Lauren Groff, Jhumpa Lahiri among book award finalists

National Book Awards shortlist

NEW YORK, Oct 11, (AP): A story collection by Lauren Groff, an Italian novel translated by Jhumpa Lahiri and poetry by Terrance Hayes were among the finalists announced Wednesday for the National Book Awards.

Judges selected by the National Book Foundation chose five nominees in each of five categories fiction, nonfiction, poetry, young people’s literature and translation - narrowed from longlists of 10 authors that came out last month. Winners will be revealed Nov 14 during a dinner ceremony in Manhattan, when honorary awards will be given to Isabel Allende and to Doron Weber of the Sloan Foundation.

Groff, a fiction finalist in 2015 for the novel “Fates and Furies,” was nominated Wednesday for “Florida.” Others in fiction include Jamal Brinkley for his debut book of stories “A Lucky Man,” Brandon Hobson for “Where the Dead Sit Talking,” Rebecca Makkai for “The Great Believers” and Sigrid Nunez for “The Friend.” In a year when few literary works had commercial success, two of the most talked about novels appeared on the longlist, but not in the final five: Tommy Orange’s debut novel “There There” and Tayari Jones’ “An American Marriage,” which Oprah Winfrey selected for her book club.

Category

Lahiri, a Pulitzer Prize winner and former National Book Award fiction finalist, is among the nominees in the newly created translation category. She was cited for her work on Domenico Starnone’s “Trick.” Others chosen were Tina Kover, who translated Negar Djavadi’s “Disoriental” from the French; Martin Aitken, who translated Hanne Orstavik’s “Love” from the Norwegian; Margaret Mitsutani, who translated Yoko Tawada’s “The Emissary” from the Japanese; and Jennifer Croft, who worked on the English edition of the acclaimed Polish author Olga Tokarczuk’s “Flights.”

In nonfiction, books touched upon everything from American Indians in the 18th century to poverty and capitalism in the country today. The nominees are Colin G. Calloway for “The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation,” Victoria Johnson for “American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic,” Sarah Smarsh’s “Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth,” Jeffrey C. Stewart for “The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke,” and Adam Winkler for “We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights.”

Hayes, a National Book Award winner in 2010 for “Lighthead,” is in the poetry category this year for “American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin.” Other finalists are Pulitzer winner Rae Armantrout for “Wobble,” Diana Khoi Nguyen for “Ghost Of,” Justin Phillip Reed for “Indecency” and Jenny Xie for “Eye Level.”

In young people’s literature, finalists drew upon various narrative forms, from poetry to pictures, from fiction to nonfiction. Elizabeth Acevedo was a nominee for her novel in verse “The Poet X,” the story of a Dominican teen and her immersion in slam poetry. M. T. Anderson, a National Book Award winner in 2006 for “The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party,” collaborated with Eugene Yelchin on the illustrated “The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge.” Other finalists were Leslie Connor for “The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle,” Christopher Paul Curtis for “The Journey of Little Charlie” and Jarrett J. Krosoczka for his graphic memoir “Hey, Kiddo.”

Awards judges, who include writers, critics and other members of the literary community, chose from more than 1,600 books submitted by publishers. Winners in the competitive categories each receive $10,000. In translation, the prize money is divided between the author and translator.

Mitch Albom’s books are about faith and salvation, forgiveness and second chances.

What they most certainly are not about, according to the author, is a certain five-letter word.

“I really don’t think my books are about death,” Albom told The Associated Press. “And I don’t think they’re depressing. I think they’re the opposite.”

Many of Albom’s works do touch on the afterlife, however, including his latest, “The Next Person You Meet in Heaven,” which comes out on Tuesday and marks the novelist’s first sequel. The new book revisits the stories of Eddie the amusement park maintenance man and Annie, the young girl whose life he saves while losing his own. Eddie and Annie appeared in 2003’s “The Five People You Meet in Heaven.”

That first foray into fiction followed the mega-successful “Tuesdays with Morrie,” which chronicled the Detroit sports columnist’s weekly meetings with his dying mentor and transformed Albom from an award-winning Detroit sports columnist into a best-selling author.

Lesson

“I think all my books at some point you can kind of draw a line somewhere with a slide rule to ‘Tuesdays with Morrie,’” Albom said. “You know, there’s some lesson that happened, and that’s OK. That was a seminal moment in my life.”

Another was his relationship with Chika, a Haitian girl with a terminal brain tumor whom Albom met through the orphanage in Port-au-Prince that he set up following the earthquake in 2010. Albom brought Chika to live with him and his wife in Michigan, and, although she was given five months to live, the girl Albom described as a “fighter” lasted nearly two years before succumbing to her illness.

“The Next Person You Meet in Heaven” is dedicated to Chika, and Albom acknowledges that a passage in which Annie suffers a tragedy involving a small child represents “a little bit of projection, I guess, on my part.”

“(Chika) permeated the air around that book,” Albom said during an interview at the S.A.Y. Detroit Play Center, a facility where young people can come and learn, eat and/or play music and sports after school. It’s one of Albom’s many charitable endeavors in his hometown and beyond, and it’s also one of the ways he spends his time when not writing best-selling novels and columns for the Detroit Free Press. Albom also hosts a local radio show and a national sports podcast.

Next up is a return to non-fiction with a look at “Chika and Haiti and the kids and how you create a family in your 50s,” said Albom, who is writing the book now and expects it to come out next year. “It’s very cathartic for me to be writing that now.”

Now 60, Albom says he may need to pare down his lengthy list of activities if he wants to complete the books that are “noodling around” in his mind. The two activities he’ll never remove, Albom says, are the “book-writing and my kids in Haiti. There’s 47 kids there, and my goal is to live long enough to see them all collegeeducated,” he said.

Albom won’t get to see Chika with a diploma in hand, but readers can learn more about her - or at least the inspiration she provided - in the pages of a book written by the man who helped extend her life.