Literary Hub quizzes the National Book Awards finalists

We’re a week away from the National Book Awards, given to outstanding work in young people’s literature, translation, poetry, nonfiction, and fiction.

LeVar Burton of Reading Rainbow fame will host the ceremony on November 20.

But before we meet the eventual winners, Literary Hub did quick interviews with almost all of the finalists.

Click on the category name to see just interviews from those nominees (the links in the book titles will take you to the book’s Amazon listing), or head to Literary Hub to see them all at once.

Fiction

• Trust Exercise, by Susan Choi.

• Sabrina & Corina: Stories, by Kali Fajardo-Anstine.

• Black Leopard, Red Wolf, by Marlon James.

• The Other Americans, by Laila Lalami.

• Disappearing Earth, by Julia Phillips.

Nonfiction

• The Yellow House, by Sarah M. Broom.

• What You Have Heard is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance, by Carolyn Forché.

• Thick: And Other Essays, by Tressie McMillan Cottom.

• The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present, by David Treuer.

• Solitary, by Albert Woodfox and Leslie George.

Poetry

• The Tradition, by Jericho Brown.

• “I”: New and Selected Poems, by Toi Derricotte.

• Be Recorder, by Carmen Giménez Smith.

• Deaf Republic, by Ilya Kaminsky.

• Sight Lines, by Arthur Sze.

Translated literature

• Death Is Hard Work, written by Khaled Khalifa and translated by Leri Price.

• Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming, written by László Krasznahorkai and translated by Ottilie Mulzet.

• The Barefoot Woman, written by Scholastique Mukasonga and translated by Jordan Stump.

• The Memory Police, written by Yoko Ogawa and translated by Stephen Snyder.

• Crossing, written by Pajtim Statovci and translated by David Hackston.

Young people's literature

• Pet, by Akwaeke Emezi.

• Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks, by Jason Reynolds.

• Patron Saints of Nothing, by Randy Ribay.

• Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All, by Laura Ruby.

• 1919: The Year That Changed America, by Martin W. Sandler.

Related posts

• NPR's coverage of the nominees

• National Book Award longlists for Young People's Literature | Translated Literature | Poetry | Nonfiction | Fiction

• Laila Lalami on why her new novel needed 9 narrators

• Author describes surviving 40 years in solitary confinement

• YA author Jason Reynolds brings your Monday motivation

• Meet the 2018 National Book Awards winners