The National Book Foundation unveiled the longlist for its National Book Award for nonfiction, with 10 authors competing for the literary prize.
Cristina Rivera Garza was nominated for Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice, her memoir about the 1980 murder of her sister. Two other memoirs made the cut: Viet Thanh Nguyen's A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial and Raja Shehadeh’s We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir.
John Vaillant made the longlist for Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World, as did Donovan X. Ramsey for When Crack Was King: A People's History of a Misunderstood Era, Christina Sharpe for Ordinary Notes, and Ned Blackhawk for The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History.
Jonathan Eig was nominated for his biography King: A Life, along with Prudence Peiffer for The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever and Kidada E. Williams for I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction.
The judges for this year’s prize are Hanif Abdurraqib, Ada Ferrer, James Fugate, Sarah Schulman, and Sonia Shah. The shortlist for the award will be unveiled on Oct. 3, with the winner announced at the National Book Awards ceremony in New York on Nov. 15.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
