It’s that time of year
- Here are the 2012 Finalists…
The judges have their work cut out for them … as has always been the case, the books that have made it to this stage are the cream of the crop – take a look at the finalists….
Do you have a favorite?
post a comment with your favorite or send us an email
FICTION
FINALISTS:
Junot Díaz,
This Is How You Lose Her (Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Group USA, Inc.)
Dave Eggers,
A Hologram for the King (McSweeney's Books)
Louise Erdrich,
The Round House (Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
Ben Fountain,
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
Kevin Powers,
The Yellow Birds (Little, Brown and Company)
POETRY
FINALISTS:
David Ferry,
Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations (University of Chicago Press)
Cynthia Huntington,
Heavenly Bodies (Southern Illinois University Press)
Tim Seibles,
Fast Animal (Etruscan Press)
Alan Shapiro,
Night of the Republic (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Susan Wheeler,
Meme (University of Iowa Press)
NONFICTION
FINALISTS:
Anne Applebaum,
Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-1956 (Doubleday)
Katherine Boo,
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (Random House)
Robert A. Caro,
The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 4 (Knopf)
Domingo Martinez,
The Boy Kings of Texas (Lyons Press, an imprint of Globe Pequot Press)
Anthony Shadid,
House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE
FINALISTS:
William Alexander,
Goblin Secrets (Margaret K. McElderry Books, an imprint of
Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing)
Carrie Arcos,
Out of Reach (Simon Pulse, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing)
Patricia McCormick,
Never Fall Down (Balzer+Bray, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
Eliot Schrefer,
Endangered (Scholastic)
Steve Sheinkin,
Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon (Flash Point, an imprint of Roaring Brook Press)
New York (September 19, 2012) – The National Book Foundation, presenter of the National Book Awards, will present its
2012 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to
Elmore Leonard in recognition of his outstanding achievement in fiction writing. For over five decades, Leonard’s westerns, crime novels, serialized novels, and stories have enthralled generations of readers. Author Martin Amis will
present the Medal to Leonard at the 63rd National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner at Cipriani, Wall Street, in New York City on Wednesday, November 14, 2012. Television and radio host, political and pop culture commentator, journalist, and actor Faith Salie will host the event. Today’s announcement coincides with the announcement by
The Library of America that it will publish a three-volume edition of Leonard’s crime novels in its esteemed series beginning in fall 2014. National Book Foundation Executive Director Harold Augenbraum said of the selection, “For a half-century, Elmore Leonard has produced vibrant literary work with an inimitable writing style. We are particularly pleased that as we at the National Book Foundation recognize his achievement, the Library of America—which publishes, and keeps permanently in print, authoritative editions of America’s best and most significant writing—has announced that Leonard will join other great American authors in its literary pantheon.”
Also on that evening, the National Book Foundation will bestow its
2012 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community on
Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., chairman and publisher of
The New York Times, for his continuing efforts through the
New York Times Book Review and online book coverage to ensure an ongoing conversation about books in American culture. While re-thinking and implementing innovative print and online initiatives at the
Times, Sulzberger and the
Times staff have shown their devotion to the coverage of books, whether by profiling authors and their work or reporting on literary culture as a whole. “It’s hard to overstate the impact of
The New York Times on the discussion about books in America,” Augenbraum said. For well over a century,
The New York Times has been central to America’s book culture.”
Leonard is the twenty-fifth recipient of the
Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, which was created in 1988 to recognize a lifetime of literary achievement. Previous recipients include John Ashbery, Toni Morrison, John Updike, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gore Vidal, and Tom Wolfe. This year’s ceremony marks the eighth year that the Foundation has presented the Literarian Award, which was established in 2005 to recognize an individual whose work has enhanced the literary world during a lifetime of service. Previous recipients include Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein, Terry Gross, Barney Rosset, Dave Eggers, Joan Ganz Cooney, and Mitchell Kaplan.
Nominations for these awards are made by former National Book Award Winners, Finalists, and Judges, as well as other writers and literary professionals from around the country. Final selections are made by the National Book Foundation’s Board of Directors.
The
twenty Finalists for the
National Book Awards in
Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and
Young People’s Literature were announced on Wednesday, October 10, 2012.
