Every year, The National Book Foundation teams up with The New School's Creative Writing Program to present readings by each of the National Book Awards Finalists. This year's reading, which features all 25 finalists including New School Alumni Kacen Callender (MFA Creative Writing '14), will be shared virtually and free and open to all.
(Finalists will not appear in this order)
Fiction Finalists:
- Rumaan Alam, Leave the World Behind
- Lydia Millet, A Children’s Bible
- Deesha Philyaw, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
- Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain
- Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown
Nonfiction Finalists:
- Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, The Undocumented Americans
- Les Payne and Tamara Payne, The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X
- Claudio Saunt, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory
- Jenn Shapland, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers
- Jerald Walker, How to Make a Slave and Other Essays
Poetry Finalists:
- Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, A Treatise on Stars
- Tommye Blount, Fantasia for the Man in Blue
- Don Mee Choi, DMZ Colony
- Anthony Cody, Borderland Apocrypha
- Natalie Diaz, Postcolonial Love Poem
Young People’s Literature finalists:
- Kacen Callender, King and the Dragonflies
- Traci Chee, We Are Not Free
- Candice Iloh, Every Body Looking
- Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed, When Stars Are Scattered
- Gavriel Savit, The Way Back
Translated Literature finalists:
- Anja Kampmann and Anne Posten, High as the Waters Rise
- Jonas Hassen Khemiri and Alice Menzies, The Family Clause
- Yu Miri and Morgan Giles, Tokyo Ueno Station
- Pilar Quintana and Lisa Dillman, The Bitch
- Adania Shibli and Elisabeth Jaquette, Minor Detail
The National Book Awards were established in 1950 to celebrate the best writing in America. Since 1989, they have been overseen by the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to celebrate the best literature in America, expand its audience, and ensure that books have a prominent place in American culture.