Page 1, 2

FINALISTS FOR THE 2003 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR
YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE

Paul Fleischman, Breakout (Cricket Books / A Marcato Book / Carus Publishing Company)
Having spent the majority of her life bouncing between foster homes, 17-year-old Audelia "Del" Thigpen is cynical beyond her years and tired of being "Del." In an attempt to escape both herself and Los Angeles, Del fakes her own death and hits the road. Her escape is hindered when she finds herself in the midst of an all-day traffic jam. Eight years later, it's the opening night of "Breakout," Del's one-woman play. As the narrative switches between present and future, Paul Fleischman traces the path of youthful experience transformed into art.

A native Californian, Paul Fleischman grew up working as a typesetter for his family's hand printing press. He attended the University of California for two years before setting out to cross the country by train and bicycle. He is an author of numerous books, including works of poetry and historical fiction, and is also a musician and found-object sculptor. His father, young people's writer Sid Fleischman, was a National Book Award Finalist in 1979 for Humbug Mountain. After living in many parts of the United States and abroad, Paul Fleischman returned to the California coast, where he now lives with his wife, Patty. They have two grown sons. www.paulfleischman.net

Polly Horvath, The Canning Season (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
When her mother decides that she needs to devote her summer to gaining entrance into a prestigious country club, Ratchet Clark is shipped off from her native Pensacola, Florida, to live in rural Maine with her 91-year-old twin aunts, Tilly and Penpen. Though wildly eccentric, the aunts manage to make Ratchet feel loved for the first time in her life. Penpen's insistence that we must always admit whoever shows up at the door often results in visits from bothersome guests. But as Ratchet learns, an unwelcome visitor may have more to offer than it seems.

Polly Horvath is the author of five previous books for young readers including The Trolls, which was a National Book Award Finalist in 1999. Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Ms. Horvath studied dance in Toronto and New York before turning to writing full time. She and her husband have two daughters and live in Metchosin, British Columbia.

Jim Murphy, An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 (Clarion Books / Houghton Mifflin Company)
The death of a young French sailor on August 3, 1793 marked the beginning of a crippling epidemic that took hold of Philadelphia, then the nation's capital, and threatened the stability of a fledgling country, leaving between 4,000 and 5,000 dead. Using medical and non-medical accounts to recreate the fear that took hold of the city, the author spotlights those who were forced to flee, President Washington among them, and the heroic residents who stayed to help combat the spread of the disease. An American Plague brings together science, history, politics, and public health to tell the story of a nation in crisis.

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Jim Murphy is the author of more than 25 books for young people, including Inside the Alamo, The Great Fire, and A Young Patriot: The American Revolution as Experienced by One Boy. Mr. Murphy earned his B.A. in English from Rutgers University, and has held jobs as an apartment cleaner, a bookseller, and working on open steel construction sites 30 stories up on Manhattan skyscrapers. He and his family live in Maplewood, New Jersey.

Richard Peck, The River Between Us (Dial Books / Penguin Group USA)
At the outset of the Civil War in 1861, two mysterious young women arrive by steamboat in Grand Tower, Illinois, a river town on the muddy banks of the Mississippi. One woman, vibrant and commanding, is dressed in the high-fashion regalia of the era; the other, withdrawn and brooding, looks very much as though she may be an escaped slave now walking on free soil. Soon after arriving, the new faces are offered room and board in the Pruitt household. As the mystery unfolds, the lives of both the Pruitts and their visitors are forever changed, and the degree of impact one person can have on another is tested to its limit.

Born in Decatur, Illinois, Richard Peck is the author of more than 20 novels. After seeing military action in Germany during World War II, he returned to the United States and was a teacher until 1971. In addition to his writing, Mr. Peck travels across the country giving talks to groups about writing. He participated in the National Book Foundation Settlement House Author Residency program at Sunnyside Community Service Senior Center in Queens, New York, in 1999. He is the recipient of a National Humanities Medal from the White House and was a National Book Award Finalist in 1998 for A Long Way From Chicago: A Novel in Stories. He lives in New York City.

Jacqueline Woodson, Locomotion (G.P. Putnam's Sons / Penguin Group USA)
This volume comprises 60 poems written by the novel's central character and narrator-poet "Locomotion" (the nickname of Lonnie Collins Motion). Introduced to the joys of poetry by his teacher, Ms. Marcus, Lonnie's revelations about himself are drawn out by his discovery of the emotive qualities encouraged by poetry's various forms, from haiku to sonnet. As he becomes more comfortable as a writer, Lonnie reveals the secret that at age seven, he and his sister were orphaned when their parents died in a fire. Throughout the collection, Lonnie's personal growth corresponds with his willingness to become a more adventurous writer.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, Jacqueline Woodson grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, and Brooklyn. She is the author of books for children, young adults, and adults, including Miracle's Boys (2001), If You Come Softly (1998), I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This (1995), Lena (2000), and Autobiography of a Family Photo (1996). Ms. Woodson was a Finalist for the 2002 National Book Award in Young People's Literature for her novel Hush, which won the LA Times Book Prize. She lives in Brooklyn and is a faculty member of the National Book Foundation Summer Writing Camp. Ms. Woodson has been a writer-in-residence in the Foundation's New York City Settlement House program at Stanley M. Isaacs Neighborhood Center in Manhattan in 1999, and the Family Literacy Program at the Family Academy in Harlem in 2002. www.jacquelinewoodson.com

