The National Book Awards unveiled the longlist in its nonfiction category, with 10 books in the running for the American literary prize.
Omar El Akkad made the longlist for One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, his first work of nonfiction. Yiyun Li was nominated for her second memoir, Things in Nature Merely Grow.
Caleb Gayle was longlisted for Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State, alongside Julia Ioffe for Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, From Revolution to Autocracy; Fatemeh Jamalpour and Nilo Tabrizy for For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran’s Women-Led Uprising; and Lana Lin for The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam.
Ben Ratliff was nominated for Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening, as were Claudia Rowe for Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care, Jordan Thomas for When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World, and Helen Whybrow for The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life.
Previous winners of the National Book Award for Nonfiction include Barry Lopez for Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape, Paul Monette for Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, and Imani Perry for South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon To Understand the Soul of a Nation.
The finalists for this year’s prize will be announced on October 7, with the winner revealed at a ceremony in New York on November 19.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
