Seabrookers are readers and it is likely many of you have read or at least heard of the books that made this year’s National Book Award shortlist. You can check the list below to see if any of your 2023 favorites made the cut.
In 1950, the National Book Awards were established to celebrate the best writing in America. Since 1989, they have been overseen by the National Book Foundation (NBF), a nonprofit organization whose mission is “to celebrate the best literature in America, expand its audience, and ensure that books have a prominent place in American culture.” The categories include Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature.
2023 Fiction Winner
Blackouts by Justin Torres
Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly but who has haunted the edges of his life: Juan Gay. Playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized, Juan has a project to pass along, one built around a true artifact of a book and its devastating history.
2023 Nonfiction Winner
The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk
The most enduring feature of U.S. history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. This long practice of ignoring Indigenous history is changing, however, with a new generation of scholars insists that any full American history address the struggle, survival, and resurgence of American Indian nations.
2023 Poetry Winner
from unincorporated territory [amot] by Craig Santos Perez
2023 Translated Literature Winner
The Words That Remain by Stenio Gardel, Bruna Dantas Lobato
2023 Young People’s Literature Winner
A First Time for Everything by Dan Santat
To see the Tidelines post in which the NBA shortlist was announced earlier this fall, click here.
–Tidelines Editors
(Image credit: National Book Award, CMPL)