National Book Awards - 2006
FICTION
Winner:
Richard Powers, The Echo Maker (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
> Appreciations on Best of National Book Awards Fiction Blog
Finalists:
Mark Z. Danielewski, Only Revolutions (Pantheon)
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Ken Kalfus, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country (Ecco/HarperCollins)
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Dana Spiotta, Eat the Document (Scribner/Simon & Schuster)
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Jess Walter, The Zero (Judith Regan Books/HarperCollins)
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >
Fiction judges:
Bharati Mukherjee (chair), Jonathan Lethem, Craig Nova, David Plante, Marianne Wiggins
NONFICTION
Winner:
Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
(Houghton Mifflin)
Finalists:
Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 (Simon & Schuster)
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone (Alfred A. Knopf)
Peter Hessler, Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China’s Past and Present (HarperCollins)
Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Alfred A. Knopf)
Nonfiction judges:
Jill Jonnes (Chair), Kevin Boyle, Randall Kennedy, Wendy Lesser, Luis Alberto Urrea
POETRY
Winner:
Nathaniel Mackey, Splay Anthem (New Directions)
> Read His Acceptance Speech
> NBA Poetry Blog Essay and Archival Material for Mackey
Finalists:
Louise Glück, Averno (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
H.L. Hix, Chromatic (Etruscan Press)
- Book That Changed My Life Essay >Ben Lerner, Angle of Yaw (Copper Canyon Press)
James McMichael, Capacity (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Poetry judges:
James Longenbach (chair), Jimmy Santiago Baca, Li Young Lee, Claudia Rankine, C.D. Wright
YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE
Winner:
M.T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party
(Candlewick Press)
Finalists:
Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death (Front Street Books/Boyds Mills Press)
Patricia McCormick, Sold (Hyperion Books for Children)
Nancy Werlin, The Rules of Survival (Dial/Penguin)
Gene Luen Yang, American Born Chinese (First Second/Roaring Brook Press/Holtzbrinck)
- Book That Changed My Life Essay >
Young People's Literature judges:
Margaret Bechard (chair), Patricia McKissack, Linda Sue Park, Benjamin Alire Saenz, Jude Watson
