Today the National Book Awards released the nonfiction longlist, with judges Steve Bercu, Jeff Chang, Ruth Franklin, Paula J. Giddings, and Valeria Luiselli selecting politically-skewed reading: Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (37 Ink) Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America (Simon & Schuster) James Forman, Jr., Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (Farrar, Straus) Masha Gessen, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (Riverhead) David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (Doubleday) Naomi Klein, No […]
Awards
The NBA Poetry Longlist
Next up from the National Book Awards is the poetry longlist: Frank Bidart, Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 (Farrar, Straus) Chen Chen, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions) Leslie Harrison, The Book of Endings (University of Akron Press) Marie Howe, Magdalene: Poems (Norton) Laura Kasischke, Where Now: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press) Layli Long Soldier, Whereas (Graywolf) Shane McCrae, In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press) Sherod Santos, Square Inch Hours (Norton) Danez Smith, Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems (Graywolf) Mai Der Vang, Afterland (Graywolf)
Booker Shortlist Favors Saunders, Hamid and Debut Novelist Mozley
The Booker shortlist was named, with the winner to be selected on October 17. The finalists include three Americans (Auster, Fridlund and Saunders), two debut novelists (Fridlund and Mozley), and two previous Booker candidates (Hamid and Smith). The complete list: 4321, by Paul Auster (Holt/Faber) History of Wolves, by Emily Fridlund (Grove/Weidenfeld & Nicolson) Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid (Riverhead/Hamish Hamilton) Elmet, by Fiona Mozley (Algonquin/JM Originals) Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders (Random House/Bloomsbury) Autumn, by Ali Smith (Pantheon/Hamish Hamilton) For now, the bookies made Saunders their favorite at 2/1 — which isn’t so good, since the favorite […]
NBA Longlists Begin with Young People’s Literature
The National Book Awards longlists will roll out Tuesday through Friday this week, and the actual finalists will be announced on October 4. Winners will be named on November 15. First up is Young People’s Literature longlist, which includes two previous nominees (Reynolds, the only man on the list, and Williams-Garcia) and current top bestseller Angie Thomas. Five of the titles are from HarperCollins imprints: Elana K. Arnold, What Girls Are Made Of (Carolrhoda Lab) Robin Benway, Far from the Tree (HarperTeen) Samantha Mabry, All the Wind in the World (Algonquin Young Readers) Mitali Perkins, You Bring the Distant Near (FSG Children’s) […]
People, Etc.
At Transatlantic Agency, Samantha Haywood, has bought controlling interest in the agency from co-founder David Bennett and is now president of the firm. Bennett will serve as chairman emeritus, and co-founder Lynn Bennett stays on as treasurer. Also at Transatlantic, Rob Firing has joined as speakers’ agent and literary agent, working tocreate a speakers’ division. He was senior director of publicity, communications, and speakers’ bureau at Harper Canada. Marilyn Biderman, previously of Marilyn Biderman Literary Management, joins as senior literary agent, bringing her clients with her. Bennett says of the changes, “Lynn and I are thrilled to be passing the torch to Samantha […]
People, Etc.
Wendi Gu has joined Janklow & Nesbit as an associate agent, working with Brooks Sherman in the children’s books division. She was most recently an agent at Greenburger Associates and will continue to represent fiction for young adult and middle-grade readers, picture books, and select adult fiction and nonfiction. Julie Tibbott, who was previously a senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children’s, has joined Jill Corcoran Literary Agency as an agent. Jim Dassise, West Coast college field sales manager for Penguin Random House, will leave the company after 17 years on September 15. He can be reached at jdassise19@gmail.com and is based […]