The 2011 finalists for the National Book Awards were announced today during a special broadcast of Think Out Loud this morning. The show is a partnership between OPB, Literary Arts and the National Book Foundation.

Young People’s Literature Finalists were announced by Virginia Euwer Wolff. The finalists are:

“My Name is Not Easy” by Debby Dahl Edwardson (Marshall Cavendish)

“Inside Out & Back Again” by Thanhha Lai (HarperCollins)

“Flesh & Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and Its Legacy” by Albert Marrin (Alfred A. Knopf)

“Shine” by Lauren Myracle (Amulet Books, an Imprint of Abrams)

“Okay for Now” by Gary D. Schmidt (Clarion Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Poetry Finalists were announced by Vern Rutsala.The finalists are:

“Head Off & Split” by Nikky Finney (Triquarterly Books /Northwestern Universty Press)

“The Chameleon Couch” by Yusef Komunyakaa (FSG)

“Double Shadow” by Carl Phillips (Farrar, Straus and Groux)

“Tonight No Poetry Will Serve” by Adrienne Rich (W.W. Norton & Company)

“Devotions” by Bruce Smith (University of Chicago Press)

Nonfiction Finalists were announced by Sallie Tisdale.The finalists are:

“The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism” by Deborah Baker (Graywolf Press)

“Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution” by Mary Gabriel (Little, Brown and Company)

“The Swerve: How the World Became Modern” by Stephen Greenblatt(W.W. Norton) 

“Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” by Manning Marable –  Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (Viking)

“Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout” by Lauren Redniss (It Books: An Imprint of HarperCollins)

Fiction Finalists were announced by Charles Johnson.The finalists are:

“The Sojourn” by Andrew Krivak (Bellevue Literary Press)

“The Tiger’s Wife” by Téa Obreht (Random House)

“The Buddha in the Attic” by Julie Otsuka (Alfred A. Knopf)

“Binocular Vision” by Edith Pearlman (Lookout Books)

“Salvage the Bones” by Jesmyn Ward (Bloomsbury) 

You can learn more about the finalists, watch the announcement, and read comments from the live blog at www.opb.org/nationalbookawards.

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