2013 National Book Award Finalists Announced

I'm almost strictly a nonfiction guy, yet the only book I was interested in this year was David Levithan's YA novel "Two Boys Kissing." While it failed to make the cut, I'm still glad the National Book Foundation released the long list and brought it to my attention. Which nominee are you rooting for?

NONFICTION

FINALISTS:

Jill Lepore, Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)

Wendy Lower, Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

George Packer, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 (W.W. Norton & Company)

Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief
(Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)

LONGLIST:

- T.D. Allman, Finding Florida: The True Story of the Sunshine State (Atlantic Monthly Press)
- Gretel Ehrlich, Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami (Pantheon Book/Random House)
- Scott C. Johnson, The Wolf and the Watchman: A Father, a Son, and the CIA (W.W. Norton & Company)
- James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865
(W.W. Norton & Company)
- Terry Teachout, Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington (Gotham Books)

YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE

FINALISTS:

Kathi Appelt, The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp
(Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster)

Cynthia Kadohata, The Thing About Luck (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster)

Tom McNeal, Far Far Away (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)

Meg Rosoff, Picture Me Gone (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Group USA)

Gene Luen Yang, Boxers & Saints (First Second/Macmillan)

LONGLIST:

- Kate DiCamillo, Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures (Candlewick Press)
- Lisa Graff, A Tangle of Knots (Philomel, A division of Penguin Group USA)
- Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic)
- David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing (Knopf Books for Young Readers/Random House)
- Anne Ursu, The Real Boy (Walden Pond Press/an Imprint HarperCollinsPublishers)

JUDGES:

Deb Caletti, Cecil Castellucci, Peter Glassman, E. Lockhart, Lisa Von Drasek

See fiction and poetry HERE.