Julia Phillips’ debut novel Disappearing Earth was a finalist for last year’s National Book Award. But Phillips explains that her first book was actually a project she made at her local public library as a child, through a four-week “make your own book” course for elementary…
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Margaret Wilkerson Sexton’s debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, was longlisted for the National Book Award in fiction in 2017. This year, she returns with a second novel, The Revisioners, which, like her first, is set in the South, where she’s from. She never expected the…
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The National Book Awards finalists have been announced—how many can you read before the winners are announced on November 20? Five finalists have been chosen in each of five categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people's literature. Discover…
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Sarah Smarsh, the first-time author of Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth, began her book in 2002 while a senior at the University of Kansas, researching her family’s chaotic history. Sixteen years later, it was a finalist for…
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