National Book Awards finalists announced

The National Book Awards nominees are out, and this year's fiction section spans every level of experience. Marilynne Robinson is nominated for Home, a sequel to her 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gilead. The other veteran of the group is 81-year-old Peter Matthiessen, who received the NBA in 1979 for nonfiction. Aleksandar Hemon is the mid-career writer of the bunch, and the two first-novel authors are Rachel Kushner and Salvatore Scibona.

The nonfiction section is dominated by American history and terrorism. Among the finalists are The Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, penned by Drew Gilpin Faust, president of Harvard University; The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, by New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer; and Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives, by Jim Sheeler, who won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in feature writing.

Popular poets Frank Bidart and Mark Doty have made the list of nominees. Richard Howard, selected for his book of poetry Without Saying, joins Peter Matthiessen as the only other finalist with a National Book Award already under his belt.

Other notables are Kathi Appelt's debut novel The Underneath, nominated in the Young People's Literature category, and Patricia Smith's collection of poems Blood Dazzler, which was published by the nonprofit indie Coffee House Press.

At the Nov. 19 ceremony, memoirist Maxine Hong Kingston and publisher Barney Rosset (known for his championing of First Amendment rights during the sixties) will be given lifetime achievement awards. A video announcement of the finalists is available at NationalBook.org.

Related links:
NationalBook.org
Review: Marilynne Robinson - Gilead
News: Aravind Adiga's White Tiger wins Booker Prize

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