Genre: Fiction

National Book Award Longlists Announced

G&A: The Contest Blog
9.15.16

Today the National Book Foundation wrapped up its longlist announcements for the 2016 National Book Awards in the categories of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and young people’s literature.

In poetry, the longlist includes 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 Press); Jane Mead, World of Made and Unmade (Alice James Books); Solmaz Sharif, Look (Graywolf Press); Monica Youn, Blackacre (Graywolf Press); and Kevin Young, Blue Laws (Knopf).

Mark Bibbins, Jericho Brown, Katie Ford, Joy Harjo, and Tree Swenson judged.

The fiction longlist includes Chris Bachelder, The Throwback Special (Norton); Garth Greenwell, What Belongs to You (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); Adam Haslett, Imagine Me Gone (Little, Brown); Paulette Jiles, News of the World (William Morrow); Karan Mahajan, The Association of Small Bombs (Viking); Elizabeth McKenzie, The Portable Veblen (Penguin Press); Lydia Millet, Sweet Lamb of Heaven (Norton); Brad Watson, Miss Jane (Norton); Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad (Doubleday); and Jacqueline Woodson, Another Brooklyn (Amistad). 

James English, Karen Joy Fowler, T. Geronimo Johnson, Julie Otsuka, and Jesmyn Ward judged.

The longlist in nonfiction includes Andrew J. Bacevich, America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (Random House); Patricia Bell-Scott, The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice (Knopf); Adam Cohen, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck (Penguin Press); Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (The New Press); Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Nation Books); Viet Thanh Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (Harvard University Press); Cathy O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (Crown Publishing Group); Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt); Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (Yale University Press); and Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (Pantheon Books).

Cynthia Barnett, Masha Gessen, Greg Grandin, Melissa Harris-Perry, and Ronald Rosbottom judged. 

Visit the National Book Foundation website for more information about the writers and judges, and to see the longlist in the category of young people’s literature.

The shortlists—which will include five finalists in each category—will be announced on October 13; the winners will be named at the foundation’s annual awards ceremony in New York City on November 16. Winners will receive $10,000; shortlisted authors will receive $1,000.

It Takes a Village

The Time Is Now
9.14.16

In mid-July, a young man caught an alligator gar—an extremely unusual, sharp-toothed, prehistoric-looking fish—while fishing from a lake in Schenectady, New York. He took a photo of the megafish to post on social media, and then let it go, in accordance with his catch-and-release policy. His mother subsequently shared the post, and her colleague then contacted the U.S. Geological Survey, which in turn contacted the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, whose agents confirmed that it was an invasive species. This led to the mayor of Schenectady offering a one hundred dollar award to anyone who managed to catch the fish. Write a short story that unfolds in a similar fashion, beginning with the small action of one individual, which then puts into effect a chain of events involving a whole town.

Booker Prize Shortlist Announced

G&A: The Contest Blog
9.13.16

This morning in London, the Man Booker Foundation announced the shortlist for the 2016 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, one of the world’s most prestigious literary prizes. The annual award is given for a book of fiction written in English and published in the United Kingdom in the previous year. The winner receives £50,000 (approximately $66,400).

The finalists are Paul Beatty of the United States for The Sellout (Oneworld); Deborah Levy of the United Kingdom for Hot Milk (Hamish Hamilton); Graeme Macrae Burnet of the United Kingdom for His Bloody Project (Contraband); Ottessa Moshfegh of the United States for Eileen (Jonathan Cape); David Szalay of Canada for All That Man Is (Jonathan Cape); and Madeleine Thien of Canada for Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Granta Books).

The judging panel—which includes 2016 judges chair Amanda Foreman, as well as Jon Day, Abdulrazak Gurnah, David Harsent, and Olivia Williams—selected the finalists from a longlist of thirteen. Foreman remarked, “The final six reflect the centrality of the novel in modern culture—in its ability to champion the unconventional, to explore the unfamiliar, and to tackle difficult subjects.” Deborah Levy is the only shortlisted author who has previously made the list, in 2012, for her novel Swimming Home.

The winner will be announced at a ceremony in London’s Guildhall on October 25. Each shortlisted author receives £2,500 (approximately $3,300) and a bound edition of their book. 

First launched in 1969, 2016 marks the third year that the Man Booker Prize has been open to writers of any nationality; the prize was previously limited to writers from Britain, Ireland, the Commonwealth, and Zimbabwe. Jamaican author Marlon James won the 2015 prize for his novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings.

Clockwise from top left: Graeme Macrae Burnet, Deborah Levy, David Szalay, Madeleine Thien, Paul Beatty, Ottessa Moshfegh 

Jacqueline Woodson

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“It's important that the criticism be constructive because otherwise it's destructive.” In a video for Big Think, Jacqueline Woodson explains the three stages of critique that are part of her writing process. Woodson speaks about her most recent novel, Another Brooklyn (Amistad, 2016), in “A Great Good” by Rigoberto González in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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Jacqueline Woodson
Big Think
2016
Amistad
September/October 2016
Another Brooklyn

Tree of Codes Dance Performance

Caption: 

“It's a series of pages that have huge holes, or volumes, where words fly off the page into your imagination, into your face. It's kind of a book that has no rules.” Choreographer Wayne McGregor and visual artist Olafur Eliasson speak with Kathleen Flood of the Creators Project about Jonathan Safran Foer’s art book, Tree of Codes (Visual Editions, 2010), which was the inspiration for their 2015 dance performance. Foer’s new novel, Here I Am (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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Fiction
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Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Page One
2010
Jonathan Safran Foer
Tree of Codes
Visual Editions
2016
September/October 2016
Here I Am
The Creators Project

Nicholson Baker

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Nicholson Baker discusses writing about the details in objects, focusing on the positives of technology, and cross-cultural respect at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Baker’s new nonfiction book, Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids (Blue Rider Press, 2016), which chronicles his experiences as a public school substitute teacher, is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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Fiction
Creative Nonfiction
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interview
Page One
Blue Rider Press
Nicholson Baker
2016
September/October 2016
Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids

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