2018 National Book Awards Finalists Revealed

The National Book Foundation revealed the longlists for its 2018 National Book Awards back in September, and now we have this year’s finalists for the prestigious literary prize, which were announced on Wednesday morning.

You can check out the full list of finalists in all categories below.

Fiction

Jamel Brinkley, A Lucky Man
In his debut collection A Lucky Man, Jamel Brinkley populates nine stories set in New York City with a host of Black boys and men—brothers, friends, classmates—all grappling with questions of masculinity, trauma and entrenched racism.

Lauren Groff, Florida
In Florida by 2015 National Book Award Finalist Lauren Groff, the titular state lives at the heart of 11 disparate stories set in suburbs, swamps and in the middle of hurricanes, examining themes of love, pain, isolation, and the many expectations and experiences tied to motherhood.

Brandon Hobson, Where the Dead Sit Talking
Brandon Hobson’s Where the Dead Sit Talking follows a 15-year-old Cherokee boy placed in a new foster home, reeling from the effects of his mother’s substance abuse, and seeking closeness and commiseration with a fellow foster child.

Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers
In alternating chapters, Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers imagines a group queer friends in Chicago in the 1980s and a woman in 2015 searching for her daughter in Paris, chronicling the years of the American AIDS epidemic from its terrifying outbreak to the present, and addressing issues of systemic neglect, the burden of memory, and the rippling consequences of loss and grief.

Sigrid Nunez, The Friend
Contemplating mourning and the unexpected places we find solace, Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend is the story of a writer who loses her dearest friend, only to inexplicably be left his aging Great Dane. Infusing its first-person narrative with quotes and anecdotes from literary texts, the novel provides a realistic portrayal of a devoted writer struggling to cope with loss and parsing the complicated legacy of a loved one.

Nonfiction

Colin G. Calloway, The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation
Colin G. Calloway’s The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation recounts the relationship between Native leaders and our first president, aiming to illustrate the ways in which Washington’s interests were directly tied to the destruction of Native lands and rights, and examining the influence of the country’s first inhabitants on the trajectory of one of the most famous figures in American history.

Victoria Johnson, American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic
American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic by Victoria Johnson sheds light on the life and work of David Hosack, a renowned surgeon at the turn of the 19th century, whose passion for botany would lead him toward groundbreaking pharmaceutical research, the gathering of unmatched collections of flora, and the pioneering of medical practices that took inspiration and direction from the natural world, ultimately impacting the medical and botanical worlds for many years to come.

Sarah Smarsh, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
Sarah Smarsh’s Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth details Smarsh’s childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and ‘90s, addressing issues of generational poverty, class divides and identity through the lens of first-hand experience.

Jeffrey C. Stewart, The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke
Jeffrey C. Stewart’s The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke provides a granularly detailed account of the life of the often-overlooked Alain Locke, a Harvard-educated philosopher and scholar who was one of the key architects of the Harlem Renaissance. The work explores his years of education, his becoming the first African-American Rhodes Scholar, his role as a champion of African-American art in the Jazz Age, his complex personal life, and his work and contributions in helping lay the groundwork for contemporary African-American studies.

Adam Winkler, We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights
In We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights, Adam Winkler traces corporations’ long history of influence in the U.S., and the ways in which they have shaped the nation and politics to create a system in which they have rights that closely resemble the rights of individuals.

Poetry

Rae Armantrout, Wobble
Teetering on the edge of the American Dream, Pulitzer Prize winner Rae Armantrout’s Wobble seeks to both playfully and forcefully evoke the devastation of a chaotic, unstoppable culture.

Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
In American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, National Book Award winner Terrance Hayes works through fear, bewilderment and ambivalence as he grapples with a moment in American history both new and entirely too familiar.

Diana Khoi Nguyen, Ghost Of
In her debut collection, Ghost Of, Diana Khoi Nguyen explores the liminality of mourning, reaching out toward the memories and voids left behind by a lost loved one.

Justin Phillip Reed, Indecency
Questions of systemic hostility and the struggle against oppressive institutions live at the heart of Justin Phillip Reed’s Indecency, which seeks to intimately confront issues of masculinity, sexuality, racism and more, working to both critique and lament a culture of exploitation.

Jenny Xie, Eye Level
Interiority and restlessness permeate Jenny Xie’s Eye Level, which meditates on the itinerant body and identity, examining shifting and rarely solidifying experiences of solitude, estrangement and belonging.

Translated Literature

Négar Djavadi, Disoriental
Négar Djavadi’s debut novel Disoriental, translated from the French by Tina Kover, follows a young Iranian woman living in Paris, divided between the life she’s made for herself and a rich family history that spans many generations in Iran.

Hanne Ørstavik, Love
Hanne Ørstavik’s short novel Love, translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken, takes place in a remote town in the north of Norway, following a mother and young son separately navigating their way through a single night, disconnected and headed for tragedy.

Domenico Starnone, Trick
In Domenico Starnone’s Trick, translated from the Italian by National Book Award finalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri, an aging illustrator watches over his four-year-old grandson in an apartment in Naples, forced to confront his own troubled past in the face of the child’s youth and innocence.

Yoko Tawada, The Emissary
In Yoko Tawada’s The Emissary, translated from Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani, a young boy and his great-grandfather live fully entwined lives in Japan following a fictional, unnamed disaster, their dispositions reflecting and juxtaposing one another.

Olga Tokarczuk, Flights
Translated from Polish, Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights, which won Tokarczuk and translator Jennifer Croft the Man Booker International Prize earlier this year, weaves together a bevy of narratives and characters, observed by a single narrator, as they wander through space and time, moving towards or away from the things they seek.

Young People’s Literature

Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X
A novel in verse, Elizabeth Acevedo’s New York Times bestseller The Poet X follows a Dominican teen who [finds] her voice in slam poetry, even as she pushes back against a restrictive family life and the unwanted attention of her neighbors.

M. T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin, The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge
M. T. Anderson, who has been recognized by the National Book Awards three times previously (2002 Finalist, 2006 Winner, and 2015 Longlister), and Eugene Yelchin combine narrative prose and extravagant illustration to tell a story of elves, goblins and intrigue in The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge, a political satire commenting on conflict, discrimination and the bias inherent in history as told by those on top.

Leslie Connor, The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle
In Leslie Connor’s The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle, a young protagonist struggles to make sense of the unexplained death of his best friend as a cycle of bullying continues and a new friend goes missing.

Christopher Paul Curtis, The Journey of Little Charlie
In The Journey of Little Charlie, Newbery Medal winner Christopher Paul Curtis tells the story of a 12-year-old boy in 1858 who, after agreeing to seek out three fugitives in order to pay off a debt, must rise above the ugly values of his time to become an unlikely hero.

Jarrett J. Krosoczka, Hey, Kiddo
Hey, Kiddo by Jarrett J. Krosoczka is a graphic memoir that chronicles a childhood fraught with familial addiction and abandonment, illustrating the exceptional power of art as survival.

Winners in all five categories will be announced in New York City on Wednesday, Nov. 15. Stay tuned for more updates.