The Booker Prize announced their shortlist, with the winner to be named October 13 [Update: The correct awards date is October 25]. Two Americans — Paul Beatty for his NBCC-winning novel and Ottessa Moshfegh for her PEN/Hemingway debut winner — are in contention in a field that includes no previous Booker winners. (Deborah Levy was shortlisted in 2012 for Swimming Home.) Since the longlist, Norton has picked up US rights to Madeleine Thien’s novel, and will publish on October 11. Graeme Macrae Burnet will continue to draw attention after garnering a nomination for a crime thriller, and Skyhorse has bumped up the US release of his book to October 4:
Paul Beatty, The Sellout (FSG/Oneworld)
Deborah Levy, Hot Milk (Bloomsbury US/Hamish Hamilton)
Graeme Macrae Burnet, His Bloody Project (Skyhorse/Contraband)
Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen (Penguin Press/Jonathan Cape)
David Szalay, All That Man Is (Graywolf/Jonathan Cape)
Madeleine Thien, Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Norton/Knopf Canada/Granta Books)
The National Book Awards also announced their second longlist of the week, for poetry:
Daniel Borzutzky, The Performance of Becoming Human (Brooklyn Arts Press)
Rita Dove, Collected Poems 1974 – 2004 (Norton)
Peter Gizzi, Archeophonics (Wesleyan University Press)
Donald Hall, The Selected Poems of Donald Hall (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Jay Hopler, The Abridged History of Rainfall (McSweeney’s)
Donika Kelly, Bestiary (Graywolf)
Jane Mead, World of Made and Unmade (Alice James Books)
Solmaz Sharif, Look (Graywolf)
Monica Youn, Blackacre (Graywolf)
Kevin Young, Blue Laws (Knopf)
The nonfiction and fiction longlists will follow Wednesday and Thursday.
And in personnel news, Carrie Howland will join Empire Literary on September 19th as a senior agent. Previously she was an agent at Donadio & Olson for 11 years.
At Viking, Diego Nunez has been promoted to assistant editor.