Yesterday (Oct. 14) the National Book Foundation announced their shortlist for one of the biggest literary prizes in the US, and women are making a strong showing.
Of the 20 writers (down from the long-listed 40), 13 are women. In fiction and non-fiction, female writers outnumber the men 4-1. This is slightly up from last year’s list, which was more evenly split at 9 women and 11 men. See the full list below.
Fiction
- Karen E. Bender, Refund: Stories (Counterpoint Press)
- Angela Flournoy, The Turner House (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
- Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies (Riverhead Books/Penguin Random House)
- Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles: Stories (Random House)
- Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life (Doubleday/Penguin Random House)
Non-fiction
- Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau/Penguin Random House)
- Sally Mann, Hold Still (Little, Brown/Hachette Book Group)
- Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus (Atria/Simon & Schuster)
- Carla Power, If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran (Henry Holt and Company)
- Tracy K. Smith, Ordinary Light (Alfred A. Knopf)
Poetry
- Ross Gay, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press)
- Terrance Hayes, How to Be Drawn (Penguin/Penguin Random House)
- Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus (Alfred A. Knopf)
- Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions)
- Patrick Phillips, Elegy for a Broken Machine (Alfred A. Knopf)
Young people’s literature
- Ali Benjamin, The Thing About Jellyfish (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
- Laura Ruby, Bone Gap (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins Children’s Books)
- Steve Sheinkin, Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War (Roaring Brook Press/Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group)
- Neal Shusterman, Challenger Deep (HarperCollins Children’s Books)
- Noelle Stevenson, Nimona (HarperTeen/HarperCollins Children’s Books)
The winners will be announced on Nov. 18.
Image by Stan Wiechers on Flickr, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.