National Book Award

I live in America, I figured I should add this list. I mean I already have an entire page dedicated to the Booker Prize, so I might as well make an effort to read the National Book Award winners and any finalists that sound interesting. The National Book Award is presented by the National Book Foundation (website) and you can find out more about the award on Wikipedia. I am going to stay primarily with the fiction winner but might throw in another here and there if it sounds really interesting.

Edit: Having added the list now, I realize how few I’ve read or even recognized! That’s embarrassing.

• 1950 – The Man With The Golden Arm – Nelson Algren
• 1951 – The Collected Stories of William Faulkner – William Faulkner; The Trouble of One House – Brendan Gill
• 1952 – From Here to Eternity – James Jones
  • The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger (Fiction, Finalist)
• 1953 – Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
• 1954 – The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
• 1955 – A Fable – William Faulkner
• 1956 – Ten North Frederick – John O’Hara
  • A Good Man is Hard to Find – Flannery O’Connor (Fiction, Finalist)
• 1957 – The Field of Vision – Wright Morris
  • Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin (Fiction, Finalist)
• 1958 – The Wapshot Chronicle – John Cheever
  • Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand (Fiction, Finalist)
• 1959 – The Magic Barrel – Bernard Malamud
  • Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov (Fiction, Finalist)
• 1960 – Goodbye, Columbus – Philip Roth
• 1961 – The Waters of Kronos – Conrad Richter
  • A Separate Peace – John Knowles (Fiction, Finalist)
  • To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee (Fiction, Finalist)
  • Rabbit, Run – John Updike (Fiction, Finalist)
• 1962 – The Moviegoer – Walker Percy
  • Catch-22 – Joseph Heller (Fiction, Finalist)
• 1963 – Morte D’Urban – J.F. Powers
• 1964 – The Centaur – John Updike
• 1965 – Herzog – Saul Bellow
• 1966 – The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter – Katherine Anne Porter
• 1967 – The Fixer – Bernard Malamud
• 1968 – The Eighth Day – Thornton Wilder
• 1969 – Steps – Jerzy Kosinski
• 1970 – Them – Joyce Carol Oates
• 1971 – Mr. Sammler’s Planet – Saul Bellow
• 1972 – The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor – Flannery O’Connor
  • Rabbit Redux – John Updike (Fiction, Finalist)
• 1973 – Chimera – John Barth
  • The Farthest Shore – Ursula K. LeGuin (Children’s Book, Winner)
• 1974 – Gravity’s Rainbow – Thoms Pynchon; A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories – Isaac Bashevis Singer
• 1975 – Dog Soldiers – Robert Stone; The Hair of Harold Roux – Thomas Williams
• 1976 – JR – William Gaddis
• 1977 – The Spectator Bird – Wallace Stegner
• 1978 – Blood Tie – Mary Lee Settle
• 1979 – Going After Cacciato – Tim O’Brien
  • The World According to Garp – John Irving (Fiction, Finalist)
• 1980 – Sophie’s Choice – William Styron
  • A Swiftly Tilting Planet – Madeleine L’Engle (Children’s Books Paperback, Winner)
• 1981 – Plains Song – Wright Morris
• 1982 – Rabbit is Rich – John Updike
• 1983 – The Color Purple – Alice Walker
• 1984 – Victory over Japan: A Book of Stories – Ellen Gilchrest
• 1985 – White Noise – Don DeLillo
  • Always Coming Home – Ursula K. Le Guin (Fiction, Finalist)
• 1986 – World’s Fair – E.L. Doctorow
• 1987 – Paco’s Story – Larry Heinemann
  • Beloved – Toni Morrison (Fiction, Finalist)
• 1988 – Paris Trout – Pete Dexter
• 1989 – Spartina – John Casey
  • The Joy Luck Club – Amy Tan (Fiction, Finalist)
• 1990 – Middle Passage – Charles Johnson
  • Dogeaters – Jessica Hagedorn (Fiction, Finalist)
• 1991 – Matig – Norman Rush
• 1992 – All the Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy
  • Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story – Paul Monette (Nonfiction, Winner)
  • Bastard Out of Carolina – Dorothy Allison (Fiction, Finalist)
• 1993 – The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
• 1994 – A Frolic of His Own – William Gaddis
• 1995 – Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth
• 1996 – Ship Fever and Other Stories – Andrea Barrett
• 1997 – Cold Mountain – Charles Frazier
• 1998 – Charming Billy – Alice McDermott
  • Holes – Louis Sachar (Young People’s Literature, Winner)
• 1999 – Waiting – Ha Jin
• 2000 – In America – Susan Sontag
• 2001 – The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
• 2002 – Three Junes – Julia Glass
• 2003 – The Great Fire – Shirley Hazzard
  • Waiting for Snow in Havana – Carlos Eire (Nonfiction, Winner)
• 2004 – The News from Paraguay – Lily Tuck
• 2005 – Europe Central – William T. Vollman
• 2006 – The Echo Maker – Richard Powers
• 2007 – Tree of Smoke – Denis Johnson
  • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian – Sherman Alexie (Young People’s Literature, Winner)
• 2008 – Shadow Country – Peter Matthiesen
• 2009 – Let the Great World Spin – Colum McCann
• 2010 – Lord of Misrule – Jaimy Gordon
• 2011 – Salvage the Bones – Jesmyn Ward
• 2012 – The Round House – Louise Erdrich
  • Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk – Ben Fountain (Fiction, Finalist)
• 2013 – The Good Lord Bird – James McBride
  • Two Boys Kising – David Levithan (Young People’s Literature, Long List)
  • Boxers & Saints – Gene Luen Yang (Young People’s Literature, Finalist)
• 2014 – Redeployment – Phil Klay
  • Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel (Fiction, Finalist)
• 2015 – Fortune Smiles: Stories – Adam Johnson
  • Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates (Nonfiction, Winner)
  • A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara (Fiction, Finalist)
  • Bone Gap – Laura Ruby (Young People’s Literature, Finalist)
• 2016 – The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead
• 2017 – Sing, Unburied, Sing – Jesmyn Ward
• 2018 – The Friend – Sigrid Nunez
• 2019 – Trust Exercise – Susan Choi
  • Disappearing Earth – Julia Phillips (Fiction, Finalist)