2019 National Book Awards Longlists Revealed

The National Book Foundation announced the longlists for the 70th annual National Book Awards last week.

To be eligible for a 2019 National Book Award, a book must have been written by a U.S. citizen and published in the United States between December 1, 2018, and November 30, 2019. 

The 2019 National Book Awards Longlist for Young People’s Literature was announced on Monday, September 16:

• Kwame Alexander and Kadir Nelson, The Undefeated (Versify / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Laurie Halse Anderson, Shout (Viking Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House)
• Akwaeke Emezi, Pet (Make Me a World / Penguin Random House)
• Cynthia Kadohata, A Place to Belong (Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books / Simon & Schuster)
• Jason Reynolds, Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks (Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books / Simon & Schuster)
• Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing (Kokila / Penguin Random House)
• Laura Ruby, Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All (Balzer + Bray / HarperCollins Publishers)
• Martin W. Sandler, 1919: The Year That Changed America (Bloomsbury Children’s Books / Bloomsbury Publishing)
• Hal Schrieve, Out of Salem (Triangle Square / Seven Stories Press)
• Colleen AF Venable and Ellen T. Crenshaw, Kiss Number 8 (First Second Books / Macmillan Publishers)

The 2019 National Book Awards Longlist for Translated Literature was announced on Tuesday, September 17:

• Naja Marie Aidt, When Death Takes Something From You Give It Back: Carl’s Book, translated by Denise Newman (Coffee House Press)
• Eliane Brum, The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field Notes on Brazil’s Everyday Insurrections, translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty (Graywolf Press)
• Nona Fernández, Space Invaders, translated by Natasha Wimmer (Graywolf Press)
• Vigdis Hjorth, Will and Testament, translated by Charlotte Barslund (Verso Fiction / Verso Books)
• Khaled Khalifa, Death Is Hard Work, translated by Leri Price (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / Macmillan Publishers)
• László Krasznahorkai, Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming, translated by Ottilie Mulzet (New Directions)
• Scholastique Mukasonga, The Barefoot Woman, translated by Jordan Stump (Archipelago Books)
• Yoko Ogawa, The Memory Police, translated by Stephen Snyder (Pantheon Books / Penguin Random House)
• Pajtim Statovci, Crossing, translated by David Hackston (Pantheon Books / Penguin Random House)
• Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House)

The 2019 National Book Awards Longlist for Poetry was announced on Wednesday, September 18:

• Dan Beachy-Quick, Variations on Dawn and Dusk (Omnidawn Publishing)
• Jericho Brown, The Tradition (Copper Canyon Press)
• Toi Derricotte, ‘I’: New and Selected Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press)
• Camonghne Felix, Build Yourself a Boat (Haymarket Books)
• Ilya Kaminsky, Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press)
• Ariana Reines, A Sand Book (Tin House Books)
• Mary Ruefle, Dunce (Wave Books)
• Carmen Giménez Smith, Be Recorder (Graywolf Press)
• Arthur Sze, Sight Lines (Copper Canyon Press)
• Brian Teare, Doomstead Days (Nightboat Books)

The 2019 National Book Awards Longlist for Nonfiction was announced on Thursday, September 19:

• Hanif Abdurraqib, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (University of Texas Press)
• Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House (Grove Press / Grove Atlantic)
• Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays (The New Press)
• Carolyn Forché, What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance (Penguin Press / Penguin Random House)
• Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (Doubleday / Penguin Random House)
• David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present (Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House)
• Greg Grandin, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America (Metropolitan Books / Macmillan Publishers)
• Iliana Regan, Burn the Place: A Memoir (Agate Midway / Agate Publishing, Inc.)
• Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership (The University of North Carolina Press)
• Albert Woodfox with Leslie George, Solitary (Grove Press / Grove Atlantic)

The 2019 National Book Awards Longlist for Fiction was announced on Friday, September 20:

• Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Fleishman Is in Trouble (Random House / Penguin Random House)
• Susan Choi, Trust Exercise (Henry Holt & Company / Macmillan Publishers)
• Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Sabrina & Corina: Stories (One World / Penguin Random House)
• Marlon James, Black Leopard, Red Wolf (Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House)
• Laila Lalami, The Other Americans (Pantheon Books / Penguin Random House)
• Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light: Stories (Vintage / Penguin Random House)
• Helen Phillips, The Need (Simon & Schuster)
• Julia Phillips, Disappearing Earth (Alfred A. Knopf / Penguin Random House)
• Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press / Penguin Random House)
• Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys (Doubleday / Penguin Random House)

This year’s group of judges included one independent bookseller on each of the five category panels: Javier Ramirez, manager of The Book Table in Oak Park, Illinois, served on the Fiction panel; Mark Laframboise, head book buyer at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C. on the Nonfiction panel; John Evans, co-owner of DIESEL, A Bookstore in Los Angeles, on the Poetry panel; Shuchi Saraswat, buyer and events coordinator at Brookline Booksmith in Brookline, Massachusetts, on the Translated Literature panel; and Kristen Gilligan, co-owner of Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, Colorado, on the Young People’s Literature panel.

Finalists will be revealed on Tuesday, October 8, and winners will be announced at the National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner on Wednesday, November 20, in New York City.