort and Sora Kim-Russell
When We Cease to Understand the World, by Benjamín Labatut, translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West
Rabbit Island: Stories, by Elvira Navarro, translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
An Inventory of Losses, by Judith Schalansky, translated from the German by Jackie Smith
In Memory of Memory, by Maria Stepanova, translated from the Russian by Sasha Dugale
Planet of Clay, by Samar Yazbek, translated from the Arabic by Leri Price
Young People’s Literature
Home is Not a Country, by Safia Elhillo
The Legend of Auntie Po, by Shing Yin Khor
A Snake Falls to Earth, by Darcie Little Badger
Last Night at the Telegraph Club, by Malinda Lo
Too Bright to See, by Kyle Lukoff
Revolution In Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People, by Kekla Magoon
Me (Moth), by Amber McBride
The Mirror Season, by Anna-Marie McLemore
Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre, by Carole Boston Weatherford, with illustrations by Floyd Cooper
From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial That Galvanized the Asian American Movement, by Paula Yoo
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