The nominees for the National Book Awards were announced on Wednesday morning, and we were excited to see two of the authors from our fall series on the list! Marilynne Robinson’s Home was nominated in the Fiction category, and Annette Gordon-Reed’s The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family was named under Nonfiction. The formal award ceremony for the 59th National Book Awards will take place on November 19 in New York City, so visit your local branch now to check out a nominated book and see how it stacks up (no pun intended).

Fiction
Aleksandar Hemon – The Lazarus Project
Rachel Kushner – Telex from Cuba
Peter Matthiessen – Shadow Country
Marilynne Robinson – Home
Salvatore Scibona – The End

Nonfiction
Drew Gilpion Faust – This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
Annette Gordon-Reed – The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
Jane Mayer – The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals
Jim Sheeler – Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives
Joan Wickersham – The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order

Poetry
Frank Bidart – Watching the Spring Festival
Mark Doty – Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems
Reginald Gibbons – Creatures of a Day
Richard Howard – Without Saying
Patricia Smith – Blood Dazzler

Young People’s Literature
Laurie Halse Anderson – Chains
Kathi Appelt – The Underneath
Judy Blundell – What I saw and How I Lied
E. Lockhart – The Disresputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
Tim Tharp – The Spectacular Now