The longlists for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize have been unveiled, with Emily St. John Mandel, Ada Limón, and Clint Smith among the nominees for the annual literary awards.
Mandel made the fiction longlist for Sea of Tranquility, her sixth novel, which a critic for Kirkus called “exciting to read, relevant, and satisfying.” Amor Towles was nominated for The Lincoln Highway, along with Xochitl Gonzalez for Olga Dies Dreaming and Stephen Graham Jones for My Heart Is a Chainsaw.
The other fiction books to make the shortlist were Kelly Barnhill’s When Women Were Dragons; Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild-Built; Myriam J. A. Chancy’s What Storm, What Thunder; Carley Moore’s Panpocalypse; Iván Monalisa Ojeda’s Las Biuty Queens; Vaishnavi Patel’s Kaikeyi; John Elizabeth Stintzi’s My Volcano; and Nghi Vo’s Siren Queen.
In the nonfiction category, which this year includes poetry, incoming U.S. Poet Laureate Limón made the longlist for The Hurting Kind, along with fellow poets John Keene for Punks and Solmaz Sharif for Customs.
Smith was nominated for his National Book Critics Circle Award–winning How the Word Is Passed, as was Andrea Elliott for Invisible Child, which won the Pulitzer Prize.
Also nominated in nonfiction were Elizabeth Alexander for The Trayvon Generation; John Paul Brammer for ¡Hola Papi!; Emily Maloney for Cost of Living; Rajiv Mohabir for Antiman; Mickey Rowe for Fearlessly Different; Mayukh Sen for Taste Makers; and Daniel Sherrell for Warmth.
The Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize, formerly known as the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, was established in 2015 and is awarded in collaboration with the Brooklyn Eagles, a group of library supporters. The winners of this year’s awards will be announced in the fall.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
