National Book Award 2018

The National Book Foundation was founded in 1989 to administer the National Book Awards, which has been one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the country since 1950. The Foundation also produces numerous educational and public programs that help connect readers to books in new and meaningful ways.

FICTION

Winner
• Sigrid Nunez, The Friend (Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House)

Finalists
• Jamel Brinkley, A Lucky Man (Graywolf Press)
• Lauren Groff, Florida (Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House)
• Brandon Hobson, Where the Dead Sit Talking (Soho Press)
• Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers (Viking Books / Penguin Random House)

Longlist
• Jennifer Clement, Gun Love (Hogarth / Penguin Random House)
• Daniel Gumbiner, The Boatbuilder (McSweeney’s)
• Tayari Jones, An American Marriage (Algonquin Books / Workman Publishing)
• Tommy Orange, There There (Alfred A. Knopf / Penguin Random House)
• Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Heads of the Colored People (Atria Books / 37 INK / Simon & Schuster)

NONFICTION

Winner
• Jeffrey C. Stewart, The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke (Oxford University Press)

Finalists
• Colin G. Calloway, The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation (Oxford University Press)
• Victoria Johnson, American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic (Liveright / W. W. Norton & Company)
• Sarah Smarsh, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth (Scribner / Simon & Schuster)
• Adam Winkler, We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights (Liveright / W. W. Norton & Company)

Longlist
• Carol Anderson, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy (Bloomsbury Publishing)
• Steve Coll, Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Penguin Press / Penguin Random House)
• Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple, Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War (One World / Penguin Random House)
• David Quammen, The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life (Simon & Schuster)
• Rebecca Solnit, Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays) (Haymarket Books)

POETRY

Winner
• Justin Phillip Reed, Indecency (Coffee House Press)

Finalists
• Rae Armantrout, Wobble (Wesleyan University Press)
• Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Penguin Books / Penguin Random House)
• Diana Khoi Nguyen, Ghost Of (Omnidawn Publishing)
• Jenny Xie, Eye Level (Graywolf Press)

Longlist
• Jos Charles, feeld (Milkweed Editions)
• Forrest Gander, Be With (New Directions)
• J. Michael Martinez, Museum of the Americas (Penguin Books / Penguin Random House)
• Raquel Salas Rivera, lo terciario / the tertiary (Timeless, Infinite Light)
• Natasha Trethewey, Monument: Poems New and Selected (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

TRANSLATED LITERATURE

Winner
• Yoko Tawada, The Emissary, Translated by Margaret Mitsutani (New Directions Publishing)

Finalists
• Négar Djavadi, Disoriental, Translated by Tina Kover (Europa Editions)
• Hanne Ørstavik, Love, Translated by Martin Aitken (Archipelago Books)
• Domenico Starnone, Trick, Translated by Jhumpa Lahiri (Europa Editions)
• Olga Tokarczuk, Flights, Translated by Jennifer Croft (Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House)

Longlist
• Roque Larraquy, Comemadre, Translated by Heather Cleary (Coffee House Press)
• Dunya Mikhail, The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq, Translated by Max Weiss and Dunya Mikhail (New Directions Publishing)
• Perumal Murugan, One Part Woman, Translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan (Black Cat / Grove Atlantic)
• Gunnhild Øyehaug, Wait, Blink: A Perfect Picture of Inner Life, Translated by Kari Dickson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers)
• Tatyana Tolstaya, Aetherial Worlds, Translated by Anya Migdal (Alfred A. Knopf / Penguin Random House)

YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE

Winner
• Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X (HarperTeen / HarperCollins Publishers)

Finalists
• M. T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin, The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge (Candlewick Press)
• Leslie Connor, The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle (Katherine Tegen Books / HarperCollins Publishers)
• Christopher Paul Curtis, The Journey of Little Charlie (Scholastic Press / Scholastic, Inc.)
• Jarrett J. Krosoczka, Hey, Kiddo (Graphix / Scholastic, Inc.)

Longlist
• Bryan Bliss, We’ll Fly Away (Greenwillow Books / HarperCollins Publishers)
• Tahereh Mafi, A Very Large Expanse of Sea (HarperTeen / HarperCollins Publishers)
• Joy McCullough, Blood Water Paint (Dutton Children’s Books / Penguin Random House)
• Elizabeth Partridge, Boots on the Ground: America’s War in Vietnam (Viking Children’s Books / Penguin Random House)
• Vesper Stamper, What the Night Sings (Knopf Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House)

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