63rd National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner
Faith Salie -
Host
Faith Salie is a television and national public radio host, political and pop culture commentator, interviewer, “ethics expert,” journalist, and actor, as well as a Rhodes Scholar, who’s been a standup comedian. She’s written for Oprah.com, Slate.com, and CNN.com and
The Huffington Post. She was the host and co-executive producer of the national public radio show “Fair Game from PRI with Faith Salie,”
and is the co-host of a new public radio podcast, “Relations Show,” a slightly nerdy look at love, sex, and relationships.
faithsalie.com
TAKE A LOOK BACK AT PREVIOUS WINNERS
1980 pb
[n 1] John Irving The World According to Garp1981 hard
Wright Morris Plains Song: For Female Voices1981 pb
[n 1] John Cheever The Stories of John Cheever1982 hard
John Updike Rabbit is Rich1982 pb
[n 1] William Maxwell So Long, See You Tomorrow1983 hard
Alice Walker The Color Purple1983 pb
[n 1] Eudora Welty The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty1984 Ellen Gilchrist Victory Over Japan: A Book of Stories1985 Don DeLillo White Noise1986 E.L. Doctorow World's Fair1987 Larry Heinemann Paco's Story1988 Pete Dexter Paris Trout1989 John Casey Spartina1990 Charles Johnson Middle Passage1991 Norman Rush Mating
1992 Cormac McCarthy All the Pretty Horses
1993 E. Annie Proulx The Shipping News
1994 William Gaddis A Frolic of His Own1995 Philip Roth Sabbath's Theater1996 Andrea Barrett Ship Fever and Other Stories1997 Charles Frazier Cold Mountain1998 Alice McDermott Charming Billy1999 Ha Jin Waiting2000 Susan Sontag In America2001 Jonathan Franzen The Corrections2002 Julia Glass Three Junes2003 Shirley Hazzard The Great Fire2004 Lily Tuck The News from Paraguay2005 William T. Vollmann Europe Central2006 Richard Powers The Echo Maker2007 Denis Johnson Tree of Smoke2008 Peter Matthiessen Shadow Country2009 Colum McCann Let the Great World Spin2010 Jaimy Gordon Lord of Misrule2011 Jesmyn Ward Salvage the BonesNONFICTION TITLES - 1950 Ralph L. Rusk
The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson (biog.
Ralph Waldo Emerson)
1951
Newton Arvin
Herman Melville (biog. Herman Melville)
1952 Rachel Carson The Sea Around Us1953 Bernard A. DeVoto The Course of Empire1954 Bruce Catton A Stillness at Appomattox (third of 3 vols)
1955 Joseph Wood Krutch The Measure of Man1956 Herbert Kubly An American in Italy1957 George F. Kennan Russia Leaves the War1958 Catherine Drinker Bowen The Lion and the Throne (see
Edward Coke)
1959 J. Christopher Herold
Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël (biog.
Madame de Staël)
1960 Richard Ellmann James Joyce (biog.
James Joyce)
1961 William L. Shirer The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich1962 Lewis Mumford The City in History: Its Origins, its Transformations and its Prospects1963 Leon Edel Henry James, volumes II and III (biog.
Henry James)
1964
to
1983 For two decades beginning 1964 there were multiple nonfiction categories, initially Arts and Letters; History and Biography; and Science, Philosophy and Religion. See also Contemporary and General Nonfiction.1984 Robert V. Remini Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Democracy, 1833-18451985 J. Anthony Lukas Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families1986 Barry Lopez Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape1987 Richard Rhodes The Making of the Atomic Bomb1988 Neil Sheehan A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam1989 Thomas L. Friedman From Beirut to Jerusalem1990 Ron Chernow The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance1991 Orlando Patterson Freedom, Vol. 1: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture1992 Paul Monette Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story1993 Gore Vidal United States: Essays 1952-19921994 Sherwin B. Nuland How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter1995 Tina Rosenberg The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism1996 James P. Carroll An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War that Came Between Us1997 Joseph J. Ellis American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson1998 Edward Ball Slaves in the Family1999 John W. Dower Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II2000 Nathaniel Philbrick In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex2001 Andrew Solomon The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression2002 Robert A. Caro Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson2003 Carlos Eire Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy2004 Kevin Boyle Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age2005 Joan Didion 2005 The Year of Magical Thinking2006 Timothy Egan The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl2007 Tim Weiner Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA2008 Annette Gordon-Reed The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family2009 T.J. Stiles The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt2010 Patti Smith Just Kids (memoir)
2011 Stephen Greenblatt The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
Taste Test Reveals Top Dog for Summer Grilling
