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CONTACT: Ellen Ryder Communications
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Winners To Be Announced at November 20th Benefit Ceremony Hosted by Steve Martin;

Philip Roth Will Receive Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters

NEW YORK, NY (October 16, 2002) - As a group, the authors of the 20 books named Finalists for the 2002 National Book Awards have called upon a fascinating range of issues, ideas, and characters to tell their stories. Individually, the 12 women and eight men - several of whom have other careers in addition to their "writing lives" - offer equally compelling stories of their own.

At the National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner on Wednesday, November 20, at 6:30 p.m. at the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel in midtown Manhattan, these authors will be honored and judges will announce the Winners in each of the four categories. The evening will benefit the Awards' institutional sponsor, the National Book Foundation, which runs dozens of educational outreach programs throughout the year for readers and writers across the country.

Also that evening, the Board of Directors of the Foundation will confer its 2002 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters upon Philip Roth, who will deliver an address to an audience of 1,000 authors, editors, publishers, friends, and supporters of books and book publishing.

Actor and author Steve Martin will, for the fourth consecutive year, serve as Master of Ceremonies.

In making the Finalists announcement, Foundation Executive Director Neil Baldwin commented: "Each of these authors has created a work of exceptional merit that resonated in a distinctive way with the judging panels surveying the ever-changing and vast terrain of the American literary landscape." Baldwin also noted the strong number of entries submitted this year: 993 titles from 183 publishers and imprints.

Following is the list of the 2002 National Book Awards Finalists in Young People's Literature, Fiction, Poetry, and Nonfiction. For additional descriptions of the titles and author biographies, visit www.nationalbook.org, or call Ellen Ryder Communications at 212/226-6563.

Readings, discussions, and special events will take place during "National Book Awards Week (November 18-21), and summary information is included. For details, visit the Foundation's website or call 212/226-6563.

M.T. Anderson, Feed (Candlewick Press)
Nancy Farmer, The House of the Scorpion (A Richard Jackson Book/Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins Publishers)
Elizabeth Partridge, This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life & Songs of Woody Guthrie (Viking/Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers)
Jacqueline Woodson, Hush (G.P. Putnam's Sons/Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers)

Mark Costello, Big If (W.W. Norton & Company)
Julia Glass, Three Junes (Pantheon Books)
Adam Haslett, You Are Not a Stranger Here (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
Martha McPhee, Gorgeous Lies (Harcourt, Inc.)
Brad Watson, The Heaven of Mercury (W.W. Norton & Company)

Harryette Mullen, Sleeping with the Dictionary (University of California Press)
Sharon Olds, The Unswept Room (Alfred A. Knopf)
Alberto Ríos, The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body (Copper Canyon Press)
Ruth Stone, In the Next Galaxy (Copper Canyon Press)
Ellen Bryant Voigt, Shadow of Heaven (W.W. Norton & Company)

Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Alfred A. Knopf)
Devra Davis, When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution (Basic Books/Perseus Books Group)
Atul Gawande, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science (Metropolitan Books/
Henry Holt & Co.)
Elizabeth Gilbert, The Last American Man (Viking Penguin)
Steve Olson, Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes (Houghton Mifflin Company)
Page 4
2002 National Book Awards/October 16, 2002

M.T. Anderson, Feed (Candlewick Press)
Set in an unspecified time in the future - when it's as easy to go to the moon as to the mall - this satire explores the nature of consumerism and what it means to be a teenager in America. Feed tells the story of Titus - whose ability to read, write and think for himself has been nearly obliterated by the advertising-laden Internet "feed" implanted in his brain - and of his relationship with Violet, who challenges him to care about what's really going on in the world.

M.T. Anderson studied English literature at Harvard and Cambridge universities, and is currently on the faculty at Vermont College's MFA Program in Writing for Children. His previous young adult novels are Thirsty (1998) and Burger Wuss (1999). He has a strong interest in classical music, having published many classical music reviews and articles, as well as a biography titled Handel Who Knew What He Liked (2001). He lives in Boston.

Nancy Farmer, The House of the Scorpion (A Richard Jackson Book/Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
A futuristic adventure story about young Matteo Alacrán and his struggle to understand his own existence. Matteo is a clone, sharing identical DNA with the maniacal El Patrón, lord of a country called Opium. Terror and danger are constant companions where they live - a strip of poppy fields between the United States and what was once called Mexico.

