The Other NBA Announces Finalists

The National Book Foundation released the finalists for the 2010 National Book Awards yesterday. The NBAs have been around since 1950 and seek to celebrate “the best in American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of good writing in America.” Titles are nominated by publishers, not by readers or critics, but each category is judged by a five-member independent panel. This year’s judges include Andrei Codrescu and Samuel R. Delaney for Fiction, and Kelly Link for Young Adult literature.

Of local interest, Port Townsend-based poetry publisher Copper Canyon Press has two authors among the finalists: James Richardson for By the Numbers, and C.D. Wright for One with Others.

The complete list of finalists:

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Fiction
Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America (Alfred A. Knopf)
Jaimy Gordon, Lord of Misrule (McPherson & Co.)
Nicole Krauss, Great House (W.W. Norton & Co.)
Lionel Shriver, So Much for That (Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel (Coffee House Press)

Nonfiction
Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group)
John W. Dower, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq (W.W. Norton & Co.)
Patti Smith, Just Kids (Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
Megan K. Stack, Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War (Doubleday)
Justin Spring, Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Poetry
Kathleen Graber, The Eternal City (Princeton University Press)
Terrance Hayes, Lighthead (Viking Penguin)
James Richardson, By the Numbers (Copper Canyon Press)
C.D. Wright, One with Others (Copper Canyon Press)
Monica Youn, Ignatz (Four Way Books)

Young People’s Literature
Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker (Little, Brown & Co.)
Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird (Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group)
Laura McNeal, Dark Water (Alfred A. Knopf)
Walter Dean Myers, Lockdown (Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer (Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)

The winners will be announced at the annual awards ceremony in November. Past winners include local favorite Sherman Alexie for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
(2007) and Seattle-based writer Timothy Egan for 2005′s The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Winners receive a $10,000 cash prize and a fancy bronze dustcatcher. Finalists each get $1,000, a shiny medal, and a citation from the panel.