NEW YORK (AP) 鈥� A comprehensive new biography of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, a memoir on family by the prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen and an exploration of the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s are among 10 books on the nonfiction longlist of the National Book Awards.
The National Book Foundation, which presents the awards, also released its poetry longlist Thursday, a day after announcing 10 nominees each in the categories of young people's literature and books in translation. Judges will next month reduce each list to five finalists, with the winners to be announced during a Manhattan dinner ceremony on Nov. 15. The foundation will unveil the fiction longlist on Friday.
Jonathan Eig's 鈥淜ing: A Life" is a nonfiction nominee, along with Nguyen's 鈥淎 Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial,鈥� Donovan X. Ramsey's 鈥淲hen Crack Was King: A People鈥檚 History of a Misunderstood Era,鈥� Ned Blackhawk's 鈥淭he Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History鈥� and Prudence Peiffer's 鈥淭he Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever.鈥�
The other nonfiction works on the longlist are Cristina Rivera Garza's 鈥淟iliana鈥檚 Invincible Summer: A Sister鈥檚 Search for Justice,鈥� Christina Sharpe's 鈥淥rdinary Notes,鈥� Raja Shehadeh's 鈥淲e Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir,鈥� John Vaillant's 鈥淔ire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World鈥� and Kidada E. Williams' 鈥淚 Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction.鈥�
In poetry, former National Book Award finalist Monica Youn is a nominee for 鈥淔rom, From,鈥� Utah poet laureate Paisley Rekdal was cited for 鈥淲est: A Translation鈥� and Craig Santos Perez for the latest in his series on the indigenous Chamoru people, 鈥渇rom unincorporated territory (氓mot)."
Others on the poetry longlist are John Lee Clark's 鈥淗ow to Communicate,鈥� Oliver de la Paz's 鈥淭he Diaspora Sonnets,鈥� Annelyse Gelman's 鈥淰exations,鈥� Jos茅 Olivarez's 鈥淧romises of Gold,鈥� Brandon Som's 鈥淭ripas,鈥� Charif Shanahan's 鈥淭race Evidence鈥� and Evie Shockley's 鈥渟uddenly we.鈥�
Hillel Italie, The Associated Press