National Book Awards Longlists Revealed

The National Book Foundation announced the longlists this week for the 2015 National Book Awards in fiction, nonfiction, young people’s literature, and poetry.

To be eligible for a 2015 National Book Award, a book must have been written by a U.S. citizen and published in the United States between December 1, 2014 and November 30, 2015. Contenders for the best books of the year are chosen by a group of distinguished judges, consisting of authors, critics, librarians, and booksellers.

The National Book Award finalists will be announced on October 14, and winners will be announced on November 18 at the National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner in New York City.

Titles on the 2015 longlists are:

Fiction 

• Jesse Ball, A Cure for Suicide (Pantheon Books/Penguin Random House)
• Bill Clegg, Did You Ever Have a Family (Scout Press/Simon & Schuster)
• Karen E. Bender, Refund (Soft Skull/Counterpoint Press)
• Angela Flournoy, The Turner House (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies (Riverhead Books/Penguin Random House)
• Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles (Random House/Penguin Random House)
• T. Geronimo Johnson, Welcome to Braggsville (William Morrow/HarperCollins)
• Edith Pearlman, Honeydew (Little, Brown/Hachette Book Group)
• Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life (Doubleday/Penguin Random House)
• Nell Zink, Mislaid (The Ecco Press/HarperCollins)                

 Nonfiction

• Cynthia Barnett, Rain: A Natural and Cultural History (Crown/Penguin Random House)
• Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (Spiegel and Grau/Penguin Random House)
• Martha Hodes, Mourning Lincoln (Yale University Press)
• Sally Mann, Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs (Little, Brown/Hachette Book Group)
• Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness (Atria/Simon and Schuster)
• Susanna Moore, Paradise of the Pacific: Approaching Hawaii(Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Macmillan)
• Michael Paterniti, Love and Other Ways of Dying (The Dial Press/Penguin Random House)
• Carla Power, If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran (Henry Holt and Company/Macmillan)
• Tracy K. Smith, Ordinary Light: A Memoir  (Alfred A. Knopf)
• Michael White, Travels in Vermeer: A Memoir (Persea Books)

Young People’s Literature

• Becky Albertalli, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins Children’s Books)
• M. T. Anderson, Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad (Candlewick Press)
• Ali Benjamin, The Thing About Jellyfish (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers/Hachette Book Group)
• Rae Carson, Walk on Earth a Stranger (Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins Children’s Books)
• Gary Paulsen, This Side of Wild: Mutts, Mares, and Laughing Dinosaurs (Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing)
• Laura Ruby, Bone Gap (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins Children’s Books)
• Ilyasah Shabazz with Kekla Magoon, X: A Novel (Candlewick Press)
• Steve Sheinkin, Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War (Roaring Brook Press/Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group)
• Neal Shusterman, Challenger Deep (HarperTeen/HarperCollins Children’s Books)
• Noelle Stevenson, Nimona (HarperTeen/HarperCollins Children’s Books)

 Poetry

• Ross Gay, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press )
• Amy Gerstler, Scattered at Sea (Penguin)
• Marilyn Hacker, A Stranger’s Mirror (W. W. Norton)
• Terrance Hayes, How to Be Drawn (Penguin)
• Jane Hirshfield, The Beauty (Alfred A. Knopf)
• Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus (Alfred A. Knopf)
• Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions)
• Patrick Phillips, Elegy for a Broken Machine (Alfred A. Knopf)
• Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Heaven (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Lawrence Raab, Mistaking Each Other for Ghosts (Tupelo Press)