Born in 1941, Nancy Farmer grew up in a hotel on the Arizona-Mexico border. She attended Reed College and was in the Peace Corps in Africa from 1963 to 1965. Her previous books include A Girl Named Disaster (a National Book Award Finalist in 1996), The Warm Place (1995), The Ear, the Eye and the Arm (1994), Do You Know Me (1993), and three picture books for young children. She lives with her husband in Menlo Park, California.

Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins Publishers)
Sixty new and collected poems for young people celebrating friends, family, and neighbors, and offering a glimpse of both the ordinary domestic life of people in the Middle East, as well as lives lived within the confines of a refugee camp, or in a bombed-out home, or with haunting memories of lost relatives.

Naomi Shihab Nye - the daughter of a Palestinian father and a German-American mother - grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio. She has devoted much of her work as a poet and anthologist to finding bridges between the work of writers and artists of the Middle East and North American readers. Her anthology, Flags of Childhood, brought together poets from all over the Middle East - Arab and Israeli. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and many awards for her books for younger readers, and has published four collections of poetry for adults. She lives in San Antonio.

Elizabeth Partridge, This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life & Songs of Woody Guthrie (Viking/Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers)
Illustrated with period photographs, letters, drawings, and other archival material, this biography of America's troubadour focuses on how his difficult childhood in Oklahoma and Texas, his travels during the Depression, and his friendships with union organizers and Dust Bowl migrant workers shaped and informed the more than 3,000 songs he wrote.

Growing up in Berkeley, California, in a large extended family, Elizabeth Partridge's childhood was filled with interaction with writers, painters, musicians, and photographers (including Dorothea Lange - a close friend of her father's). She studied Chinese medicine in England in the 1970s and began writing children's books in the 1990s. Her other books for young people include Restless Spirit: The Life and Work of Dorothea Lange (1998) and Oranges on Golden Mountain (2001). She and her husband live in Berkeley and are parents of two college-age sons. www.elizabethpartridge.com

Jacqueline Woodson, Hush (G.P. Putnam's Sons/Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers)
Evie (once named Toswiah) is this novel's narrator, telling her story in flashbacks as she struggles to reinvent herself and re-imagine her future. After her father testified against two fellow police officers in a murder case, she and her family enter a witness protection program, move to a strange new city, leave their "old" lives behind, and try to come to terms with their new identities.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, Jacqueline Woodson grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, and Brooklyn. A former drama therapist for runaway and homeless children, she is the author of a number of books for children, young adults, and adults, including Miracle's Boys, which won the Coretta Scott King Award. Her other titles include If You Come Softly (1998), I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This (1995), Lena (2000), and Autobiography of a Family Photo (1996). Her picture books include The Other Side (2001), Sweet, Sweet Memory (2001), We Had a Picnic This Sunday Past (1998), and Our Gracie Aunt (2002). Her video, "Among Good Christian People," a collaborative project with Katherine Saalfield, received an American Film Institute Award. She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook Retreat Center, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She lives in Brooklyn, and is currently working on a novel for adults, Grail, NY. www.jacquelinewoodson.com

Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Alfred A. Knopf)
In this, the 1,152-page third installment of Robert Caro's biography of the 36th president, Johnson's story is carried through his 12 years (1949-1960) in the United States Senate. Caro reveals how Johnson - in his ascent to the presidency - triumphed in the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done. And, in the telling, Caro also presents a primer on how legislative power really works in America.

A graduate of Princeton University, Robert A. Caro spent six years as an award-winning investigative reporter for Newsday and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. To research his three-volume The Years of Lyndon Johnson, he moved from his native New York City to Texas Hill Country then to Washington D.C. In 1975, he was a National Book Award Finalist for The Power Broker, about New York City's public works "czar" Robert Moses; and was a Finalist again in 1983 for The Path To Power - the first volume of his LBJ biography.

Devra Davis, When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution (Basic Books/Perseus Books Group)
The author, a leading public health expert, confronts both public triumphs and private failures in the battle against environmental pollution. She reports on the deadly London smog of 1952 (when deaths were falsely attributed to influenza); behind-the-scenes machinations by oil companies and auto manufacturers to keep lead in gasoline; and the pollution that killed many in her own family and forced others - survivors of the 1948 smog emergency in Donora, Pennsylvania - to live out their lives with damaged health.

