Six out of the ten fiction longlist authors will be appearing, including Portlander Vanessa Veselka.
Last week, in partnership with NewYorker.com, the National Book Foundation announced their longlists for the 2020 National Book Awards. You can see the full longlists below, and check out the New Yorker’s announcements for Young People’s Literature, Translated Literature, Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction.
Eleven of these longlisted authors will be appearing at the 2020 Portland Book Festival, held entirely online from November 5–21, including Portlanders Aiden Thomas and Vanessa Veselka. In addition, Lit Hub released the 5 under 35 list from the National Book Foundation today, and two of those authors will be appearing at the Festival.
The National Book Foundation will announce five finalists in each category will be announced on October 6. Stay tuned for more details, coming soon, about a special National Book Foundation Presents event at this year’s virtual Portland Book Festival; and save the date for this year’s virtual National Book Award ceremony on November 18, 2020.
Young People’s Literature
Evette Dionne, Lifting as We Climb: Black Women’s Battle for the Ballot Box
Viking Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House
Aiden Thomas, Cemetery Boys
Swoon Reads / Macmillan Publishers
Nonfiction
Jill Lepore, If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future
Liveright / W. W. Norton & Company
Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
Random House / Penguin Random House
(Book-inclusive ticketed event)
Poetry
Natalie Diaz, Postcolonial Love Poem
Graywolf Press
Fiction
Rumaan Alam, Leave the World Behind
Ecco / HarperCollins Publishers
Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half
Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House
Megha Majumdar, A Burning
Alfred A. Knopf / Penguin Random House
(Listen to an interview with Megha Majumdar on our ‘Long Distance’ podcast).
Lydia Millet, A Children’s Bible
W. W. Norton & Company
Vanessa Veselka, The Great Offshore Grounds
Alfred A. Knopf / Penguin Random House
Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown
Pantheon Books / Penguin Random House
From 5 Under 35
Raven Leilani, Luster
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
(Listen to an interview with Raven Leilani on our ‘Long Distance’ podcast).
C Pam Zhang, How Much of These Hills Is Gold
Riverhead
