2013 National Book Award Finalists Announced

The 20 finalists for the National Book Awards in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature were announced on Wednesday morning, October 16, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, hosted by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. David Steinberger, chair of the National Book Foundation’s Board of Directors, announced the picks on the show. The finalists are: 

FICTION

• Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers (Scribner/Simon & Schuster)
• Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)
• James McBride, The Good Lord Bird (Riverhead Books/Penguin Group USA)
• Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge (Penguin Press/Penguin Group USA)
• George Saunders, Tenth of December (Random House)

NONFICTION

• Jill Lepore, The Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)
• Wendy Lower, Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• George Packer, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 (W.W. Norton & Company)
• Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)

POETRY

• Frank Bidart, Metaphysical Dog (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Lucie Brock-Broido, Stay, Illusion (Alfred A. Knopf)
• Adrian Matejka, The Big Smoke (Penguin Poets/Penguin Group USA)
• Matt Rasmussen, Black Aperture (Louisiana State University Press)
• Mary Szybist, Incarnadine: Poems (Graywolf Press)

YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE

• Kathi Appelt, The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster)
• Cynthia Kadohata, The Thing About Luck (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster)
• Tom McNeal, Far Far Away (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)
• Meg Rosoff, Picture Me Gone (G.P. Putnam’s Sons/Penguin Group USA)
• Gene Luen Yang, Boxers & Saints (First Second/Macmillan)

The winners will be announced at the 64th National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner in New York City on Wednesday, November 20, 2013.