The National Book Foundation has announced the twenty-five Finalists for the 2022 National Book Awards for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature.
The NBA ceremony is planned as “in-person” event for the first time in three years, notes Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly senior writer. The November 16 awards gala at the Cipriani Wall Street venue in Manhattan (the home of the New York Stock Exchange) can also be seen on YouTube, Facebook, and the Foundation’s website at nationalbook.org/awards.
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Publishers submitted a total of 1,772 books for this year’s National Book Awards, Albanese tells me.
Finalists in nonfiction include The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir, by Ingrid Rojas Contreras, and His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice, by Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa.
Fiction finalists include Jamil Jan Kochai, for his story collection, The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories, concerning characters of the Afghan diaspora living in the United States and modern-day Afghanistan, and Sarah Thankam Mathews’s debut novel All This Could Be Different, the story of a young queer immigrant.
Tracie D. Hall, Executive Director of the American Library Association (ALA) will receive the 2022 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.
“This is the second year in a row a librarian has won the honor,” says Albanese. “Congratulations to Tracie and to the National Book Foundation for keeping the library community in its focus at a time when libraries need support.”