Devra Davis's work as a leading epidemiologist and researcher on the environmental causes of breast cancer and chronic disease has made her an internationally known figure. She holds a PhD from the University of Chicago and an MPH from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. She is currently a Visiting Professor of Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and lives in Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.

Atul Gawande, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Co.)
A Boston surgeon recounts true cases of patients and doctors making critical choices when the science was ambiguous, information was limited, and the stakes were high. The author scrutinizes what happens when medicine comes face-to-face with the inexplicable.

A graduate of Harvard Medical School and a Rhodes Scholar, Atul Gawande is also a staff writer at The New Yorker covering science and medicine. The son of physicians, he is chief surgical resident at Boston's Brigham & Women's Hospital. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with his wife and three children.

Elizabeth Gilbert, The Last American Man (Viking Penguin)
Masculine identity in America - along with our various ingrained ideas about inventiveness, narcissism, isolation, and intimacy - are all explored in the course of unraveling the story of Eustace Conway, a self-made "throwback" who deserted suburbia's comforts at the age of 17 to make his way in the Appalachian Mountains, where he has lived off the land for the past 20 years.

Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of a short story collection, Pilgrims (1997), and a novel, Stern Men (2000). She works as a writer-at-large for GQ magazine, and her journalism has been published in Harper's Bazaar, Spin, and the New York Times Magazine. Her stories have appeared in Esquire, Story, and the Paris Review. She lives in New York City.

Steve Olson, Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes (Houghton Mifflin Company)
Literally traveling across four continents, Steve Olson physically and critically explored 150,000 years of human history. The veteran science journalist charts the African origins of modern humans, and, by following the migration of our human ancestors throughout the world, presents a genealogy of all humanity.

Steve Olson has worked for the National Academy of Sciences, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the Institute of Genomic Research. A science journalist with more than 20 years experience, he is the author of several other books, including Shaping the Future and Biotechnology, and has written for the Atlantic Monthly, Science, and many other magazines. He lives outside Washington, D.C.

Harryette Mullen, Sleeping with the Dictionary (University of California Press)
Inspired by acrostics, anagrams, and puns; a "collaboration" with Roget's Thesaurus and the American Heritage Dictionary; and her own reflections on the politics of language, Harryette Mullen's alphabetically arranged poems stir new perspectives on the words we use.

Born in Florence, Alabama, and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, Harryette Mullen is Associate Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Sleeping with the Dictionary is her fifth collection of poetry. She is also the author of Tree Tall Woman (1981), Trimmings (1991), S*PeRM**KT (1992), and Muse & Drudge (1995). A recipient of a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship from the Institute at the University of Rochester, and the Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative Poetry, she has taught in the Poets in the Schools Program in Texas, and serves on the faculty of Cave Canem, a workshop for African-American poets.

Sharon Olds, The Unswept Room (Alfred A. Knopf)
A new collection of poems from a distinguished poet, ranging from those erupting out of history and childhood, a new generation of children, the transformative power of marital love, and the shock when that love comes to an end.

Sharon Olds was born in San Francisco and educated at Stanford University and Columbia University, where she earned her PhD. Her books are Satan Says (1980), The Dead and the Living (1984), The Gold Cell (1991), The Wellspring (1995), The Father (1992), and Blood, Tin, Straw. (1999). Her poems appear frequently in The New Yorker and other magazines. She was the New York State Poet Laureate from 1998 to 2000. She teaches at New York University and the NYU Workshop Program at Goldwater Hospital for the severely physically disabled on Roosevelt Island.

Alberto Ríos, The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body (Copper Canyon Press)
Set in a town that straddles the American/Mexican border, these poems are lyric adventures, crossing boundaries as they move between cultures, languages, and sensibilities. Drawing upon fable, parable, and family legend, Alberto Ríos utilizes the imagination of childhood to reveal essential relationships.

Alberto Ríos was born in Nogales, Arizona, on the Mexican border, in 1952. He studied at the University of Arizona, where he received a MFA in Creative Writing. His books include Capirotada: A Nogales Memoir (1999); The Curtain of Trees: Stories (1999); Pig Cookies and Other Stories (1995); Teodora Luna's Two Kisses: Poems (1990); The Lime Orchard Woman: Poems (1988); Five Indiscretions: A Book of Poems (1985); The Iguana Killer: Twelve Stories of the Heart (1984), and Whispering to Fool the Wind: Poems (1982). His poetry has been set to music in a cantata by James DeMars called "Toto's Say," and was also featured in the documentary Birthwrite: Growing Up Hispanic. Since 1982, he has taught at Arizona State University. He lives in Chandler, Arizona

Ruth Stone, In the Next Galaxy (Copper Canyon Press)
For her eighth volume of poetry, Ruth Stone, an octogenarian Vermonter, writes from the vantage point of an aging and impoverished woman, and in doing so, reveals a fiery passion for knowing exactly how the world works.

