National Book Award finalists

The day after the Man Booker Prize was handed out, the nominations for the National Book Award were announced in the US. The fiction shortlist includes Peter Carey’s Parrot and Olivier in America (he can get nominated because he has dual citizenship) and  Patti Smith’s awesome memoir Just Kids for nonfiction. Predictably what everyone is talking about is the notable absence of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom especially since his novel, The Corrections, won the award nine years ago. 

Here is the full list of finalists:

Fiction
Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America
Nicole Krauss, Great House
Lionel Shriver, So Much for That 
Jaimy Gordon, Lord of Misrule 
Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel

Nonfiction
Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy
Megan K. Stack, Every Man in This Village Is a Liar
Patti Smith, Just Kids
John W. Dower, Culures of War
Justin Spring, Secret Historian

Poetry
Kathleen Graber, The Eternal City
Terrance Hayes, Lighthead
James Richardson, By the Numbers
C.D. Wright, One with Others
Monica Youn, Ignatz

Young People’s Literature
Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship BreakerKathryn Erskine, Mockingbird
Laura McNeal, Dark Water
Walter Dean Myers, Lockdown
Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer