The National Book Awards announced their nonfiction longlist Wednesday morning, with roughly half of the ten books on the list falling into the memoir category (including the much-acclaimed and strong-selling book by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith’s chronicle of her life.) The full list includes:
Cynthia Barnett, Rain: A Natural and Cultural History (Crown)
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau)
Martha Hodes, Mourning Lincoln (Yale University Press)
Sally Mann, Hold Still (Little, Brown)
Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus (Atria)
Susanna Moore, Paradise of the Pacific: Approaching Hawai’i (FSG)
Michael Paterniti, Love and Other Ways of Dying (The Dial Press)
Carla Power, If the Oceans Were Ink (Henry Holt)
Tracy K. Smith, Ordinary Light: A Memoir (Knopf)
Michael White, Travels in Vermeer: A Memoir (Persea)