The 2022 National Book Awards Longlist Is Here
Awards season is officially upon us—for stars of the page as well as stage and screen. Every November, the National Book Awards celebrates the best and brightest in contemporary literature across five categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, young people’s literature, and translated literature. And now, after months of waiting, we finally know who made the longlist. This year, publishers submitted 1772 books across those five categories, all whittled down to these 50 deserving longlisters. 2022’s nominees run a broad gamut of authors both emerging and established, with some of the year’s buzziest titles taking top honors, and some of the year’s most underrated gems finally receiving the spotlight they deserve.
Finalists will be announced on October 4, and we’ll know who the winners are on November 16, when the National Book Foundation hosts its usual star-studded gala in downtown Manhattan. For now, 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 Art Spiegelman, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus, which tells of his parents’ survival as Polish Jews during the Holocaust. Earlier this year, Maus soared to the top of the bestseller list after it was banned in a Tennessee middle school. Spiegelman’s work has often been targeted by book-banning campaigns, and his advocacy as a self-described “First Amendment fundamentalist” has shaped school libraries around the nation. “Banning books never works,” he said in February. “It ignites the interest in reading what is forbidden.”
With American book bans surging to their highest levels in two decades, no doubt censorship will be the topic of everyone’s lips in November. Stick with us—we’ll be covering the finalists in October and reporting from the ceremony in November.
Fiction
Fatimah Asghar, When We Were Sisters
Ramona Emerson, Shutter
Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You
Tess Gunty, The Rabbit Hutch
Gayl Jones, The Birdcatcher
Jamil Jan Kochai, The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories
Sarah Thankam Mathews, All This Could Be Different
Leigh Newman, Nobody Gets Out Alive
Marytza K. Rubio, Maria, Maria & Other Stories
Alejandro Varela, The Town of Babylon
Nonfiction
Anna Badkhen, Bright Unbearable Reality: Essays
John A. Farrell, Ted Kennedy: A Life
Natalie Hodges, Uncommon Measure: A Journey Through Music, Performance, and the Science of Time
Kelly Lytle Hernández, Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands
Meghan O’Rourke, The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness
Imani Perry, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
David Quammen, Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus
Ingrid Rojas Contreras, The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir
Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice
Kathryn Schulz, Lost & Found: A Memoir
Poetry
Rio Cortez, Golden Ax
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Look at This Blue
Jay Hopler, Still Life
John Keene, Punks: New & Selected Poems
Sharon Olds, Balladz
Roger Reeves, Best Barbarian
Sherry Shenoda, Mummy Eaters
Quincy Troupe, Duende
Shelley Wong, As She Appears
Jenny Xie, The Rupture Tense
Young People’s Literature
Kelly Barnhill, The Ogress and the Orphans
Isaac Blum, The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen
Traci Chee, A Thousand Steps into Night
Johnnie Christmas, Swim Team
Anna-Marie McLemore, Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix
Sonora Reyes, The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School
Tommie Smith, Derrick Barnes, and Dawud Anyabwile, Victory. Stand!: Raising My Fist for Justice
Sabaa Tahir, All My Rage
Sherri Winston, Lotus Bloom and the Afro Revolution
Lisa Yee, Maizy Chen’s Last Chance
Translated Literature
Mohammed Hasan Alwan, Ibn Arabi's Small Death (Translated from the Arabic by William M. Hutchins)
Jon Fosse, A New Name: Septology VI-VII (Translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls)
Shahriar Mandanipour, Seasons of Purgatory (Translated from the Persian by Sara Khalili)
Scholastique Mukasonga, Kibogo (Translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti)
Mónica Ojeda, Jawbone (Translated from the Spanish by Sarah Booker)
Olga Ravn, The Employees (Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken)
Samanta Schweblin, Seven Empty Houses (Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell)
Saša Stanišić, Where You Come From (Translated from the German by Damion Searls)
Yoko Tawada, Scattered All Over the Earth (Translated from the Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani)
Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob (Translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft)
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