2024 National Book Awards Primer
Hopes for this year's Fiction longlist and reflecting on my last 5 years reading the prize
Hi, book friends.
We’ve made it to NBA season.
No, not basketball. 😉 The National Book Awards! The 2024 NBA longlists will be announced this week, and I couldn’t be more excited. This will be my sixth year (!) reading through the Fiction list.
In celebration, this week’s newsletter is all about the NBAs: a quick refresher on how they work, reflections on all these years of reading the prize, and my hopes and dreams for this year’s list.
Before I dive in: I’m going to write in a more longform style than usual this week, which makes it a good candidate for the Substack app’s text-to-speech feature, if you prefer to listen to it. Substack recently upgraded the feature from a Siri-type voice to a scary-good, probably-AI, much more lifelike voice, so check it out if you haven’t yet.
OK, let’s do it!
Quick refresher: What are the National Book Awards and how do they work?
The National Book Awards are a set of five annual literary prizes awarded by the National Book Foundation to “celebrate the best writing in the United States.” They’ve been awarded each year since 1950 — so this is the 75th year. 🎉
The five categories are Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature. Each category has its own committee, which curates a 10-book longlist for that category, then narrows it down to five finalists, and then chooses a winner. Finalists get $1,000, and each category’s winner gets $10,000.
The 2024 longlists will all be announced this week. We get Young People’s Literature and Translated Literature tomorrow, Poetry and Nonfiction on Thursday, and Fiction on Friday. (It’s usually done Wednesday through Friday; I think they just wanted to avoid making announcements on 9/11 this year.) We’ll learn who the finalists are on Tuesday, October 1, and the award ceremony is Wednesday, November 20 at 8 PM ET. You can register to watch it online for free here.
To be eligible, books must have been published in the US between December 1 of last year and November 30 of this year — which means that yes, there will likely be some nominees that aren’t published quite yet. Fall is the publishing industry’s biggest season, so this eligibility period makes it possible for all the publishers’ most anticipated releases to be included. Authors also need to either be US citizens or “maintain their primary, long-term home in the United States, US territories, or Tribal lands, regardless of immigration status” as of December 1 of last year.
That’s the gist of it, but there are more nuanced rules shared here, if you’re curious.
Reflections: Reading the past 5 years’ Fiction longlists
I love this prize, and I have loved reading it ever since I really committed myself to it back in 2019. In fact, that was my all-time favorite NBA longlist so far. Maybe it’s because it was my first one, but I don’t think so. Just look at it:
Winner: Trust Exercise by Susan Choi (people either loved this or hated it; I loved it)
Finalists: Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips, Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James, and The Other Americans by Laila Lalami
Other nominees: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The Need by Helen Philips, and Black Light by Kimberly King Parsons
Is that not an absolutely stacked list? Every single one of those books was either a highly anticipated release and a blockbuster out of the gate, or won over everyone’s hearts once it made the list. I’d be able to list off at least six or seven of these books from memory if you got me talking about the prize, and I remember reading each of them vividly. (Coincidentally, I think 2019 was the best Booker Prize longlist I’ve ever read, too. Take us back!!)
The subsequent prize years haven’t hit quite as hard, but there’s no denying that the NBA has either included or introduced me to many other favorites. Books like:
2020: Interior Chinatown, Leave the World Behind, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, Shuggie Bain, A Burning
2021: Hell of a Book, The Prophets, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, Matrix
2022: All This Could Be Different, When We Were Sisters
2023: Chain-Gang All-Stars, Blackouts
Another reason I love the NBA is because it’s historically been enticing and accessible for lots of readers. I love the Booker Prize and the Women’s Prize, but they tend to feature books that fall farther down the literary and cerebral spectrum, which can make them feel intimidating for book prize novices. The NBA has a wide appeal, and I’ve met so many Bookstagram friends by way of NBA discourse (although to be fair, that’s true of the Booker and Women’s Prize too).
Plus, in the last two years (and hopefully again this year 🤞🏼), I’ve had the honor to be invited to the award ceremony’s after-party in NYC. It’s a book nerd’s ultimate red carpet. Everywhere you turn, there’s another literary superstar: Jesmyn Ward! Carmen Maria Machado! Akwaeke Emezi! And the list goes on. I was 8 weeks pregnant and extremely sick last year, but I still wouldn’t have missed it for anything. My husband took time off work to drive me down, the prescription nausea medication I’d gotten two days before kept me from spending the whole night in the bathroom, and my lovely friends Bernie, JC, and Hunter kept me on my feet.
