By Melissa Platero, CCNN Writer
The National Book Awards finalists for 2013 have been chopped down from 40 on the “longlist” to the cream of the crop! 20 authors survived the cut, with 5 each in the categories of Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature.
In 1950, publishers, writers, editors, and critics gathered together in New York City to celebrate the first annual National Book Awards, and now, a half-century later, it continues to honor the best American literature.
The official winners will be announced at the National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner on November 20. The winners will receive a prize of $10,000 and the finalists will each get $1,000.
Without further ado, here are the nominees:
Fiction:
Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers (Scribner/ Simon & Schuster)
Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland (Alfred A. Knopf/ Random House)
James McBride, The Good Lord Bird (Riverhead Books/ Penguin Group USA)
Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge (The Penguin Press/ Penguin Group USA)
George Saunders, Tenth of December (Random House)
Non-Fiction
Jill Lepore, Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin (Alfred A. Knopf/ Random House)
Wendy Lower, Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
George Packer, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 (W.W. Norton & Company)
Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief
(Alfred A. Knopf/ Random House)
Poetry
Frank Bidart, Metaphysical Dog (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Lucie Brock-Broido, Stay, Illusion (Alfred A. Knopf)
Adrian Matejka, The Big Smoke (Penguin Poets/ Penguin Group USA)
Matt Rasmussen, Black Aperture (Louisiana State University Press)
Mary Szybist, Incarnadine: Poems (Graywolf Press)
Young People’s Literature
Kathi Appelt, The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp
(Atheneum Books for Young Readers/ Simon & Schuster)
Cynthia Kadohata, The Thing About Luck (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/ Simon & Schuster)
Tom McNeal, Far Far Away (Alfred A. Knopf/ Random House)
Meg Rosoff, Picture Me Gone (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Group USA)
Gene Luen Yang, Boxers & Saints (First Second/ Macmillan)
Images courtesy of National Book Awards Facebook.