The National Book Foundation has announced the 2021 National Book Award longlists. Five finalists in each of the five categories—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people's literature—will be named on October 5. The winner will be announced during the awards ceremony on November 17, which will once again be held in-person at Cipriani Wall Street in New York.
The announced longlists are as follows:
Fiction
- Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (Scribner)
- Matrix by Lauren Groff (Riverhead)
- Abundance by Jakob Guanzon (Graywolf)
- Zorrie by Laird Hunt (Bloomsbury)
- The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (Harper)
- The Prophets by Robert Jones, Jr. (G. P. Putnam’s Sons)
- Intimacies by Katie Kitamura (Riverhead Books)
- The Souvenir Museum: Stories by Elizabeth McCracken (Ecco)
- Hell of a Book by Jason Mott (Dutton)
- Bewilderment by Richard Powers (W. W. Norton)
Nonfiction
- A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib (Random House)
- Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains by Lucas Bessire (Princeton University Press)
- Tastes Like War: A Memoir by Grace M. Cho (Feminist Press)
- The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice by Scott Ellsworth (Dutton)
- Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America by Nicole Eustace (Liveright)
- The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee (One World)
- The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War by Louis Menand (FSG)
- All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles, (Random House)
- How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith (Little, Brown)
- The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship by Deborah Willis (New York University Press)
Poetry
- The Wild Fox of Yemen by Threa Almontaser (Graywolf Press)
- Ghost Letters by Baba Badji (Parlor Press)
- What Noise Against the Cane by Desiree C. Bailey (Yale University Press)
- Master Suffering by C.M. Burroughs (Tupelo Press)
- The Vault by Andrés Cerpa (Alice James Books)
- Floaters by Martín Espada (W.W. Norton)
- Twice Alive by Forrest Gander (New Directions)
- Sho by Douglas Kearney (Wave Books)
- A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure by Hoa Nguyen (Wave Books)
- The Sunflower Cast A Spell To Save Us From The Void by Jackie Wang (Nightboat Books)
Translated Literature
- Waiting for the Waters to Rise by Maryse Condé and translated from the French by Richard Philcox (World Editions)
- Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin and translated from the French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins (Open Letter)
- Peach Blossom Paradise by Ge Fei and translated from the Chinese by Canaan Morse (New York Review Books)
- The Twilight Zone by Nona Fernández and translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer (Graywolf Press)
- On the Origin of Species and Other Stories by Bo-Young Kim and translated from the Korean by Joungmin Lee Comfort and Sora Kim-Russell (Kaya Press)
- When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut and translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West (New York Review Books)
- Rabbit Island: Stories by Elvira Navarro and translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney (Two Lines Press)
- An Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalansky and translated from the German by Jackie Smith (New Directions)
- In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova and translated from the Russian by Sasha Dugdale (New Directions)
- Planet of Clay by Samar Yazbek and translated from the Arabic by Leri Price (World Editions)
Young People’s Literature
- Home Is Not a Country by Safia Elhillo (Make Me a World/PRH)
- The Legend of Auntie Po by Shing Yin Khor (Kokila/PRH)
- A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger (Levine Querido)
- Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo (Dutton Books for Young Readers/PRH)
- Too Bright to See by Kyle Lukoff (Dial Books for Young Readers/PRH)
- Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People by Kekla Magoon (Candlewick Press)
- Me (Moth) by Amber McBride, (Feiwel and Friends/Macmillan)
- The Mirror Season by Anna-Marie McLemore (Feiwel and Friends/Macmillan)
- Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre by Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrated by Floyd Cooper (Carolrhoda/Lerner)
- From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement by Paula Yoo (Norton Young Readers/W. W. Norton)
A total of 415 books were submitted for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction. The judges are Alan Michael Parker, Emily Pullen, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, Luis Alberto Urrea (chair), and Charles Yu.
Publishers submitted a total of 679 books for the 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction. The judges are Eula Biss, Aaron John Curtis, Nell Painter (chair), Kate Tuttle, and Jerald Walker.
A total of 290 books were submitted for the 2021 National Book Award for Poetry. The judges are Don Mee Choi, Natalie Diaz, Matthea Harvey, A. Van Jordan (chair), and Ilya Kaminsky.
Publishers submitted a total of 164 books for this year’s National Book Award for Translated Literature. The judges are Jessie Chaffee, Madhu H. Kaza, Achy Obejas, Sergio de la Pava, and Stephen Snyder (chair).
A total of 344 books were submitted for this year’s National Book Award for Young People's Literature. The judges are Pablo Cartaya, Traci Chee, Leslie Connor, Cathryn Mercier (chair), and Ibi Zoboi.
This article has been updated with further information.
