The finalists for this year’s National Book Awards have been announced.
2020 Finalists for Fiction
- Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam
- A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet
- The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
- Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
- Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
2020 Finalists for Nonfiction
- The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by Les Payne & Tamara Payne
- Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory by Claudio Saunt
- My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland
- The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
- How To Make a Slave and Other Essays by Jerald Walker
2020 Finalists for Young People’s Literature
- King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callender
- We Are Not Free by Traci Chee
- Every Body Looking by Candice Iloh
- When Stars Are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson & Omar Mohamed
- The Way Back by Gavriel Savit
2020 Finalists for Translated Literature
- High as the Waters Rise by Anja Kampmann (translated by Anne Posten)
- The Family Clause by Jonas Hassen (translated by Khemiri Alice Menzies)
- Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri (translated by Morgan Giles)
- The Bitch by Pilar Quintana (translated by Lisa Dillman)
- Minor Detail by Adania Shibli (translated by Elisabeth Jaquette)
2020 Finalists for Poetry
- A Treatise on Stars by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
- Fantasia for the Man in Blue by Tommye Blount
- DMZ Colony by Don Mee Choi
- Borderland Apocrypha by Anthony Cody
- Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz
2020 5 Under 35 Honorees
- Bestiary by K-Ming Chang
- Halsey Street by Naima Coster
- Luster by Raven Leilani
- A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza
- How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang
