By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
See also:
The UN’s Melissa Fleming: A ‘Summit of the Future’ and IPA’s Congress
US National Book Award 2024 Longlists: Young People’s Books
US National Book Award 2024 Longlists: Translated Literature
A Third of Five Categories’ 2024 Longlists
Seeming to have come newly into its own during moments of unusually high political awareness in the States, nonfiction is moving quickly on the American election-season terrain again, something pointed out by Melissa Fleming, the United Nations’ under-secretary-general for global communications, in her recent interview with Publishing Perspectives. Fleming offers a strong nonfiction reading list in that story, ahead of her upcoming keynote address at the 34th International Publishers Congress from the International Publishers Association (IPA) at Guadalajara, a program presented by Mexico’s CANIEM and the Association of American Publishers.
The National Book Foundation‘s 10-title longlist in nonfiction this year includes the work of writers some of whom have been MacArthur, Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, and Knight Science Journalism Program Fellows.
These longlisted authors have been previously honored by the Booker Prize, the Kirkus Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Whiting Award, and the Pulitzer. Their work has appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s Bazaar, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the New York Times, The Paris Review, Quanta Magazine, The Rumpus, and Scientific American, among others.
In short, in this 75th year of the National Book Awards regime, the Nonfiction group may comprise the most accomplished writers’ corps of all five categories.
As many of our world publishing industry readers know as they prepare to meet at Frankfurter Buchmesse (October 16 to 20), the realm of nonfiction has become conspicuously sophisticated and competitive, having been politically stress-tested in a growing archipelago of international book markets facing autocratic dynamics. Such competitions as the Baillie-Gifford Prize for Nonfiction, the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, and the Cundill History Prize have encouraged publishers and writers to explore the close proximity that accessible and yet intelligently serious nonfiction can inhabit in the hands of a talented writer.
Publishers submitted a handsome total 671 books for consideration in the 2024 National Book Award for Nonfiction, running right past last year’s 638 entries. As with the other four categories and lifetime-achievement awards this year, the nonfiction winners will be named and honored on November 20 at Cipriani Wall Street in the program’s 75th annual fundraising ceremony.
This year’s jurors in nonfiction are Brenda J. Child, Anand Giridharadas, Tressie McMillan Cottom (chair), Timothy Morton, and Arvin Ramgoolam.
The 2024 Nonfiction Longlist
As always, the jury’s decisions are made independently of the National Book Foundation staff and board of directors and deliberations are strictly confidential.
More related reading:
US 2024 Distinguished Contribution Medalist: Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher Paul Coates Wins the US 2024 Literarian Award
US National Book Award: Opening to Non-US Citizens
The US National Book Foundation Issues US$350,000 in Hawthornden Grants
More from Publishing Perspectives on the National Book Awards in the United States is here and more on the huge field of international book awards and prizes is here. More from us on translation and translators is here, more on international publishing rights is here, and more on the United States’ market is here.