2015 National Book Award Finalists Announced Exclusively on NPR

NEW YORK - Oct. 19, 2015 - PRLog -- For a second consecutive year, the five Finalists in each National Book Award Category: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People's Literature were announced on NPR's 'Morning Edition'. NPR's David Greene, Barrie Hardymon, and Glen Weldon announced the five Finalists in each category on October 14,

The selection of Finalists follows last month's announcement of the National Book Award Longlists of ten books in each of the Awards' four categories.

The Longlists and Finalists were each chosen by a panel of five writers and literary experts. Of the twenty Finalists, only two-poet Terrance Hayes and Young People's author Steve Sheinkin-have ever been NBA Finalists before.

The Fiction Finalist list includes Karen E. Bender, Angela Flournoy, Lauren Groff, Adam Johnson, and Hanya Yanagihara. Karen Bender’s collection of short stories focuses on money and family; Angela Flournoy’s debut novel is a family history set in Detroit, Michigan as it deteriorates through the decades; Lauren Groff’s novel follows the ups and downs of a married couple; Pulitzer Prize Winner Adam Johnson’s short stories one of which won the Sunday Times short story prize see the world through scrims of death and dying; Hanya Yanagihara’s novel follows four men from college through middle age. Yanagihara’s A Little Life was shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize

The Nonfiction list includes Ta-Nehisi Coates’ powerful indictment of racial politics in America,  written in a form of a letter to his son;  Sy  Montgomery’s fascinating “immersion” in the world of octopi; Carla Power’s chronicle of conversations that she, a secular-oriented American, engaged in with a madrasa-trained sheikh, which confronts persistent misconceptions; and memoirs by two artists,Sally Mann’s life and work as a photographer, and poet and Pulitzer Prize Winner Tracy K. Smith’s  coming-of-age.

Among this year’s Poetry Finalists are four first-timers. Ross Gay apotheosizes daily life, with such poems as “Spoon,” and “Feet”. Ada Limón focuses on place, relationships, and the formation of personal identity. Patrick Phillips’ elegiac volume is a son’s lament for his father. Robin Coste Lewis’ first collection of verse interweaves language with various ecologies of verse, embedding her content in varied lines and typefaces. Winner of the 2010 National Book Award in Poetry, Terrance Hayes returns to the NBA with a collection of powerful language and investigation of verse forms.

The Young People's Literature list includes Steve Sheinkin, a Finalist for the National Book Award in2012 and 2014. Among this year’s first-time Finalists are Ali Benjamin for The Thing about Jellyfish, her debut novel; Laura Ruby, who writes for children, young adults, and adults; Neal Shusterman, whose prior work has been an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and a Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Readers; and Noelle Stevenson, a cartoonist, for Nimona, her first solo work. Stevenson is 23 years old.

2015 National Book Award Finalists

Finalists for Fiction

Karen E. Bender, Refund, published by Counterpoint Press

Angela Flournoy, The Turner House, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies, published by Riverhead Books/Penguin Random House

Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles, published by Random House

Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life, published by Doubleday/Penguin Random House

Finalists for Nonfiction

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, published by Spiegel &  Grau/Penguin Random House

Sally Mann, Hold Still, published by Little, Brown, a division of Hachette Book Group

Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus, published by Atria Books, a division of Simon & amp; Schuster

Carla Power, If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran, published by Henry Holt and Company, a division of Macmillan

Tracy K. Smith, Ordinary Light, published by Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists for Poetry

Ross Gay, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press

Terrance Hayes, How to Be Drawn, published by Penguin

Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus, published by Alfred A. Knopf

Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things, published by Milkweed Editions

Patrick Phillips, Elegy for a Broken Machine, published by Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists for Young People’s Literature

Ali Benjamin, The Thing About Jellyfish, published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Laura Ruby, Bone Gap, published by Balzer + Bray, a division of HarperCollins Children's Books

Steve Sheinkin, Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War, published by Roaring Brook Press

Neal Shusterman, Challenger Deep, published by HarperCollins Children's Books

Noelle Stevenson, Nimona, published by HarperTeen/HarperCollins Children's Books

For Finalists’ bios and book summaries, click on

http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2015.html#.ViNYILT2hUQ.

Publishers submitted a total of 1,428 books for this year’s National Book Awards: 419 in Fiction, 494 in Nonfiction, 221 in Poetry, and 294 in Young People’s Literature. Judges’ decisions are made independent of the National Book Foundation staff and Board of Directors; deliberations are strictly confidential. To be eligible for a 2015 National Book Award, a book must have been published in the United States between December 1, 2014 and November 30, 2015, and must have been written by a United States citizen.