National Book Awards 2016: Finalists Announced For 4 Categories

The National Book Foundation released Thursday its shortlist for the 2016 National Book Awards. The finalists for four categories — fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people’s literature — were chosen from a group of 40.

The authors who win the prestigious annual prize will be entitled to a medal, appreciation and a cash prize of $10,000. The 2015 National Book Awards for the four categories were presented to Adam Johnson for “Fortune Smiles: Stories,” Ta-Nehisi Coates for “Between the World and Me,” Robin Coste Lewis for “Voyage of the Sable Venus” and Neal Shusterman for “Challenger Deep.”

This year, Pulitzer prize-winning biographer Robert A. Caro will be the recipient of the National Book Awards’ lifetime achievement honor, earning the medal for distinguished contribution to American letters.

Finalists for Fiction

Chris Bachelder, “The Throwback Special” (W. W. Norton & Company)

Paulette Jiles, “News of the World” (William Morrow/HarperCollins Publishers)

Karan Mahajan, “The Association of Small Bombs” (Viking Books)

Colson Whitehead, “The Underground Railroad” (Doubleday)

Jacqueline Woodson, “Another Brooklyn” (Amistad)

Finalists for Nonfiction

Arlie Russell Hochschild, “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right” (The New Press)

Ibram X. Kendi, “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America” (Nation Books)

Viet Thanh Nguyen, “Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War” (Harvard University Press)

Andrés Reséndez, “The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Heather Ann Thompson, “Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy” (Pantheon Books)

Finalists for Poetry

Daniel Borzutzky, “The Performance of Becoming Human” (Brooklyn Arts Press)

Rita Dove, “Collected Poems 1974–2004” (W. W. Norton & Company)

Peter Gizzi, “Archeophonics” (Wesleyan University Press)

Jay Hopler, “The Abridged History of Rainfall” (McSweeney’s)

Solmaz Sharif, “Look” (Graywolf Press)

Finalists for Young People’s Literature

Kate DiCamillo, “Raymie Nightingale” (Candlewick Press)

John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell, “March: Book Three” (Top Shelf Productions)

Grace Lin, “When the Sea Turned to Silver” (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)

Jason Reynolds, “Ghost” (Atheneum Books for Young Readers)

Nicola Yoon, “The Sun Is Also a Star” (Delacorte Press)

National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner will be held on Nov. 16. The winners of each category will be announced at the event.