The short list--the finalists--has been released, and "Bright Dead Things," published by Milkweed Edition, is still in the running. So is "Fates and Furies," the much-lauded novel by Lauren Groff, and "Fortune Smiles," the remarkable short story collection by Adam Johnson, as well as the essay collection by Ta-Nahesi Coates. Face it, the whole short list is daunting!
The award winners will be announced Nov. 18. Here are the final 20:
FICTION
Karen E. Bender, Refund, published by Counterpoint Press
Angela Flournoy, The Turner House, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies, published by Riverhead Books/Penguin Random House
Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles, published by Random House
Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life, published by Doubleday/Penguin Random House
NONFICTION
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, published by Spiegel & Grau/Penguin Random House
Sally Mann, Hold Still, published by Little, Brown, a division of Hachette Book Group
Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus, published by Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster
Carla Power, If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran, published by Henry Holt and Company, a division of Macmillan
Tracy K. Smith, Ordinary Light, published by Alfred A. Knopf
POETRY
Ross Gay, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press
Terrance Hayes, How to Be Drawn, published by Penguin
Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus, published by Alfred A. Knopf
Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things, published by Milkweed Editions
Patrick Phillips, Elegy for a Broken Machine, published by Alfred A. Knopf
YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE
Ali Benjamin, The Thing About Jellyfish, published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Laura Ruby, Bone Gap, published by Balzer + Bray, a division of HarperCollins Children's Books
Steve Sheinkin, Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War,
published by Roaring Brook Press
Neal Shusterman, Challenger Deep, published by HarperCollins Children's Books
Noelle Stevenson, Nimona, published by HarperTeen/HarperCollins Children's Books
