15 Black Authors Have Been Longlisted for the National Book Award
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The National Book Award is one of the most anticipated award ceremonies in the US for authors, publishers, and readers alike. Since its founding in 1950, the NBA has honored nearly 2,600 titles across a small number of categories. This year, 15 black authors have been longlisted across four categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people’s literature. The NBA will release a list of finalists on October 6th and announce the winners in an online ceremony on November 18th. We wish each of these incredible authors good luck!
Fiction
Rumaam Alam, Leave the World Behind
“Spectacular and ominous…. This illuminating social novel offers piercing commentary on race, class and the luxurious mirage of safety, adding up to an all-too-plausible apocalyptic vision. –Publishers Weekly
Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half
“A story of absolute, universal timelessness …For any era, it’s an accomplished, affecting novel. For this moment, it’s piercing, subtly wending its way toward questions about who we are and who we want to be….” -Entertainment Weekly
Randall Kenan, If I Had Two Wings
“The slyly soulful Kenan takes his time between books. Now he rewards readers who have waited almost three decades for a return to his fictional Tims Creek, North Carolina… It is a feast. Ten artful stories conjure contemporary North Carolina, mouthwatering and matter-of-factly haunted.” –Kirkus
Deesha Philyaw, The Secret Life of Church Ladies
“Tender, fierce, proudly black and beautiful, these stories will sneak inside you and take root.”–Kirkus
Nonfiction
Les Payne and Tamara Payne, The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X
“…an extraordinary and essential portrait of the man behind the icon. ” -Publishers Weekly
Jerald Walker, How to Make a Slave and Other Essays
“Walker’s rich compilation adds up to a rewardingly insightful self-portrait that reveals how one man relates to various aspects of his identity.” –Publisher’s Weekly
Frank B Wilderson III, Afropessimism
“Frank B Wilderson III sketches a map of the world in which Black people are everywhere integral but always excluded.” –The New Yorker
Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
“Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is a masterwork of writing–a profound achievement of scholarship and research that stands also as a triumph of both visceral storytelling and cogent analysis.” –NPR Book Review
Poetry
Tommye Blount, Fantasia for the Man in Blue
“Tommye Blount’s fearlessness and vulnerability extends radical empathy almost to the point of solution, far past any superficial discussion. Read Fantasia for the Blue Man, but I promise you, you will never be able to un-read it.” –Rhino Magazine
Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, The Age of Phillis
“This masterful book is a fountain of spirited dedication and lucid reclamation, and contemporary American poetry is richer for it.” -Cyrus Cassells, author of The Gospel according to Wild Indigo
Young People’s Literature
Kacen Callender, King and the Dragonflies
“The tale is set in Louisiana, and Callender’s vivid descriptions of the rural area King calls home are magical; readers will feel the heat and the sweat, see the trees and the moss. This quiet novel movingly addresses toxic masculinity, homophobia in the black community—especially related to men—fear, and memory.” –Kirkus
Evette Dione, Lifting as We Climb: Black Women’s Battle for the Ballot Box
“Dionne provides a detailed and comprehensive look at the overlooked roles African American women played in the efforts to end slavery and then to secure the right to vote for women.” –Kirkus
Candice Iloh, Ever Body Looking
“An essential—and emotionally gripping and masterfully written and compulsively readable—addition to the coming-of-age canon.”—Nic Stone, author of Dear Martin
Omar Muhamed and Victoria Jamieson, When Stars Are Scattered
“Jamieson’s characteristically endearing art, warmly colored by Geddy, perfectly complements Omar’s story, conjuring memorable and sympathetic characters who will stay with readers long after they close the book . . . This engaging, heartwarming story does everything one can ask of a book, and then some.” –Kirkus
What do you think of this year’s longlist nominees? Let us know in the comments.
Addendum: We are currently mourning the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, known by her supporters as the Notorious RBG for her landmark dissents. We urge you to honor her legacy, and the legacy of civil rights activist John Lewis who passed in July, to vote. Every election. For every position. You can check your voter registration status at https://www.vote.org/am-i-registered-to-vote/.
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