FINALISTS FOR THE 2003 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION

T.C. Boyle, Drop City (Viking / Penguin Group USA)
Under the influence of the hippie spirit that spilled over from the late 1960s, Norm Sender decided to open the doors to his Sonoma County ranch to any idealistic vagrant interested in being part of his community. The group of open-minded free-lovers and drug-abusers soon come to be known as "Drop City," but beneath the nonchalant veneer characterizing the group lurk the same selfish impulses against which the group set out to define themselves. As run-ins with the law and interpersonal strife threaten to break up the group, Norm proposes that Drop City relocate to rural Alaska as a way to cement its earthy aspirations. Despite good intentions, Alaska's harsh conditions and unsympathetic locals threaten the communal goodwill the group was attempting to recapture.

T.C. Boyle is the author of eight previous novels and six collections of stories. His work has appeared in many major American magazines, including The New Yorker, GQ, Harper's, and The Atlantic Monthly. Mr. Boyle received an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1974 and his Ph.D. in 19th Century British Literature from the University of Iowa in 1977. Since 1986, he has been a member of the English Department at the University of Southern California, where he teaches creative writing. Mr. Boyle lives near Santa Barbara with his wife and their three children. www.tcboyle.com

Shirley Hazzard, The Great Fire (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Ravaged by the closing events of World War II, Japan in this novel is an ancient society struggling to cope with the brutal implications of defeat in modern warfare. Aldred Leith, military hero and son of a famous novelist, has come to Eastern Asia to observe firsthand the subject matter of a book he intends to write. There he meets Helen, the teenaged daughter of a local Australian commander, and becomes captivated by her ability to live vicariously through literature. Despite their differences in age, the two gradually are drawn to one another. Both must heal from the recent global horrors before regaining the capacity to love.

The Great Fire is Shirley Hazzard's first published work of fiction in more than 20 years. Born in Australia, Ms. Hazzard traveled the world during her early years, a result of her parents' diplomatic postings. In 1947, at the age of 16, she was engaged by British intelligence to monitor the civil war in China. In 1963, she married the writer Francis Steegmuller, who died in 1994. She has written three other novels, two of which were National Book Award Finalists: The Bay of Noon (1971) and The Transit of Venus (1981). She is also the author of two collections of short stories, and several works of nonfiction including the memoir Greene on Capri. She now lives in New York, making frequent travels to Italy.

Edward P. Jones, The Known World (Amistad / HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.)
With the Civil War looming, former slave Henry Townsend is a farmer and boot-maker, and has as his mentor (and former owner) William Robbins, arguably the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Under Robbins' guidance, Henry eventually becomes proprietor of his own plantation, entitling him to 50 acres of land and 33 slaves of his own. The Known World explores the often-neglected historical phenomenon of slaves with black masters in all of its legal and social complexity, providing a glimpse not only into 19th century race relations, but also into the most complex aspects of human nature itself.

Edward P. Jones was a National Book Award Fiction Finalist for his 1992 debut, Lost in the City, a collection of stories, which went on to win the PEN-Hemingway Foundation Award for best first fiction. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Mr. Jones studied at Holy Cross College and the University of Virginia. He now lives in Arlington, Virginia. The Known World is his first novel.

Scott Spencer, A Ship Made of Paper (Ecco / HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.)
When Daniel Emerson, a New York City lawyer, returns to his hometown of Leyden, New York, a picturesque small town on the Hudson River, he is anxious to settle down into family life with his girlfriend Kate, a writer, and her daughter Ruby. But as Kate descends into obsession with the O.J. Simpson trial and starts drinking, Daniel begins to find himself hopelessly attracted to Iris Davenport, a black woman whose son is Ruby's best friend. After Daniel and Iris spend a night together when they are trapped in the same house by a blizzard, the rosy domesticity that had until then characterized their lives is shattered, and in its place arise troubled issues of race, class, romantic obsession, and family responsibility.

Scott Spencer has written seven previous novels, including Endless Love, a National Book Award Finalist in 1981. Mr. Spencer has written for The New York Times, Esquire, The Nation, and Rolling Stone, and he has taught fiction writing at Columbia University and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. He lives in upstate New York.

Marianne Wiggins, Evidence of Things Unseen (Simon & Schuster, Inc.)
From his days spent in trenches during the Great War in France, Ray "Fos" Foster had always been intrigued by light. Upon his return to the United States, Fos sets up a photography studio with his new wife, Opal. When Opal inherits land in rural Tennessee, the two relocate, but are soon forced to pick up again after the land is claimed by the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1942. Fos' scientific leanings lead him to seek work at the Oak Ridge Laboratory, where the government is secretly pushing full force ahead for the construction of the atom bomb that eventually will be dropped on Hiroshima. But when Opal is struck with radiation poisoning, Fos loses his faith in science and realizes the difference between things of natural radiance and the new world of artificial suns - a realization that will ultimately come to haunt his son.

Marianne Wiggins is the author of seven novels including Almost Heaven and John Dollar. She published her first novel, Babe, at the age of 28. She has won a Whiting Award, an NEA award, and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. The scientific information that informs Evidence of Things Unseen is entirely self-taught and the result of five years of research. Ms. Wiggins lives in Southern California.

Page 1, 2