2010 National Book Awards Finalists Announced

On Wednesday, October 13, author Pat Conroy announced the 20 finalists for the 2010 National Book Awards at the Flannery O'Connor Childhood Home in Savannah, Georgia. The list includes a previous National Book Award winner (John W. Dower), two previous finalists (Walter Dean Myers and Rita Williams-Garcia), the largest number of women finalists in a single year (13) in the awards' history, and six books from small, independent presses.

This year’s finalists are:

Fiction

Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America (Alfred A. Knopf) – A May 2010 Indie Next Great Read

Jaimy Gordon, Lord of Misrule (McPherson & Co.)

Nicole Krauss, Great House (W.W. Norton) – An October 2010 Indie Next Great Read

Lionel Shriver, So Much for That (Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers) – A March 2010 Indie Notables Title

Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel (Coffee House Press)

Nonfiction

Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
(Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group)

John W. Dower, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq (W.W. Norton)

Patti Smith, Just Kids (Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers) – A February 2010 Indie Notables Title

Justin Spring, Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Megan K. Stack, Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War (Doubleday)

Poetry

Kathleen Graber, The Eternal City (Princeton University Press)

Terrance Hayes, Lighthead  (Viking Penguin)

James Richardson, By the Numbers (Copper Canyon Press)

C.D. Wright, One With Others (Copper Canyon Press)

Monica Youn,Ignatz (Four Way Books)

Young People's Literature

Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker (Little, Brown)

Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird (Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group) – A Summer 2010 Children's Indie Next List Recommendation

Laura McNeal, Dark Water (Alfred A. Knopf)

Walter Dean Myers, Lockdown (Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers)

Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer (Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers)

The winners will be announced at the 61^st  National Book Awards Benefit Dinner and Ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City on Wednesday, November 17. Each winner will receive $10,000 and a bronze statue; each finalist will receive $1,000 and a bronze medal.

The ceremony will also feature the presentation of the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to Tom Wolfe and the Foundation's Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community to Sesame Street visionary Joan Ganz Cooney.