Great news! The author of Freshwater, Akwaeke Emezi is one of the 2019 National Book Award finalists. The award rewards works in fiction, non-fiction, young people’s literature, poetry, and the recently introduced translated literature category.
Below is the full list of finalists in three different categories.
Young Adults Literature
Akwaeke Emezi, “Pet”
Source: Akwaeke Emezi’s Instagram
Book description
There are no monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. Jam and her best friend, Redemption, have grown up with this lesson all their life. But when Jam meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colors and claws, who emerges from one of her mother’s paintings and a drop of Jam’s blood, she must reconsider what she’s been told. Pet has come to hunt a monster, and the shadow of something grim lurks in Redemption’s house. Jam must fight not only to protect her best friend, but also to uncover the truth, and the answer to the question–How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?
Fiction
Susan Choi, “Trust Exercise”
Kali Fajardo-Anstine, “Sabrina & Corina: Stories”
Marlon James, “Black Leopard, Red Wolf”
Laila Lalami, “The Other Americans”
Julia Phillips, “Disappearing Earth”
Nonfiction
Sarah M. Broom, “The Yellow House”
Tressie McMillan Cottom, “Thick: And Other Essays”
Carolyn Forché, “What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance”
David Treuer, “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present”
Albert Woodfox with Leslie George, “Solitary”
Winners will be announced on the 20th of November at an awards ceremony in New York City
Congratulations!