Born in Roanoke, Virginia in 1915, Ruth Stone is the author of seven books of poetry, including In an Iridescent Time (1951), Topography and Other Poems (1970), and Cheap (1972), as well as several chapbooks. She is the recipient of many honors including the Academy of American Poets Eric Mathieu King Award, the Whiting Award, the Cerf Lifetime Achievement Award from the State of Vermont, and two Guggenheim Fellowships. She raised three daughters alone while teaching creative writing at colleges and universities across the United States, including University of Illinois, University of Wisconsin, Wellesley College, Indiana University, Brandeis, and SUNY Binghamton, where she is professor emerita. She lives in Vermont.

Ellen Bryant Voigt, Shadow of Heaven (W.W. Norton & Company)
With titles such as "Winter Field," "The Garden, Spring, the Hawk," and "Autumn in the Yard We Planted," nature infuses these poems and sequences written by a poet determined "to bring out-doors inside, /The natural and the wild, picked by my own hand."

Born in Virginia in 1943, Ellen Bryant Voigt grew up on a farm and, from an early age, was a serious student of the piano. She attended Converse College and the University of Iowa. She was the recipient of the 2002 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has taught at Goddard College and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and now teaches in the low-residency MFA Program for writers at Warren Wilson College. The Vermont Symphony Orchestra on its 2000 tour premiered a commissioned work based on her previous book Kyrie. She lives in Cabot, Vermont, and is currently Vermont State Poet.

Mark Costello, Big If (W.W. Norton & Company)
In a riff on recent history and the American obsession with assassination, five Americans - bodyguards and soccer dads and campaign volunteers - long for security in the crowds and in their own lives. At the center is the story of Vi, a secret service bodyguard protecting the Vice President campaigning for the White House, and her troubled brother, a software genius poised to make a fortune on "BigIf," a state-of-the-art computer game.

Mark Costello was born and raised near Boston, and is a former federal prosecutor. In 1990 he co-authored Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present with David Foster Wallace. He published his first novel, Bag Men (1996), under the name John Flood. He teaches criminal law at Fordham University and lives in New York City with his family.

Julia Glass, Three Junes (Pantheon Books)
Set on both sides of the Atlantic during three fateful summers (1989, 1995, and 1999) in the lives of a Scottish family, this novel explores love in its limitless forms: between husband and wife, between lovers, between people and animals, between parents and children. At turns suspenseful, comic, and sad, these family members in inextricably entwined lives try to make peace with the past and to embrace the future.

Recipient of a 2000 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in fiction writing, Julia Glass has won several prizes for her short stories. She lives with her family in New York City, where she works as a freelance journalist and editor. Three Junes is her first published novel.

Adam Haslett, You Are Not a Stranger Here (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
A debut collection of nine stories about anguished and complex people: mourning mothers; maniacal fathers; schizophrenics; depressed, lonely teenagers; perplexed gay men; treacherous and jealous brothers; and other victims of human grief. The book is a landscape of absences, deaths, and peculiar salvations, taking place in settings ranging from the American West to New England to Great Britain.

A graduate of Swarthmore College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Adam Haslett has published work has appeared in Zoetrope: All Story, The Yale Review, BOMB magazine, and on National Public Radio's "Selected Shorts." He has received fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the Michener/Copernicus Society of America. He is currently a student at Yale Law School.

Martha McPhee, Gorgeous Lies (Harcourt, Inc.)
In the 1970s, the media lavished attention on Anton Furey's blended family and their utopian lifestyle. Now he's dying and his "tribe" comes to reconcile with the patriarch and the life he created for all of them. Martha McPhee, in this sequel to her first novel, Bright Angel Time, paints a portrait of an era and a family that scrutinizes the obligations of love.