I hope it’s clear by now that this is one of my favorite prizes. But the past five years have also taught me a lot about what my ideal longlist looks like. In short, I’m still chasing the high of 2019. 😆 Which brings me to…
Looking ahead: Hopes for the 2024 longlist
You might have noticed that when I listed my favorite books from the last four years above, the lists got shorter and shorter for each year. So what’s going on? Are books getting worse?
That’s definitely not it. But many of us have noticed that the judging panels seem to have become increasingly reluctant to nominate buzzy books and big-name authors. Last year — the second year in a row with an underwhelming longlist — it hit a boiling point among many of my Bookstagram friends. Nobody correctly predicted anything, and authors that felt like sure bets were passed over entirely. (Jesmy Ward, 2-time winner? Lauren Groff, 3-time finalist? Nowhere to be seen.) Instead, there were a ton of books nobody had heard about before. That’s not inherently bad; we ALL want the prize to recognize debut authors and under-the-radar novels. But the prize’s mission is to recognize the best writing in the United States. And you cannot do that without nominating at least a few literary giants — they’re giants for a reason.
Plus, as Traci of The Stacks said in her IG Stories last year, it’s so much more fun to watch a matchup of titans vs dark horses. Recognizing some of the competitors and cheering for your favorites brings people in, and discovering new darlings keeps people engaged. You have to have both.
I’d also add that it’s no fun when the list 100% unpredictable. For those of us who follow book prizes, a major part of the discourse is speculation about what will be included. When that exercise feels fruitless, it’s just not as fun.
So this year, my hope is that the list will rediscover its balance. The judging panel has a lot of promise — Lauren Groff is the chair, for Pete’s sake. And she’s brilliant … but she’s also famously “always a bridesmaid” with this prize, lol. If anyone is going to understand what we’re looking for, I hope it’s her.
Which brings me to the books I’d like to see on the list. Of course, it’s impossible to predict which dark horses will be nominated (that’s the point, after all). But I can tell you which buzzy books I’ve read this year that I would love to root for. They include, in no particular order:
James by Percival Everett
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
The Morningside by Téa Obreht
The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James
We Were the Universe by Kimberly King Parsons
Small Rain by Garth Greenwell (actually I’m reading this now)
The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft (who happens to be the chair of the judging panel for translated literature! Also in 2022, Bernie and I stood behind her in the coat check line after the NBA Awards after party, and she is truly a lovely human)
And just a handful of buzzy books on my TBR that I would be delighted to read for this prize:
Ours by Phillip B Williams
The American Daughters by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez
Exhibit by R. O. Kwon
Housemates by Emma Copley Eisenberg
Hombrecito by Santiago Jose Sanchez
Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak (on my TBR this month)
Madwoman by Chelsea Bieker
Colored Television by Danzy Senna
Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
Entitlement by Rumaan Alam
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (also on my TBR this month)
The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich (I’m especially rooting for this one after the New York Times unforgivably left Erdrich off of their best books of the century list)
Finally, here are some things I’d love to find in the judges’ darkhorse picks:
Great short stories. I haven’t read any short story collections yet this year, but there’s always a few on the NBA longlist, so I’ll be fixing that soon. I’m hoping for some weird short stories and ones that translate well to audiobooks.
Magic. You know I’m a sucker for any book with magic in it, no matter how slight.
Something plotty. Right now I’m craving that rare type of literary fiction that’s also fast-paced and gripping.
Big love for indie presses. The big five publishers don’t need help rising to the top of the media mountain. Tin House and Grove Atlantic are two of my favorites.
It think that’s it! As always, thanks for sharing your corner of the internet with me! It would mean a lot if you were to take a second to like this post. I’d love to hear your thoughts and which books you’re hoping to see on this year’s longlist in the comments, too.
Finally, if you like this newsletter, please send a few friends my way.
See you on Instagram!
— Deedi (she/her)
I think I’ll try to read more NBA picks this year. I hope Lauren picks some good ones, hearing her talk about Martyr and looking for writing that’s real and vulnerable makes me hopeful.
You are inspiring me to read the list !