2004 National Book Award Finalists Announced

On Wednesday, October 13, the 20 finalists for the 2004 National Book Awards were announced by Garrison Keillor at the F. Scott Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota. The winners in each of four categories -- Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People's Literature -- will be announced on November 17 at a ceremony at the Marriott Marquis in New York City to be hosted by Keillor. Each winner will receive $10,000 and a bronze statue; each finalist will receive a $1,000 cash award and a bronze medal.

The finalists are:

Fiction
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Madeleine Is Sleeping (Harcourt)
Christine Schutt, Florida (TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern Univ. Press)
Joan Silber, Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories (Norton)
Lily Tuck, The News From Paraguay (HarperCollins)
Kate Walbert, Our Kind: A Novel in Stories (Scribner)

Nonfiction
Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age (Holt)
David Hackett Fischer, Washington's Crossing (Oxford Univ. Press)
Jennifer Gonnerman, Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett (FSG)
Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (Norton)
The 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States -- Authorized Edition (Norton)

Poetry
William Heyen, Shoah Train (Etruscan Press)
Donald Justice, Collected Poems (Knopf)
Carl Phillips, The Rest of Love (FSG)
Cole Swensen, Goest (Alice James Books)
Jean Valentine, Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003 (Wesleyan Univ. Press)

Young People's Literature
Deb Caletti, Honey, Baby, Sweetheart (S&S Books for Young Readers)
Pete Hautman, Godless (S&S Books for Young Readers)
Laban Carrick Hill, Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance (Megan Tingley Books/Little, Brown)
Shelia P. Moses, The Legend of Buddy Bush (Margaret K. McElderry Books/S&S Children's Publishing)
Julie Anne Peters, Luna: A Novel (Megan Tingley Books/Little, Brown)

Three of the five finalists in the Young People's Literature category were previously selected by independent booksellers as Book Sense Kids' Picks in summer 2004: Honey, Baby, Sweetheart; Harlem Stomp!; and Luna.

The Board of Directors of the National Book Foundation also announced that it will bestow its 2004 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters upon Judy Blume at the November 17 ceremony.

To be eligible for this year's National Book Awards, a book must have been published in the U.S. between December 1, 2003, and November 30, 2004, and must have been written by a U.S. citizen.

The National Book Foundation noted that "among the finalists are a first novelist, two distinguished historians, five prolific and established poets, two previous finalists --including the poet Donald Justice, who died earlier this year -- and the 9/11 Commission. All five Fiction finalists are women who live in New York City. Also, five small presses have books on the list of finalists."

"We are delighted with the Judges' selections for this year's National Book Award Finalists, which represent a wonderful cross-section of the best of American writing and culture," said Harold Augenbraum, executive director of the National Book Foundation, in a prepared statement. "We imagine the judges' discussions regarding the selection of this year's winners will be quite spirited, as the level of excellence is extremely high across the genres."

For additional information about the 20 finalists and the special events that will take place during "National Book Awards Week," visit www.nationalbook.org.