Martha McPhee's first novel, Bright Angel Time, was published in 1997 and her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Redbook, and Open City. Her nonfiction has been published in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Interview and Real Simple. She is the recipient of a 1998 National Endowment for the Arts Grant and has been a fellow at both the MacDowell and Yaddo artist colonies. She received her MFA from Columbia University where she has also taught in both the undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs. She is co-author with Jenny and Laura McPhee of Girls, a nonfiction book. She lives in New York City with her daughter and husband.

Brad Watson, The Heaven of Mercury (W.W. Norton & Company)
Set deep in the American South, this debut novel spans 80 years in the life of Mercury, Mississippi, as it evolves from sleepy backwater to a small city. Mercury's changing landscape and cast of characters enrich the tale of the lifelong and complicated friendship between Finus Bates and his love, Birdie Wells.

Brad Watson was born in Meridian, Mississippi, studied at Mississippi State University and received an MFA from the University of Alabama. He has been a newspaper reporter on the Alabama and Florida Gulf coasts, an English instructor, and a creative writing teacher at Harvard. His short fiction has been published in Story, Black Warrior Review, Greensboro Review and Dog Stories. His short story collection, Last Days of the Dog-Men, won a Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He and his family live in Pensacola, Florida, where he teaches at the University of West Florida.

2002 National Book Awards
Event Listings Information
Monday, November 18
10:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Finalists for Young People's Literature
"Meet the Authors" Panel Discussion/Q&A/Book Signing
Donnell Library Center
20 West 53rd Street
(Not open to the public)

Monday, November 18
7:00 p.m.
The Book That Changed My Life
"Meet the Authors," Panel Discussion, and Book Signing
David Levering Lewis, Philip Levine, Cynthia Ozick, and Robert Stone
Barnes and Noble - Upper West Side
2289 Broadway at 82nd Street
Call (212) 362-8835 for more information

Tuesday, November 19
12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.
"Meet the Authors" Book Signing with Finalists for Young People's Literature, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry
Barnes and Noble - Union Square
17 East 17th Street
Call (212) 253-0810 for information

Tuesday, November 19
7:00 p.m.
Annual Finalists Reading
The New School - Tischman Auditorium
66 West 12th Street
Call (212) 229-5488 for more information
Tickets are $5 and must be purchased in advance through the New School box office.

Wednesday, November 20
6:30 p.m.
National Book Awards Ceremony and Dinner
New York Marriott Marquis Hotel
1535 Broadway (between 45th & 46th Streets)
By advance reservation only. For ticket information, email mjacob@nationalbook.org or visit www.nationalbook.org

NOTE TO PRESS: To make reservations to cover events, call Jessica Weintraub at
(212) 226-6563 or email jessica@ellenrydercommunications.com

S T E V E M A R T I N
Host
2002 National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner

Steve Martin, one of the most diversified performers in the motion picture industry today - actor, comedian, author, playwright, producer - has been successful as a writer of and performer in some of the most popular movies of recent film history. The National Book Foundation is proud to welcome him back as host for the National Book Awards for the fourth year in a row.

Born in Waco, Texas and raised in Southern California, Mr. Martin became a television writer in the late 1960s, winning an Emmy Award for his work on the hit series "The Smothers Brothers Comedy hour." By the end of the decade he was performing his own material in clubs and on television. Launched by frequent appearances on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show," Mr. Martin went on to host several "Saturday Night Live" shows, and star in and co-write television specials. He won Grammy Awards for his two comedy albums, "Let's Get Small" and "A Wild and Crazy Guy" and had a gold record with his single, "King Tut."

His first film project, "The Absent-Minded Waiter," a short which he wrote and starred in, was nominated for a 1977 Academy Award. In 1979, he moved into feature films, co-writing and starring in "The Jerk." After playing the lead role in "Pennies from Heaven" in 1981, he co-wrote and starred in "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" and "The Man With Two Brains," both directed by Carl Reiner in 1982. He received Best Actor awards from both the New York Film Critics Association and the National Board of Review in 1984 for his performance in "All of Me." His film, "Roxanne" (1987) garnered him a Best Actor award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, as well as the Best Screenplay award from the Writers Guild of America. His other films include "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" (1988), "Parenthood" (1989), "L.A. Story" (1991), "Father of the Bride"(1991), "Grand Canyon" (1991), "The Spanish Prisoner" (1997), "Bowfinger" (1999), and "Novocaine" (2001).

