Established in 1950, the National Book Award is an American literary prize given to writers by writers and administered by the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization. Writers such as William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, John Cheever, Philip Roth, John Updike, Norman Mailer, Flannery O’Connor, and Alice Walker have all won the Award. Each year, the Foundation selects a total of twenty judges, including five in each of the four Award categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature. Judges are published writers who are known to be doing great work in their genre or field, and in some cases, are past NBA Finalists or Winners. Each panel reads all of the books submitted in their category over the course of the summer. This number typically ranges from 150 titles (Poetry) to upwards of 500 titles (Nonfiction). In September, each panel compiles a “shortlist” of five Finalists. This year’s finalists were announced on October 10, 2012.
Fiction Titles
This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz
The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers
Nonfiction Titles
Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1945-1956 by Anne Applebaum
The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 4 by Robert Caro
The Boy Kings of Texas by Domingo Martinez
House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family and a Lost Middle East by Anthony Shadid
Poetry
Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations by David Ferry
Heavenly Bodies by Cynthia Huntington
Fast Animal by Tim Seibles
Night of the Republic by Alan Shapiro
Meme by Susan Wheeler
Young People’s Literature
Goblin Secrets by William Alexander
Out of Reach by Carrie Arcos
Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick
Endangered by Eliot Schrefer
Bomb: The Race to Build- and Steal- the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin
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