Poetry

This year, The New Yorker published poems from six of the ten poetry collections that appear on this year’s longlist: “Piano Lesson,” by Richard Siken; “True Apothecary,” by Natalie Shapero; “Maybe in Another Life,” by Tiana Clark; “Hammond B3 Organ Cistern,” by Gabrielle Calvocoressi; “70,” by Patricia Smith; and an excerpt of “Sometimes Tropic of New Orleans,” by Rickey Laurentiis. Nine of the nominees are being honored by the National Book Awards for the first time; Smith, long-listed this year for “The Intentions of Thunder,” was a finalist in 2008.

Gbenga Adesina, “Death Does Not End at the Sea”
University of Nebraska

Gabrielle Calvocoressi, “The New Economy”
Copper Canyon

Cathy Linh Che, “Becoming Ghost”
Washington Square / Simon & Schuster

Tiana Clark, “Scorched Earth”
Washington Square / Simon & Schuster

 

Rickey Laurentiis, “Death of the First Idea”
Knopf / Penguin Random House

Esther Lin, “Cold Thief Place”
Alice James Books

Natalie Shapero, “Stay Dead”
Copper Canyon

Richard Siken, “I Do Know Some Things”
Copper Canyon

Patricia Smith, “The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems”
Scribner / Simon & Schuster

Fargo Nissim Tbakhi, “Terror Counter”
Deep Vellum

 

Translated Literature

In March, Alice Gregory reviewed Vincenzo Latronico’s “Perfection”—an Italian-language novel about the beautiful, aimless life of an expat millennial couple in Berlin, which reimagines Georges Perec’s début “Things: A Story of the Sixties” (1965) in the twenty-tens. “Perfection,” translated into English by Sophie Hughes, is one of ten titles on this year’s longlist. The books on the list originally appeared in nine languages: Arabic, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Uzbek. Hamid Ismailov’s “We Computers: A Ghazal Novel,” about a French poet who devises an A.I. program to replicate Persian poetry, is the first Uzbek translation to be honored by the National Book Awards.

Solvej Balle, “On the Calculation of Volume (Book III)”
Translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell
New Directions

Jazmina Barrera, “The Queen of Swords”
Translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
Two Lines

Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, “We Are Green and Trembling”
Translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers
New Directions

Anjet Daanje, “The Remembered Soldier”
Translated from the Dutch by David McKay
New Vessel

Saou Ichikawa, “Hunchback”
Translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton
Hogarth / Penguin Random House

Hamid Ismailov, “We Computers: A Ghazal Novel”
Translated from the Uzbek by Shelley Fairweather-Vega
Yale

Han Kang, “We Do Not Part”
Translated from the Korean by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris
Hogarth / Penguin Random House

Mohamed Kheir, “Sleep Phase”
Translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger
Two Lines

Vincenzo Latronico, “Perfection”
Translated from the Italian by Sophie Hughes
New York Review Books

Neige Sinno, “Sad Tiger”
Translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer
Seven Stories

The judges for the category this year are Stesha Brandon, the literature and humanities program manager at the Seattle Public Library; Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón, a professor of Hispanic studies at Oberlin College and the author of several books, including the novel “Los días hábiles”; Bill Johnston, a translator of Polish and French literature whose rendition of Adam Mickiewicz’s “Pan Tadeusz” won the 2019 National Translation Award in Poetry; Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel, a professor of Romance studies at Duke University; and Karen Tei Yamashita, a professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of ten books, including the novel “I Hotel.”

 

Young People’s Literature

This year’s longlist includes works of fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, and novels in verse. Several of the titles contend with grief and loss among young people; a few, such as Kyle Lukoff’s “A World Worth Saving” and Mahogany L. Browne’s “A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe,” wrestle with the ruptures of the COVID-19 pandemic. Four of the authors on the longlist—Derrick Barnes, Kyle Lukoff, Amber McBride, and Ibi Zoboi—have been finalists in the category before.

María Dolores Águila, “A Sea of Lemon Trees: The Corrido of Roberto Alvarez”
Roaring Brook / Macmillan

K. Ancrum, “The Corruption of Hollis Brown”
HarperCollins

Derrick Barnes, “The Incredibly Human Henson Blayze”
Viking / Penguin Random House

Mahogany L. Browne, “A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe”
Crown / Penguin Random House

Kyle Lukoff, “A World Worth Saving”
Dial / Penguin Random House

Amber McBride, “The Leaving Room”
Feiwel & Friends / Macmillan

Daniel Nayeri, “The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story”
Levine Querido

Hannah V. Sawyerr, “Truth Is”
Amulet / Abrams

Maria van Lieshout, “Song of a Blackbird”
First Second / Macmillan

Ibi Zoboi, “(S)Kin”
Versify / HarperCollins

The judges for the category this year are Cathy Berner, a bookseller at Blue Willow Bookshop and a former school librarian; David Bowles, a professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and the author of dozens of books, including “My Two Border Towns”; the young-adult author candice iloh, whose book “Every Body Looking” was a 2020 National Book Award finalist; Jung Kim, a professor of education at Lewis University; and the actor and award-winning author Maulik Pancholy, best known for his roles as Jonathan on “30 Rock” and Baljeet on “Phineas and Ferb.”

For more information about the 76th National Book Awards and to register to watch the winners announced live, please visit nationalbook.org/awards.

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Fiction by James Thurber: “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”

 

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