He is the author of the play "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" and the best-selling Pure Drivel, a collection of short essays. In 2001, he published the novella Shopgirl, which went into seven printings and spent time on both the New York Times and Los Angeles Times Best Seller Lists.

His coming film projects include the starring role opposite Queen Latifah in the feature comedy "Bringing Down the House" and the male lead in the film version of "Shopgirl," which he has adapted for the screen from his own novella. He is writing his second book for Hyperion, The Pleasure of My Company.

2002 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALISTS TO READ
AT ANNUAL GATHERING ON EVE OF AWARDS CEREMONY;
Co-Sponsored by The New School Writing Program

FICTION: Mark Costello, Big If; Julia Glass, Three Junes; Adam Haslett, You Are Not
a Stranger Here; Martha McPhee, Gorgeous Lies; Brad Watson, The Heaven of Mercury

NONFICTION: Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson; Devra Davis, When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution; Atul Gawande, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science; Elizabeth Gilbert, Last American Man; Steve Olson, Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes

POETRY: Harryette Mullen, Sleeping With the Dictionary; Sharon Olds,
The Unswept Room; Alberto Ríos, The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body;
Ruth Stone, In the Next Galaxy; Ellen Bryant Voigt, Shadow of Heaven

YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE: M.T. Anderson, Feed; Nancy Farmer,
The House of the Scorpion; Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle;
Elizabeth Partridge, This Land Was Made for You and Me; Jacqueline Woodson, Hush

WHERE: The New School, Tischman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street

TICKETS: $5 and must be purchased in advance through the New School box office

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Jessica Weintraub
Ellen Ryder Communications
212/226-6563

HIGH SCHOOL JOURNALISTS TO INTERVIEW
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALISTS
_________________

Donnell Library Center in Manhattan to Host
Five Award-Winning Authors; Student Press Conference Planned

New York, NY (October 16, 2002) --- Approximately 250 students and young print and broadcast journalists from local New York City high schools will attend an exclusive press conference with this year's five finalists for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. The Donnell Library Center, part of The Branch Libraries of The New York Public Library system, in conjunction with the National Book Foundation, will host the event on Monday, November 18 at the library, 20 West 53rd Street from 10:30 a.m. - 1:00p.m.

The Donnell Library program is the first in a series of readings and other events taking place during "National Book Awards Week," culminating in the National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner on November 20 at the New York Marriott Marquis. For more information, visit www.nationalbook.org

This year's Young People's Literature Finalists - announced today, along with the Finalists in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry - are a diverse group of authors, whose books for young adults explore remarkably provocative subjects: cloning, brain-implanted advertising messages, the witness protection program, the Middle East conflict, and the life of Woody Guthrie.

M.T. Anderson, Feed (Candlewick Press)
Set in an unspecified time in the future - when it's as easy to go to the moon as to the mall - this satire explores the nature of consumerism and what it means to be a teenager in America. Feed tells the story of Titus - whose ability to read, write and think for himself has been nearly obliterated by the advertising-laden Internet "feed" implanted in his brain - and of his relationship with Violet, who challenges him to care about what's really going on in the world.
M.T. Anderson, of Boston, is on the faculty at Vermont College's MFA Program in Writing for Children. His previous young adult novels are Thirsty (1998) and Burger Wuss (1999).

Nancy Farmer, The House of the Scorpion (A Richard Jackson Book/Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
A futuristic adventure story about young Matteo Alacrán and his struggle to understand his own existence. Matteo is a clone, sharing identical DNA with the maniacal El Patrón, lord of a country called Opium. Terror and danger are constant companions where they live - a strip of poppy fields between the United States and what was once called Mexico.
A National Book Award Finalist in 1996 for A Girl Named Disaster, Nancy Farmer grew up in a hotel on the Arizona-Mexico border, attended Reed College, and was in the Peace Corps in Africa from 1963 to 1965. She lives in Menlo Park, California.

Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins Publishers)
Sixty new and collected poems for young people celebrating friends, family, and neighbors, and offering a glimpse of both the ordinary domestic life of people in the Middle East, as well as lives lived within the confines of a refugee camp, or in a bombed-out home, or with haunting memories of lost relatives.
Naomi Shihab Nye - the daughter of a Palestinian father and a German-American mother - grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio. She has devoted much of her work as a poet and anthologist to finding bridges between the work of writers and artists of the Middle East and North American readers. She lives in San Antonio.

