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A mordant, linguistically deft historical novel about the ambiguities of the Jewish-American experience, presenting ideas and disputes as volatile as its tightly-wound plot.
Finalists
Monkey Boy, by Francisco Goldman (Grove Press)
Palmares, by Gayl Jones (Beacon Press)
Drama
A funny, poignant play that deftly transposes “Hamlet” to a family barbecue in the American South to grapple with questions of identity, kinship, responsibility, and honesty.
Finalists
Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord, by Kristina Wong
Selling Kabul, by Sylvia Khoury
History
Covered with Night, by Nicole Eustace (Liveright/Norton)
A gripping account of Indigenous justice in early America, and how the aftermath of a settler’s murder of a Native American man led to the oldest continuously recognized treaty in the United States.
Cuba: An American History, by Ada Ferrer (Scribner)
An original and compelling history, spanning five centuries, of the island that became an obsession for many presidents and policy makers, transforming how we think about the U.S. in Latin America, and Cuba in American society.
Finalists:
Biography
A searing first-person illustrated account of an artist’s life during the 1950s and 1960s in an unreconstructed corner of the deep South–an account of abuse, endurance, imagination, and aesthetic transformation.
Finalists
Pessoa: A Biography, by Richard Zenith (Liveright/Norton)
Poetry
frank: sonnets, by Diane Seuss (Graywolf Press)
A virtuosic collection that inventively expands the sonnet form to confront the messy contradictions of contemporary America, including the beauty and the difficulty of working-class life in the Rust Belt.
Finalists
Refractive Africa: Ballet of the Forgotten, by Will Alexander (New Directions)
Yellow Rain, by Mai Der Vang (Graywolf Press)
General Nonfiction
Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City, by Andrea Elliott (Random House)
An affecting, deeply reported account of a girl who comes of age during New York City’s homeless crisis–a portrait of resilience amid institutional failure that successfully merges literary narrative with policy analysis.
Finalists
The Family Roe: An American Story, by Joshua Prager (W. W. Norton & Company)
Shelf Life 