2011 National Book Award Winners & Finalists

Learn more about the National Book Awards here.

FICTION

WINNER: Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones
(Bloomsbury USA)

FINALISTS:
Andrew Krivak, The Sojourn
(Bellevue Literary Press) – Interview

Téa Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife
(Random House)

Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic
(Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House) – Interview

Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision
(Lookout Books, an imprint of the Department of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington) – Interview

Fiction Judges: Deirdre McNamer (Panel Chair), Jerome Charyn,
John Crowley, Victor LaValle, Yiyun Li

NONFICTION

WINNER: Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
(W. W. Norton & Company) – Interview

FINALISTS:
Deborah Baker, The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism
(Graywolf Press) – Interview

Mary Gabriel, Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution
(Little, Brown and Company) – Interview

Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
(Viking Press, an imprint of Penguin Group USA) – Interview

Lauren Redniss, Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout
(It Books, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers) – Interview

Nonfiction Judges: Alice Kaplan (Panel Chair), Yunte Huang,
Jill Lepore, Barbara Savage

POETRY

WINNER: Nikky Finney, Head Off & Split
(TriQuarterly, an imprint of Northwestern University Press) – Interview

FINALISTS:

Yusef Komunyakaa, The Chameleon Couch
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Carl Phillips, Double Shadow
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux) – Interview

Adrienne Rich, Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010
(W.W. Norton & Company) – Interview

Bruce Smith, Devotions
(University of Chicago Press) – Interview

Poetry Judges: Elizabeth Alexander (Panel Chair), Thomas Sayers Ellis,
Amy Gerstler, Kathleen Graber, Roberto Tejada

YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE

WINNER: Thanhha Lai, Inside Out & Back Again
(Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers) – Interview

FINALISTS:
Franny Billingsley, Chime
(Dial Books, an imprint of Penguin Group USA, Inc. )

Debby Dahl Edwardson, My Name Is Not Easy
(Marshall Cavendish)

Albert Marrin, Flesh & Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and Its Legacy
(Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books) – Interview

Gary D. Schmidt, Okay for Now
(Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) – Interview

Young People’s Literature Judges: Marc Aronson (Panel Chair),
Ann Brashares, Matt de la Peña, Nikki Grimes, Will Weaver