Elizabeth Partridge, This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life & Songs of Woody Guthrie (Viking/Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers)
Illustrated with period photographs, letters, drawings, and other archival material, this biography of America's troubadour focuses on how his difficult childhood in Oklahoma and Texas, his travels during the Depression, and his friendships with union organizers and Dust Bowl migrant workers shaped and informed the more than 3,000 songs he wrote.
Elizabeth Partridge's other books for young people include Restless Spirit: The Life and Work of Dorothea Lange (1998) and Oranges on Golden Mountain (2001). She and her husband live in Berkeley and are parents of two college-age sons. www.elizabethpartridge.com

Jacqueline Woodson, Hush (G.P. Putnam's Sons/Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers)
Evie (once named Toswiah) is this novel's narrator, telling her story in flashbacks as she struggles to reinvent herself and re-imagine her future. After her father testified against two fellow police officers in a murder case, she and her family enter a witness protection program, move to a strange new city, leave their "old" lives behind, and try to come to terms with their new identities.
Born in Columbus, Ohio, Jacqueline Woodson grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, and Brooklyn. She is the author of a number of books for children, young adults, and adults, including Miracle's Boys, which won the Coretta Scott King Award. Her other titles include If You Come Softly (1998), I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This (1995), Lena (2000), and Autobiography of a Family Photo (1996). She lives in Brooklyn, and is currently working on a novel for adults, Grail, NY. www.jacquelinewoodson.com

The session is open to students and their faculty advisers by invitation only. A signing and reception with the authors will follow the presentation and question-and-answer session.

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PHILIP ROTH TO RECEIVE NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION
MEDAL FOR DISTINGUISHED CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICAN LETTERS
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NEW YORK, NY (October 16, 2002) - The National Book Foundation will confer its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters this year on novelist Philip Roth, one of America's most acclaimed and inventive authors, whose prolific publishing history over six decades has achieved both best-seller status and critical praise.

The medal will be presented to Mr. Roth at the 2002 National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner, to be held on Wednesday, November 20 at the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel. Mr. Roth will deliver an address to an audience of 1,000 authors, editors, publishers, friends, and supporters of books and book publishing. The evening benefits the Foundation's many educational outreach programs for readers and writers across the country.

Mr. Roth is the fourteenth recipient of the National Book Foundation Medal, established in 1988. Previous recipients are Jason Epstein, Daniel Boorstin, Saul Bellow, Eudora Welty, James Laughlin, Clifton Fadiman, Gwendolyn Brooks, David McCullough, Toni Morrison, Studs Terkel, John Updike, Ray Bradbury, and Arthur Miller.

The November 20 ceremony will feature the announcement of the four Winners of the 2002 National Book Awards in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People's Literature. The 20 Finalists for the Awards were announced today.

Philip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1933, the son of American-born parents and grandson of European Jews, who were part of the 19th Century wave of immigration to the United States.

He received a master's degree from the University of Chicago in 1955, and his debut collection, Goodbye, Columbus, was published in 1959 and received the National Book Award for Fiction in 1960.

His third novel, Portnoy's Complaint (1969), caused a stir with its representation of the middle-class Jewish world of Alexander Portnoy. Prominent among Roth's later works has been a series featuring Nathan Zuckerman.

He inaugurated and for 15 years served as general editor of the Penguin book series, "Writers from the Other Europe," introducing the work of such writers as Bruno Schulz and Milan Kundera to American audiences. He retired from teaching as a Distinguished Professor of Literature at Hunter College in 1992, after many years of teaching comparative literature, primarily at the University of Pennsylvania and also at Iowa and Princeton. His fiction and essays have appeared in many magazines, including Esquire, Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Paris Review, and Playboy.

He won the National Book Award for Fiction again in 1995 for Sabbath's Theater, and was a Finalist four other times for My Life as a Man, (1975); The Ghost Writer, (1980); The Anatomy Lesson (1984); and The Counterlife, (1987). His other notable and acclaimed books include Patrimony, Operation Shylock, American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, and last year's The Human Stain.

Mr. Roth has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1970; and in 1998, he received the National Medal of Arts, bestowed by The White House. He has lived in Rome, London, Chicago, and New York. He resides now in Connecticut.

Updated information regarding the 2002 National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner, as well as events in conjunction with National Book Awards Week, can be found on the Foundation's Web site www.nationalbook.org