Here are the longlist nominees for this year's National Book Awards
Go Deeper.
Create an account or log in to save stories.
Like this?
Thanks for liking this story! We have added it to a list of your favorite stories.
Updated September 16, 2021 at 10:15 AM ET
Over the next few days, we'll be finding out which books made the longlists for this year's National Book Awards — beginning Wednesday morning with Young People's Literature and finishing up Friday with Fiction.
Check back with us throughout the week as we post each list to see who's in the running and find links to our coverage.
Finalists will be announced Oct. 5, and we're set to find out the winners Nov. 17 during a live ceremony at a New York City venue — a return to form after last year's pandemic-induced virtual broadcast. But there will be virtual elements, and for those who can't make it to New York, the event will still be streaming live.
Poetry
Threa Almontaser, “The Wild Fox of Yemen”
Baba Badji, “Ghost Letters”
Desiree C. Bailey, “What Noise Against the Cane”
CM Burroughs, “Master Suffering”
Andrés Cerpa, “The Vault”
Martín Espada, “Floaters”
Forrest Gander, “Twice Alive”
Douglas Kearney, “Sho”
Hoa Nguyen, “A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure”
Jackie Wang, “The Sunflower Cast A Spell To Save Us From The Void”
Translated Literature
Maryse Condé, “Waiting for the Waters to Rise,” translated from the French by Richard Philcox
Elisa Shua Dusapin, “Winter in Sokcho,” translated from the French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins
Ge Fei, “Peach Blossom Paradise,” translated from the Chinese by Canaan Morse
Nona Fernández, “The Twilight Zone,” translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer
Bo-Young Kim, “On the Origin of Species and Other Stories,” translated from the Korean by Joungmin Lee Comfort and Sora Kim-Russell
Benjamín Labatut, “When We Cease to Understand the World,” translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West
Elvira Navarro, “Rabbit Island: Stories,” translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
Judith Schalansky, “An Inventory of Losses,” translated from the German by Jackie Smith
Young People's Literature
Safia Elhillo, “Home Is Not a Country”
Shing Yin Khor, “The Legend of Auntie Po”
Darcie Little Badger, “A Snake Falls to Earth”
Malinda Lo, “Last Night at the Telegraph Club”
Kyle Lukoff, “Too Bright to See”
Kekla Magoon, “Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party's Promise to the People”
Amber McBride, “Me (Moth)”
Anna-Marie McLemore, “The Mirror Season”
Carole Boston Weatherford; illustrations by Floyd Cooper, “Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre”
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
Turn Up Your Support
MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all.